How Should Addicts Treat Anxiety?
In a response to an earlier post, a woman wrote that her son, an opioid addict, developed a new addiction to alprazolam—a medication prescribed by his physician to treat opioid withdrawal while starting buprenorphine. I’ll soon write about the use of buprenorphine for opioid dependence, but for now I will note that the opioid withdrawal that occurs when starting buprenorphine is short-lived, and does not generally warrant treatment with an addictive substance like alprazolam.
I did not, of course, witness her son’s anxiety, and I know nothing about the details of the case. But her remarks reflect a common phenomenon that deserves examination.
