People who read this blog are aware of the shortage of physicians who can prescribe buprenorphine to treat people addicted to pain pills, even as an epidemic of addiction to heroin and pain pills devastates the heartland of the country.  In order to prescribe buprenorphine, physicians take a short course and obtain special certification.  To obtain certification, physicians must promise to treat no more than 30 patients at one time, a number that can be increased to 100 patients after one year.

If you only have a few minutes, please take the time to go to the White House web site and add you name to a petition to allow individual doctors to treat more than 100 patients using buprenorphine.  The whole process is fast and easy, and only requires your name and email address through this link: http://wh.gov/QR6K

If you have more time, need convincing, or just like hearing a 52-y-o rage against the machine, continue reading my thoughts about limiting treatment for this one health condition.

The reason for the patient cap, according to cap proponents, is to prevent pill-mill practices where patients could obtain narcotic medications without adequate care for their underlying addiction.  That concern is reasonable, I suppose, but I often discover that proponents of the cap have other motives to keep the limits in place.  For example, one person at a ‘linked in’ group argued that individual physicians don’t provide the all-encompassing care that he provides… to the 800+ patients he ‘counsels’ at the methadone clinic where he works!  According to that counselor, all people addicted to opioids need years of counseling—largely from other people with addictions, who after a couple years of school have all the answers.

He would be surprised to see just how well people can do on buprenorphine, a medication that selectively removes craving for opioids.  After years of treating and knowing patients on buprenorphine I realized that ‘character defects’ are largely maintained by active craving.  Yes– people with antisocial tendencies before and during active addiction have the same antisocial tendencies on buprenorphine.  But people who …

Several of my patients have warned me about the world ending in a few days, on December 21, 2012.  There are variations on the theme, but the basic idea is that the Mayans, who were accomplished mathematicians and astronomers, used an advanced calendar to measure planetary cycles… and that calendar ends at the end of this week.   Some patients tell me that the end of the Mayan calendar coincides with predictions by the French seer Nostradamus, although the definitive authority on everything, Wikipedia, holds that Nostradamus did not make such a prediction.

I’ve browsed internet sites about this topic in order to prepare this post and found that there are about as many different versions as there are web sites about the prediction.  I suspect that some versions have more adherents than others, and I have no idea which web sites are the most authoritative.  I’ve read, though, that the world will end as described in the Book of Revelation in the Bible, or that instead, humanity will be erased, leaving the Earth unscathed.  I’ve read that the Earth and Sun will line up in a way that eclipses the energy flowing from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, causing humanity to die off and be replaced by aliens from outer space.

Like any good prediction, this one has plenty of wiggle-room.  Comparisons between our modern calendar and the Mayan calendar require assumptions about how the Mayans determined months and years, so December 21st is only one best guess for the end of times.  Some interpretations place the date a year or so ago, and others place the date a year or so in the future.  In other words, things are not quite as tidy as they were at the millennium, when people only had to figure out which time zone marked where midnight would spell disaster.

Talk about the end of the world carries a certain levity, but like anything conjured by humans has a dark side.   In 1997, 39 members of the religious group Heaven’s Gate committed suicide in order …

Lately it seems as if I’ve been hearing more calls to change US marijuana laws.  The legalization of marijuana has been a cause for some citizens for decades, and efforts to change marijuana laws have waxed and waned since I was a teenager in the 1970’s.  Some people believe that this time around, attitudes are truly changing.  A recent Quinnipiac University poll  showed that as of November 2012, a majority of US voters favor legalization of the drug for recreational use.

The current status of marijuana laws are confusing, to say the least. Marijuana is regulated at multiple jurisdictional levels, so a person in any one location is subject to state, federal, and sometimes local statutes.  These statutes are often at odds with each other, so the legality of marijuana depends largely on the employer of the agent or officer making the arrest.

There are also multiple forms of legality. In November, Colorado and Washington State legalized the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana.  Another dozen-or-so states decriminalized marijuana over the past 20 years, so that possession of the drug is punishable by citation, not prison time.  Another 20 or so states have laws allowing for the medical use of marijuana, including in some cases provisions to grow marijuana for personal use or for a small number of patients.

By federal law, marijuana continues to be illegal in virtually all settings.  The DEA classifies marijuana as ‘Schedule I’, the same status as heavy-hitters like LSD or Heroin.  Smoking marijuana can be reason enough for most employers to terminate employment.  And violation of marijuana laws, even the possession of small amounts of marijuana, can result in permanent banishment from federal financial aid programs for higher education.

I have no pressing personal opinion on this issue.  I don’t have a ‘marijuana problem’, and I never really had a problem with the drug.  I smoked it as a teen, and note that the year of my high school graduation, 1978, was the peak year for marijuana use in this country.  But I never enjoyed smoking pot …