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Stop Stigma Now (Part 5)

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Steppin’ Out Radio is proud to present this special webseries with Dr. Mary Jeanne Kreek of Stop Sigma Now, a group dedicated to eradicating the stigma associated with the medical treatment of addiction. They believe no one taking medication to overcome opiate addiction should feel ashamed or disgraced.

 

About Dr. Mary Jeanne Kreek

Dr. Kreek is a Senior Attending Physician, Patrick E. and Beatrice M. Haggerty Professor at the Laboratory of the Biology of Addictive Diseases at The Rockefeller University in New York City.

Mary Jeanne Kreek, MD

Mary Jeanne Kreek, MD

An estimated 25 to 33 percent of people who take a short-acting opiate drug — usually heroin — develop an addiction to it.
This suggests that some people are naturally more vulnerable to addiction than others and that genetics may play a role along with direct drug-induced effects and environmental and psychological factors. Dr. Kreek investigates how genetic factors, as well as neurobiological alterations, factor into addictive diseases such as opiate addiction, nicotine addiction, cocaine dependency and alcoholism.

Dr. Kreek is well known for her pioneering work in the development of methadone maintenance therapy for heroin addiction in the 1960s, a therapy that has become common practice throughout the world. She also was one of the first to document that drugs of abuse significantly alter expression of specific genes in specific brain tissues and alter normal perceptions of reward and dysphoria.

Click to Play Part 5 of “Stop Stigma Now”

 


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