Dr Llew Mills (USYD)

What works and why: two approaches to the treatment of addiction

Abstract

Addiction affects everyone, either directly through their own struggles or indirectly through the struggles of their friends and family. Yet it remains one of the most challenging disorders to treat. Medical addiction research tends to be pre-occupied with what treatments work and for whom, whereas theoretical addiction research attempts to ask why these treatments work. Dr Llew Mills from the Specialty of Addiction Medicine, University of Sydney discusses the pros and cons of these two different approaches, first via a tour through his more theroretical PhD work examining the cognitive processes that affect caffeine withdrawal, and second via a discussion of some of the studies he has run as a postdoc at the Faculty of Medicine: testing efficacy of a cannabis agonist drug for people with cannabis use disorder; determining what factors are associated with cannabis use disorder among medical cannabis users; and examining whether methamphetamine use at outset of treatment is associated with poorer outcomes among clients enrolled in an opioid treatment program.