Opioid Use Disorder with Dr. Mark Thomas

Stigma's Toll: A Podcast Series to Reduce the Stigma of Opioid Use Disorder Through Education

For the scientific background regarding Opioid Use Disorder, the expert is Dr. Mark Thomas who is a professor of neuroscience and director of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction, a new research program funded by the Minnesota legislature to fuel cross-disciplinary collaborations and discover new treatment options. His research examines how addictive drugs alter the brain and how these changes can lead to compulsive drug use. His lab is now focusing on ways to disrupt addiction relapse. This team researches addiction and are trying to find new ways to treat it.

During our interview, Dr. Mark Thomas explained some of what the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction is, and how they are hoping to design transformative therapies to battle addiction. He spoke to the dopamine system in the brain, and how that is important to addiction, and how it plays a role in helping us do things that are important for survival. He spoke to the misconception that people use drugs only for pleasure, which adds to stigma, as many believe that drug users are being selfish and seeking pleasure. He explains that just because drugs release dopamine, it does not mean that pleasure is the draw to keep using, he reports that the science doesn’t back up the pleasure-seeking theory, which I mentioned earlier in the introduction. Instead, it is better explained as though once used the brain thinks that we need these drugs for survival, so pleasure is not even in the equation. The brain simply is saying, there is something important to survival in the environment, keep doing that. Dr. Mark Thomas explained that with advances in neuroimaging, they are able to view the brain’s functions in real time, which is very important to advancing research. The most exciting and biggest advancement that he spoke to is the idea of neurostimulation as a therapy for addiction, to help create new pathways in the brain. They already have used this process to help manage Parkinson’s Disease, with great success. The hope is that through this stimulation, they may be able to cure addiction, or at least make it much more manageable.

References:

Bechara, A., Berridge, K. C., Bickel, W. K., Morón, J. A., Williams, S. B., & Stein, J. S. (2019). A Neurobehavioral Approach to Addiction: Implications for the Opioid Epidemic and the Psychology of Addiction. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 20(2), 96–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619860513

Volkow, N. D., Jones, E. B., Einstein, E. B., & Wargo, E. M. (2019). Prevention and Treatment of Opioid Misuse and Addiction: A Review. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(2), 208. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.3126

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