Addiction, the Opioid Epidemic and How to Save Lives with Professor Sir John Strang

Professor Sir John Strang is a leading clinical academic. He is head of the Addictions Department at King’s College London and a Consultant Psychiatrist in addictions treatment for over 30 years. He is one of a small number of senior addictions researchers outside North America identified by ISI (the Institute for Scientific Analysis) as a “Highly Cited Author” with a rate of citation in the “top one half of one percent of all publishing researchers in the last two decades”. He developed and continues to expand the work on Take-Home Naloxone, a life-saving innovation for reducing opiate overdose deaths. We discuss how addiction and substance use disorders are defined and what might cause someone to develop them.

We talk about what can make substance use disorders difficult to treat. We talk about the opioid epidemic and pick Prof Strang’s brains on what the reasons for the differences between the UK and USA are. We discuss take-home naloxone and treatment for opiate dependence and consider broader issues such as what the aims of treatment might be/should be. We are so grateful to all the listeners who sent questions in - we didn’t get to cover all of them this time, but look out for future episodes!

Interviewed by Dr. Anya Borissova