There are many reasons why patients misuse medications.

Today, Joseph Pierre shakes us out of our 1990s understanding of addiction

and explains a new trend.

Misuse of uncontrolled medications like buproprion, quatyapine, and the gabapentinoids.

Music quityapine and the gabapentinoids. Welcome to the Carlet Psychiatry Podcast, keeping psychiatry honest since 2003.

I'm Chris Aiken, the editor-in-chief of the Carlat Psychiatry Report.

And I'm Kelly Newsom, a psychiatric MP, and a dedicated reader

of every issue. I guess it's unrealistic to think that life expectancy is going to keep rising every year,

which it has done nearly every year since the 1950s. But that trend started to reverse in 2015, from 78.9 years to 78.7, 78.6, and then down to

77 years during the pandemic in 2020. Now, life expectancy is down to 76 in America. Sure, COVID has accelerated this problem,

but the other cause is closer to home for us workers in the field of mental health, drug overdose

deaths. It's a national crisis, and it's only getting worse. I'm not myself an addictionologist,

but I believe we can no longer afford to leave this work to those of our colleagues with higher

training in addictions. So today, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and get into it with

Joseph Pierre. You might remember him from our July issue where he gave an interview on prescription medication misuse,

how to spot red flags and what to do about them.

I went into this interview with some misunderstandings, and you're going to see that here.

For example, I thought the drug misuse was

directly related to the rewarding qualities of the drug. But as Dr. Pierre explains, that is only

part of a much more complicated behavior. But first, a preview of the CME quiz for this episode.

Thank you. But first, a preview of the CME quiz for this episode. Which medication for extraperimital side effects has fallen out of favor because of its potential for misuse?

A. Benzotropine.

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