I started my medical career in Emergency Medicine, completing my residency in 2013. Despite 7 years of training in medical school and residency, I received essentially no education on addiction. 

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In 2013, one of my colleagues took care of a 19 month old that died of an opioid overdose, and she founded the Monterey County Prescribe Safe Initiative - a coalition of healthcare providers, law enforcement, schools, and community based organizations focused on reducing the harms of opioids on our community. 

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We started by trying to reduce how often doctors were prescribing opioids, and along the way we started to learn more about addiction. We made friends with several of our local drug treatment programs, and got to know people living with addiction (including Paul - whose art is featured on my podcast and this site). 

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In 2019, fentanyl arrived in the drug supply of our community - and we saw our overdoses surge. I was treating so many patients through the Emergency Department with buprenorphine that I wanted to learn more about how to treat addiction. I started working in a street clinic for patients with opioid use disorder, and loved the work. 

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So in 2022, my colleague and both decided that we wanted to be able to practice Addiction Medicine - as we felt we could make a huge difference in our community if we could treat patients with addiction ourselves

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In 2023 I passed my boards in Addiction Medicine, and now practice Addiction Medicine in a community based clinic, and work with several local drug treatment programs. 

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I believe that we need to incorporate Addiction Medicine into general medical education so that every provider has at least a baseline knowledge about addiction and an ability to provide treatment for addiction in their practice. 

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