Dr. Sarah Wakeman:
So there are three FDA approved medications available in the U.S. for treatment of alcohol use disorder. There's also other medications that are off label are not officially approved for that indication, but are very effective. And these medicines, for the most part, work by reducing the urge to want to drink and the pleasurable feedback that you get from drinking.
And so they can be really powerful. And it's been shown to help reduce heavy drinking days, and also to improve the likelihood that someone can achieve abstinence meaning not drinking at all. I think many people aren't even aware that there are medications they could ask their doctor for, or that could be a part of their treatment.
And we have to remember, as a society, for more than 100 years, we've really carved addiction out as something separate from the rest of our healthcare system are somehow different than the rest of medical care or medical conditions that we treat.
And so there's been this idea that addiction, although we sometimes say it's an illness, many of our policies and our clinical procedures really approach it like it's an issue of morality or willpower. And so really undoing that ideology. Those general stigmatizing notions is really important to bring addiction back into the medical system back into medical training, so that doctors and nurses and other health care professionals feel comfortable addressing this and offer medication treatment just like they would for depression, or diabetes or heart disease.
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