What are the common components of family history contributing to the recycling of relapses and spreading the addiction epidemic within the family? One frequent pattern associated with opioid addiction within the family appears to involve unemployment, trailed by the decay of the family structure (1). During the past several decades, there has been a continuous shift of American factories to foreign countries, resulting in job losses in traditional small-town and rural environ

Is the treatment of opioid addiction sufficient for minimizing the frequency of relapse? The disease is largely due to changes in brain function, including processes mediated by opioid receptors and the neural system’s response to pain and stress. Buprenorphine, a partial opioid antagonist and a medication used to treat addiction, interacts with the brain’s receptors and mitigates the effects of withdrawal, resulting in protective, stabilizing effects on patients. However,

Why does opioid addiction remain a national epidemic travesty? Why, despite the implementation of several protective measures by the state and federal agencies, including restricting prescriptions of opioids, does opioid addiction remain a national epidemic travesty, and why does overdose mortality increase (1, 2)? If it were as simple as limiting a patient’s access to opioids, the epidemic should subside. Even patients with genetic risk factors for opioid addiction would hav

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