Holding an MD from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine, Wayne Macfadden brought over three decades of experience in psychiatry when he worked at Spirit Lake Reservation in Fort Totten, North Dakota. He was the first full-time psychiatrist on the Indian Reservation, where he provided psychiatric evaluation and treatment to Native American Indians. Wayne Macfadden, MD treated substance abuse disorders there using medication-assisted treatment, including opiate use disorders treated with buprenorphine.

Buprenorphine is one of the three main drugs used in medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. Substance abuse treatment providers and some medical professionals offer medication-assisted treatment, which combines medications, counseling, and other forms of support to treat opioid addiction and manage opioid withdrawal symptoms.

Opioids are drugs that often help manage pain by slowing down the action of the body. These drugs have a high abuse risk because of their ability to elicit a pleasant feeling or ecstasy. Addiction is characterized by a craving for opioids and a loss of control over one’s consumption of the drug. Consuming opioids without a doctor’s prescription or taking more doses than prescribed has adverse health impacts, promotes addictive thinking, increases harmful behavior, and undermines the overall quality of life.

Buprenorphine helps manage opioid addiction by reducing or mitigating withdrawal symptoms that follow the cessation of opioid consumption. Opioid withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, muscle cramps, hot and cold flashes, insomnia, and nausea. Buprenorphine’s action in the brain prevents the brain and body from developing opioid withdrawal symptoms. The drug, which is available in a pill form, passes the sublingual route by dissolving into the rich network of blood vessels under the tongue to get to the bloodstream rapidly.