As the patient gets sober and is doing well in their sobriety, there is always a cloud looming as long as there is craving for the drug. It is so easy to have a bad day, a reminder of past use that triggers relapse. It is relatively unique to patients to be unable to learn from or recall the terrible consequences they lived through while addicted and how hard they fought to be sober. There needs to be a therapy that can be taken regularly like insulin, or a statin, that could work on lessening this craving by getting the brain to turn off that constant reminder of using.

With buprenorphine, you must wait almost 24 hours after taking your last dose of opiate, during which time withdrawal symptoms are growing in intensity. Many people suffering from SUD are extremely fearful of how sick they will become with withdrawal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, muscle aches, chills and shakes, that they just won't take the risk and try to get sober. In the case of alcohol, withdrawal can be life-threatening if not done carefully under the appropriate oversight and supervision. If there were something to take immediately after stopping drugs, many lives would be saved. It would be empowering for a person to have access to do this on their own and having the independence of deciding when they want to become sober.

It is important to identify the genetic factors that predispose someone to substance use disorder (SUD). It is likewise important to understand how environmental vulnerabilities interact with those genes to precipitate an "addiction". We can find a cure for SUD and other forms of the disease if we can understand exactly what is neurobiologically changing in the brain and how it can be fixed. When a disease like SUD is triggered, there is a complete change in the way the brain functions. There is the most intense craving, both physical and psychological, to do anything to get drugs. It becomes your full-time occupation. A logical person becomes completely illogical and may lie or do absolutely anything to obtain the drugs. There must be a better understanding of this to be able to find a permanent and enduring cure. FDA approved medications for other conditions need to be studied to see if they can be re-purposed for SUD.

There is so much societal and personal shame and feelings of failure and weakness for the patient and/or the "addicts" family. Often people hide away and do not seek help for fear of embarrassment or losing their friends or employment. It is a disease, and those suffering from it need to be treated as patients not criminals–just as cancer was once a disease people whispered about, we need to change the public perception of substance use disorder. The war on drugs has become a war on drug users and must be replaced with support and novel effective treatments.