National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week: Shattering the Myths

January 23, 2017

Maureen Fitzgerald
Editor, NIATx
Communications Coordinator, ATTC Network Coordinating Office 

This week, January 23-29, NIDA's  National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week returns to shatter the myths  that contribute to underage drinking and experimentation with other drugs and tobacco.

Teens are bombarded with conflicting messages that can leave them feeling confused and unsure of who to ask for information about drug use. With 12.9% of 12th graders reporting abuse of prescription drugs in the past year and 21.3% reporting use of marijuana in the past month, there is no better time than now to help teens understand the serious consequences of drug and alcohol use (data is from the Monitoring the Future Study: Trends in Prevalence of Various Drugs).

Shared Decision Making: Helping prescribers taper opioid prescriptions in Maine

January 12, 2017

Maureen Fitzgerald
Editor, NIATx and ATTC Network Coordinating Office

Image: CDC Injury Prevention & Control

States across the country are taking a variety of actions to respond to the opioid crisis. Forty-nine states have established Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs that track prescription and dispensing data as a way to reduce misuse and diversion, particularly of prescription pain medication.

Three states, Maine, Washington, and Massachusetts, have added additional regulations that limit the daily amount of opioid pain medications doctors can prescribe. Maine’s law, the most restrictive of the three states’, went into effect this month. It sets a 100 morphine milligram equivalent (MME) for new patients, and 300 MME for current patients.

The law does not place daily MME limits on medications prescribed for treating substance use disorders. It’s intended to keep people with chronic pain from the taking higher doses of opioid pain medication that increase the risk of overdose and death.

Changing the world's relationship with alcohol through mobile technology

January 2, 2017

Chris Raine
CEO and Founder of Hello Sunday Morning


My parents have been dealing drugs their whole lives.

As general practitioners, they spend their days listening carefully to the patient's ailment and deciding which drug will be most likely to help them achieve their medical aims. You're depressed? Try these antidepressants. High cholesterol? Take a statin. Diabetic? Here is a syringe full of insulin. And through this ongoing dance between diagnosis and dose they are able to adjust a person's biology to help them live better, longer, and happier (most of the time).

I was never smart enough to get into medicine (thankfully) but I did manage to find myself picking up the family business of dealing drugs from a young age. From the age of 15 right through to 22, I made a career out of prescribing copious doses of the drug that billions of people consume but rarely consider its diagnosis: alcohol. It all started with selling bootlegged alcohol to other awkward high school boys at my boarding school. I made a tidy little profit selling it for all sorts of teenage boarding school ailments. Nervous about talking to girls at a party? "This here is called Dutch Courage." Want to do something you would never do sober? "Take four swigs of this." Can't dance? "Shots!"

The ATTC Network's Global Reach

December 21, 2016
Maureen Fitzgerald
Editor, NIATx and ATTC Network Coordinating Office 

You probably know that the ATTC Network serves the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Islands of Guam, American Samoa, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the Mariana Islands.

But did you know that the Network includes international Centers?



The Vietnam-HIV Addiction Technology Transfer Center (VHAATC) in Hanoi was established in 2011 with support from the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief  (PEPFAR) and SAMHSA.

An additional VHATTC site opened in Ho Chi Minh City in 2014. And in 2016, the Southeast Asia Regional HIV ATTC was established in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

How substance use disorders affect the family

December 12, 2016

Tracey M. Duncan, Ed.S., Ph.D., LPC, ACS
Assistant Professor
Department of Counselor Education
New Jersey City University

tduncan2@njcu.edu

It’s been well-documented that addiction is a family disease, affecting every member of the family in some way. Family members organize themselves according to their behavioral and emotional reactions to the loved one suffering from a substance use disorder. In many families, these responses flare up during the holiday season, when spending time with a sibling, parent, or child with an untreated substance use disorder can make family gatherings more stressful than joyful.