On International Overdose Awareness Day and every day, the Department
of Health remains dedicated to giving New Yorkers the tools they need to break the
cycle of misery caused by heroin and
opioid abuse and find their path to recovery.»
Maureen Boyle, chief
of the Science Policy Branch
of the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, and Edward Bilsky, a professor
of pharmacology and the founding director
of the Center for Excellence in Neurosciences at the University
of New England, showed how
opioids can commandeer the brain's natural systems that control pain and reward, and trigger a vicious response
cycle that can diminish the pain - relieving power
of medications, prompt users to reach for increasingly larger quantities
of opioids and lead to deadly overdoses.