Dr. Kevin McCauley will illuminate current neuroscience and public health research about addiction (Substance Use Disorder) for people in or seeking recovery, their families, friends and co-workers, and public policy professionals. He will address two important areas of recent discovery: epigenetics (the study of how behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way genes work) and psychoneuroimmunology (interactions among behavioral, neural and endocrine, and immune processes).
Much of this research validates the lived experiences of people with addiction, and this program will help us to understand those experiences.
Dr. McCauley will also address:
• barriers to the use of Medication for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD)
• the evolving epidemiology of cannabis use after legalization
• the importance of nicotine cessation in recovery
Meet our Presenter:
Meet our Presenter:Kevin McCauley, MD
Dr. Kevin McCauley is a Meadows Senior Fellow, joining the Meadows Behavioral Healthcare team in 2016. A 1992 graduate of Drexel University School of Medicine, he first became interested in the treatment of substance use disorders while serving as a Naval Flight Surgeon where he observed the U.S. Navy’s policy of treating addiction as a safety (not a moral) issue and returning treated pilots to flight status under careful monitoring.
After developing his own addiction to prescription opioids, however, Dr. McCauley was court-martialed and imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. There he read voraciously of what was known about the disease of addiction at that time. Today, he has over 15 years of continuous sobriety and has worked in a non-clinical capacity at several treatment centers, giving over 2,000 lectures on the neuroscience of addiction and recovery management. From 2004 to 2008, Dr. McCauley was Director of a level III Recovery Residence in Sandy, Utah, and the first president of the Utah Association for Recovery Residences.
Dr. McCauley wrote and directed two films: Pleasure Unwoven, about the neuroscience of addiction, which won the 2010 Michael Q. Ford Award for Journalism from the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, and Memo to Self, about the concepts of recovery management.
Kevin currently lives with his wife, Kristine, in Sedona, Arizona, where he is a graduate student at the University of Arizona School of Public Health.
