February 18, 2025
Dear Hossein,
I was delighted to receive news of the conference. What a wonderful attendance at this year’s conference. It warmed my heart to see the conference rooms with standing room only. I was also pleased that the remarks Shani presented on my behalf were well-received by those attending the panel presentations. Please thank her again for performing this service for me. And thank you for the photos and the videos of the Addiction Science Congress. I so appreciate those as they convey the feeling of being there.
Yes, the United States in recent years has been on a quest for THE single gene linked to addiction, but what has been revealed by your research is that addiction is far more complex that a single genetic risk factor. The likelihood of an addiction risk screening tool or a universal vaccine for all substance use disorders is unlikely until that complexity is fully understood.
The prizes for the best research papers provided by Dezhakam Publications are quite generous, and I am sure the winners will be greatly honored to receive them. Your support of students and doctoral dissertations is also quite commendable. I just met a young PhD student who is also a person in long-term recovery who I hope to mentor in the coming years. We desperately need a new generation of addiction treatment and recovery research scientists in the U.S. Those of us who entered the field in the 1970s and 1980s are rapidly disappearing so time is limited to prepare this new generation.
I have been researching how individually optimal doses of methadone and buprenorphine are determined in the U.S. Could you provided me with some additional detail I can include in our forthcoming paper on how OT doses are initially set in Congress 60 and how any subsequent adjustments of dose are determined? I think that would be a good comparison to include in the paper.
My work on the monograph on retention in medications used in the treatment of addiction continues. I hope to have a completed draft by April of this year and then will work on a shorter version for publication in one of the addiction science journals.
Please extend my warmest regards to your family and to all members of Congress 60.
Friends and Brothers Forever