Rewired Radio

Twenty years into the opioid epidemic, only one in five of the 2.4 million Americans with opioid use disorder (OUD) receive treatment.Twenty years into the opioid epidemic, only one in five of the 2.4 million Americans with opioid use disorder (OUD) receive treatment, and less than half of them receive effective, evidence-based treatment. Dr. Adam Bisaga is an addiction psychiatrist, clinician, researcher, and professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and the author of Overcoming Opioid Addiction. Dr. Bisaga discusses why opioid use disorder is different from other types of addiction -- and therefore requires different treatment -- as well as why it should be treated as a medical rather than a criminal problem.He also explains what adopting a system of medication-assisted treatment would mean for us as a society.