Alcohol and Benzodiazepines: What Clinicians Need to Know

Date: 6/14/24              Time: 9:30-11am
Enrollment limited to: No limit     Contact Hours/CEU’s: 1.5

Description: Alcohol consumption remains a prominent preventable cause of death and overdoses on benzodiazepines have spiked in the past few years. These substances share similar mechanisms of intoxication, withdrawal, and addiction. This session will review these common mechanisms. In addition, how to recognize and treat intoxication, withdrawal, and addiction to alcohol and benzodiazepines will be discussed in detail. This discussion will also include reviewing medications to treat alcohol use disorder, including disulfiram, naltrexone, and acamprosate. Psychosocial innervations will also be highlighted. The session will also review medical complications from alcohol and benzodiazepine use along with psychiatric cooccurring disorders and how to treat them. Time for questions will be available after the presentation.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the common mechanism through which both alcohol and benzodiazepines cause intoxication and withdrawal.
• Describe how to treat withdrawal from alcohol and benzodiazepines along with potential medical complications from withdrawal.
• Understand the different mechanisms through which disulfiram, naltrexone, and acamprosate treat alcohol use disorder.
• Identify the main medical complications from long-term alcohol use.
• Give an overview of effective psychosocial interventions for alcohol and benzodiazepine use disorders.
• Describe how to differentiate and treat psychiatric co-occurring disorders with alcohol and benzodiazepine use.

Instructor: John Douglas, MD, MBA, MS

Location: Live via Zoom

Cost: Free to attendees thanks to an Opioid Settlement Fund Treatment Grant awarded to WJCS by the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health.

Westchester Jewish Community Services is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0101, and by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Worker as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW0067.

Please note: To receive CE credits, one must attend the entirety of the class. Partial credit will not be awarded to those who attend only a portion of the class. Therefore, late arrival or an early departure of greater than 10 minutes constitutes not attending a class in its entirety. To document attendance, participants must sign in and out of the class and complete an evaluation at the end of each class.

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