What Do we Know (and Not Know) about Prescription Opioid Misuse in the Context of Chronic Pain Management?

Abstract

James Zacny received his PhD in Psychology at West Virginia University (WV, USA) in 1984. From 1984 to 1986 he did a postdoctoral fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (MD, USA) in the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He then became Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago (IL, USA) and conducted both preclinical and human psychopharmacology studies. In 1992 he joined the faculty in the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care at the University where he is currently Professor. His two primary research interests have been in studying the psychopharmacological effects of drugs used in anesthesiology, chiefly inhaled and intravenous general anesthetics at subanesthestic doses, and opioid analgesics, in healthy nondrug-abusing volunteers. The unique research environment he is in fostered a large body of research that systematically characterized the subjective, psychomotor and reinforcing (rewarding) effects of a number of different anesthetic and analgesic agents. Dr Zacny‘s primary source of funding is through the National Institute on Drug Abuse and in 1999 was presented with a MERIT award for his research on opioids. In 2001 he focused his efforts on prescription opioids at about the same time that warning signs started to emerge indicating that prescription opioid abuse was on the rise. He has characterized the psychopharmacological effects of a number of prescription opioids, as well as investigated possible factors that might modulate their positive (as well as negative) subjective effects including gender, sensation seeking and alcohol. He has also written guest editorials on the psychomotor effects of opioids in relation to the ability of chronic pain patients on long-term opioid therapy to drive. He is an elected member of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and of the Association of University Anesthesiologists, and served as President of the Division of Psychopharmacology and Substance Abuse of the American Psychological Association, and the International Study Group Investigating Drugs as Reinforcers.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.