Addiction Treatment, Science, and Dead Rats

In my last post I teased that I would write about fake science.  I’ll try to make it interesting. The internet allows everyone to do research about symptoms and treatments for any condition. If not for need for prescriptions, people could act as their own doctors.  But a huge dose of caution is necessary before anyone takes that path. Realize first that doctors don’t treat themselves or even their family members.  The saying that ‘a person representing himself in court has a fool for a lawyer’ applies double in healthcare.  Treating someone close to one’s self introduces a bias that is hard to explain, but easy to notice.  As an example, I see a doctor annually to monitor a progressive condition that threatens my vision.  I would like to know the answer to a simple question:  how bad is it?  If I have a patient with that condition I can look at images of his/her retina and have an immediate, rough sense about what the person is facing.  But when I look at my own images and test results I sense nothing beyond fear or relief.  The problems with self-assessment are of course greater in the field of psychiatry and addiction.  After my relapse in 2001 I was told I needed treatment, and my assessment called for a brief refresher course on the twelve steps.  Three months later, still in residential treatment, I recognized how wrong I was. A larger problem is that research on the internet is nothing like the research used by doctors or scient...
Source: Suboxone Talk Zone - Category: Addiction Authors: Tags: Education Pharma pharmacology Research treatment alcohol treatment fake science FDA approval nutritional supplements Source Type: blogs