To call Dr. Mary Jeanne Kreek the Mother of Medication-Assisted-Treatment (MAT) is no exaggeration. The physician/scientist, who died March 27 at the age of 84, was not only a core part of the team who helped make the process safe, but she “conducted landmark studies that led to the establishment of methadone as a treatment for heroin addiction.”
Everyone expected the COVID pandemic to fuel the opioid epidemic, but no one expected such stratospheric overdose numbers. They sure didn’t expect those numbers to keep rising. Then again, how could they? No one had ever faced such a devastating one-two punch before.
