COVID-19 has disrupted addiction treatment

Many of the services and treatments available to people recovering from drug addiction have been disrupted by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, putting thousands of lives at risk. Countless clinics that provide syringe exchange services or daily addiction medication have closed or reduced their hours, while rehab centres have limited the number of new admissions, or even shut up shop for fear of spreading the virus.

To address this need, addiction treatment has become more flexible – something that addiction treatment advocates have been campaigning for, for years. In the United States, governmental restrictions have been relaxed, allowing doctors to supply patients with 28-day take-home doses of methadone – a normally heavily regulated medicine for opioid addiction – and give first-time prescriptions of other addiction medications over the phone.
Though perhaps not front-of-mind mind for everyone among the coronavirus chaos, the impact of the pandemic on addiction treatment was of immediate concern to Professor Judith Grisel, a leading expert in the neuroscience of addiction at Bucknell University. Having recovered from drug and alcohol dependency herself before becoming an academic, Judith shared her personal and professional experience of addiction at this year's Annual Meeting in Davos.
We caught up with her to hear her views on the consequences that this disruption is having on the lives of people with substance use disorders.

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