Editorial Comment 3/24/2020: Guidances

1. Guidance for our practice of medicine: 

• The ASAM National Practice Guidelines for Opioid Treating Opioid Use Disorder is linked below with introductory comments.  The 95-page text, an ASAM Journal of Addiction Medicine Supplement, may be downloaded here at no charge: https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/quality-science/npg-jam-supplement.pdf?sfvrsn=a00a52c2_2  This is a comprehensive update to the original 2015 Guideline, including both major revisions and new material.
• The ASAM Guideline on Alcohol Withdrawal Management was approved by the ASAM Board on 23 January, and we have re-linked it here for convenience.  A final copy without watermark is pending.

2. Guidance for our patients:

• https://www.thetokenshop.com/Online_AA_Meetings  - 38 pages of links to real-time online AA meetings, principally Zoom-based, generally open, arranged by day of the week and hour in EST. The address leads to a commercial page, The Token Shop; the document with active links may be downloaded through the button, “Download PDF.”  Identifying this service is not intended as an endorsement of the sponsor’s commercial products, but we appreciate their and Dr. Harry Haroutunian’s kindness in facilitating access to these resources. …Any similar lists of online meetings for NA, Al-Anon Family Groups, SMART Recovery, or other mutual-assistance meetings will be gratefully received.   Please send to ASAM Weekly: asamweekly@ASAM.org

3. Guidance for ourselves:

•  Despite an avalanche of information in recent weeks, related to the COVID-19 pandemic and similar epidemics, we don’t seem to know nearly enough.  That lack is anxiogenic, and reflects a sense of powerlessness in the presence of enormous threats.  Knowledge is one of our few defenses against anxiety, at least one of the few without a chemical basis.  Among the uses of the ASAM Conference, this year in virtual and real-time format as well as in recordings, is some increased mastery of the field; a field in which the patients will remain needful and underserved, well after the passing of this infectious pandemic.  We become calmer and more confident as we know more; comprehension of any skill or discipline has a strange way of permeating our emotional state.

I hope that you will be able to join us in ASAM Virtual 2020; regardless, I wish that we will all find others to whom we may turn for understanding and comfort.

- Editor-in-Chief: Dr. William Haning, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM