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Dawn Farm Addiction and Recovery Education Series


Oct 4, 2014

Opiates and Medicine; Where Are We, America?” was presented on Tuesday September 23, 2014; by Dr. Jeffrey P. Berger, MD, FASAM. Non-medical use of opiates has been called an “epidemic” by CDC Director Thomas Frieden and “an urgent public health crisis” by US Attorney General Holder. Local and national leaders and media headlines echo and highlight this concern. How did we get this way?  This presentation is a historically based look at the medical use of opiates, especially in American society.  It describes the development and use of narcotic medications against the background of the three opiate epidemics in America. Dr. Berger discusses the history of opiates in medicine, opiate addiction as a brain disease, issues in the use of opiates to treat chronic pain and the medical treatment of addiction.  This program is part of the Dawn Farm Education Series, a FREE, annual workshop series developed to provide accurate, helpful, hopeful, practical, current information about chemical dependency, recovery, family and related issues.  The Education Series is organized by Dawn Farm, a non-profit community of programs providing a continuum of chemical dependency services. For information, please see http://www.dawnfarm.org/programs/education-series.

 

Dr. Jeffrey Berger is a native of the Detroit Area.  He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in German Language and Literature and later his MD degree from Wayne State University.  Following Medical School, he completed training in Internal Medicine and is a Board Certified Internist. Early in his career as a physician, he became interested in Addiction Medicine.  He began working at Henry Ford Hospital’s Maplegrove Center in 1983 and is board-certified by the  American Society of Addiction Medicine.  He began working at Brighton Hospital in 1998 and is now the Medical Director of the Brighton Center for Recovery.