Addiction has devastated the United States. As a healthcare professional, you’ve almost certainly seen its impact upon your patients and their families. As a community member, parent or friend, you’ve seen it in your town, on your streets and in your schools. The damage crosses geographic, socioeconomic and religious fault lines. Heartache, broken trust, desperation, grief and even death are left in its wake.

Two specific patients opened my eyes to this epidemic. Back in 2007, I was a new attending at a family medicine residency. The practice was filled with kind, well-meaning, compassionate physicians and staff who were a joy to work with. We cared deeply for our patients, and had very much taken to heart the emphasis on treating non-cancer pain with opiates that was pushed in the early 2000s. As a result, a high number of patients in our practice were taking controlled substances, but we had not yet caught up with the need to do things like pill counts, urine drug screens, and other interventions to prevent misuse, diversion and addiction. Additionally, the practice was busy, and it was admittedly easier to just continue medications that seemed to be working without delving into the details, risks and side effects with patients who were not asking to cut back. This is not a justification for how we practiced, just an explanation. We were not alone, as numerous practices did and still do operate with less-than-stringent compliance mechanisms in place for high-risk medications, but we were sitting on a ticking time bomb.

One morning, I was notified one of my patients had died that weekend in a car accident. There was a story in the newspaper about the accident. Apparently when his body was found, still in the vehicle, he was clutching a bottle of prescription hydrocodone. While I can’t be certain, there’s a good chance I had prescribed those pills. Less than a week later, one of our residents came to me distraught because they had just seen the toxicology report from one of their patients who had died after overdosing on multiple medications, including an opiate and a benzodiazepine prescribed by our clinic. I looked back in the chart and realized I had provided staffing for that patient within the last couple months.

I knew immediately I needed to do something. These tragedies served as a catalyst for me to help spearhead efforts within our program to overhaul our controlled substance prescription patterns and come into better compliance with best practices. It was not easy to change our ways, and it created conflict with patients and even among the staff at times. However, things did get better in our practice and for the community we served.

The scope of this problem can feel overwhelming. In 2023, over 81,000 people died in the United States from opioid overdose,[1] including an average of 22 adolescents per week.[2] Treatment is difficult to come by. Less than half of the facilities offering inpatient addiction rehabilitation have open beds, and the average wait for the others is 28 days. Only about half of these facilities accept Medicaid, and the out-of-pocket treatment cost for those paying privately is over $26,000.[3] Finding care within a given practice or community that prescribe medications like suboxone can be challenging for patients, particularly those without insurance or reliable transportation.

Of course, the problem of addiction is not limited to opioid use. Statistics tell us 10.5 percent of Americans who are 12 or older meet criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder.[4] Benzodiazepines, illicit drugs and other lifestyle addictions like gambling and pornography rip at the fabric of our families and our society.

Statistics fail to capture the heartbreak of the individual stories that lie behind these numbers. Perhaps someone you know and love has battled addiction or has even lost their life because of it. NICUs around the country care for newborns struggling through opioid withdrawal. Unintended overdose from increasingly dangerous fentanyl tainted street drugs end the lives of young people every day. The lives of those struggling with addiction and those who love and care for them can be a nightmare of betrayal, broken promises and destroyed relationships. Law enforcement and the criminal justice system struggle to find ways to balance compassion and consequence, without easy answers. Personally, my wife and I experienced the depth of the depravity addiction can cause when my wife’s fentanyl patches prescribed for cancer pain were stolen from our bathroom medicine cabinet by someone we had invited into our home. The scope of the problem can easily engender a sense of hopelessness.

Recognizing the scope and trajectory of the problem, the United States Congress passed the Medication Access and Training Expansion (MATE) Act, which went into effect in June 2023. The MATE Act requires U.S. based prescribers who hold a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration to complete eight hours of continuing education on substance use disorder assessment and treatment prior to their next DEA renewal, which will impact all DEA holders over the next three years. Exceptions include those who have recently obtained DEA registrations within the last five years, and those with specialized training in addiction.

As Christians, of course, we have resources and guidelines the world lacks. Jesus gives us clear instructions and tangible examples of how to treat the outcast, forgotten and downtrodden. Matthew 25 reminds us whatever we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus. In Luke 5:12-32, we read of Jesus showing love and concern for a leper, a paralytic and a tax collector. A 21st century person struggling with addiction would fit right into this line-up, wouldn’t they? Is there any doubt Jesus would reach out to the addict with compassion, and would ask the same of us, His followers?

CMDA has a great deal of concern and compassion for those struggling with addiction, and for our members who are providing medical care and support to these individuals and their families. As Jesus ministered to the leper, the paralytic and the tax collector, as Christians we should consider how He might be asking us to use our skills to serve those struggling with addiction.

CMDA is responding in concrete, tangible ways. Our Addiction Medicine Section (AMS) exists to prevent and treat addiction and transform lives, by God’s grace, love and power. The AMS strives to provide compassionate excellence in all aspects of addiction care, including whole-person prevention and treatment, education, advocacy, empowerment of others, research, church and community partnerships, and interprofessional collaboration and support.[5] We welcome and encourage any students, trainees, or professionals to be part of AMS, even those who don’t have addiction medicine as part of their daily practice.

Pertaining to the MATE Act, in a spirit of collaboration, CMDA has joined forces with one of our long-standing and highly valued partner organization, Christian Community Health Fellowship (CCHF). Together we have produced a high-quality course, Opioid and Substance Use Disorder Identification & Treatment, that meets the MATE Act’s requirements of eight hours of continuing education material. The course equips participants with practical, up-to-date information to apply in clinical practice. The course was developed by subject matter experts from CMDA and CCHF and is available free-of-charge to our members through CMDA’s online Learning Center.

The course is comprised of four modules:

1. Intersection of Faith and Science in Addiction Treatment
2. Safe and Effective Opioid Prescribing & Pain: Historical Context and Current Approaches
3. Identifying and Treating Opioid Use Disorder
4. An Alternative Approach to Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment and Nutritional Repletion in Addiction

Participants will find that this offering is unique among other courses that meet the MATE Act’s requirement. Several for-profit continuing education companies saw this law as a profit opportunity and created courses, of varying quality, that charge up to $500 for access to their material. CMDA and CCHF’s course, in contrast, is different. It stands alone as providing a whole-person care approach that integrates faith and science in approaching and treating addiction. The course includes very practical and clinically relevant information along with poignant personal testimony. The lecturers and quality of their content are outstanding, and the feedback from those who have completed the course has been uniformly positive. The lectures can be viewed with video and are also valuable if you listen to them while on the go.

Additionally, this course serves to highlight the value of CMDA membership. Free continuing education is one of the numerous benefits our members enjoy. By joining and remaining a member of CMDA, you not only support the dozens of ministries that CMDA is involved in, but also enjoy unlimited access to the online Learning Center, including this course. Perhaps this is even a time you’d consider becoming a lifetime member and enjoying both the additional benefits and the absence of an annual membership invoice!

In closing, we all have a part to play in addressing the scourge of addiction that plagues our world. We can start by educating ourselves. Then, we can ask the Holy Spirit to guide us as to what role we might have in helping those in our community struggling with addiction. Remember what we do for the least of these, we do for Jesus.

About The Author

Doug Lindberg, MD, has served at CMDA as the Director for the Center for Advancing Healthcare Missions since 2020. He attended Loyola University, Chicago for medical school, completed a family medicine residency at Waukesha Family Practice Residency and then completed a one-year rural health fellowship at East Tennessee State University. The Lindbergs served in South Asia as missionaries from 2009 to 2013, and Doug served as the medical director for a mission hospital there. They returned to the U.S. in 2013 for what was intended to be a one-year furlough. However, a series of unexpected events, including his wife’s life-threatening cancer diagnosis followed by her miraculous healing, led them to relocate back to Wisconsin where they continue to reside. In addition to his work with CMDA, Doug works part-time clinically in urgent care. He and his wife Ruth are both family physicians, and they have two children, Maddie and James. He also enjoys running, hiking and coaching his son’s sports teams.

To Learn More

Center exists to provide quality continuing education opportunities to healthcare professionals and encouragement as they glorify God through providing care with excellence and compassion for all people. The Opioid and Substance Use Disorder Identification & Treatment course is now available. To explore this course, visit cmda.org/learning.

Get Involved

The Addiction Medicine Section of CMDA exists to prevent and treat addiction and transform lives, by God’s grace, love and power. We strive to provide compassionate excellence in all aspects of addiction care, including whole-person prevention and treatment, education, advocacy, empowerment of others, research, church, and community partnerships, and interprofessional collaboration and support. For more information and to get involved, visit cmda.org/ams.

[1] https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/about-22-high-school-age-adolescents-died-each-week

[2] https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

[3] https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2023.00777

[4] https://americanaddictioncenters.org/addiction-statistics

[5] https://cmda.org/specialty-sections/addiction-medicine-section/