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William Craft's Dissertation Defense (4/19/2023): The Impact of Pain on Key Outcomes in Opioid Use Disorder Recovery

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William Craft

Dissertation Defense: The Impact of Pain on Key Outcomes in Opioid Use Disorder Recovery

William Craft

Graduate Student, Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health
Graduate Research Assistant, Bickel Lab, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
April 19, 2023 at 3 p.m.,  Room R3012, 2 Riverside Circle

About this Dissertation

Opioid misuse and addiction constitute a significant public health challenge in the 21st century, with opioids involved in the majority of drug overdose deaths since 1999. A vigorously researched area that contributes substantially to the opioid misuse and addiction challenge is pain. The impact of pain, however, on important health outcomes for individuals in recovery from opioid use is less well understood. The effects of pain on substance use and mental health outcomes was investigated among individuals in recovery from opioid use disorder. Two studies are reported. First, the relationships between pain status and severity on substance use, treatment utilization, and mental health outcomes (e.g., depressive symptoms) was characterized cross-sectionally. Second, the longitudinal impact of pain status across recovery as well as associations between transition states and opioid use, remission status, and quality of life was investigated. The present findings support pain as a key dimension of opioid use disorder recovery, highlighting the distinction between acute and chronic pain and emphasizing the necessity of integrating pain into opioid use disorder treatment.

More About the Candidate and Project

Education

Virginia Tech, Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Ph.D. Candidate

Virginia Tech, B.S., Neuroscience

Virginia Western Community College, A.S.

Training

Graduate Research Assistant, Bickel Lab, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC

Mentor

Warren Bickel, Ph.D., Professor, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, Director, Center for Health Behaviors Research and Addiction Recovery Research Center

Committee Members

  • Elizabeth Gilbert, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Tech
  • Jungmeen Kim-Spoon, Ph.D.,  Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Science, Virginia Tech
  • Jeff Stein, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Associate Director, Center for Health Behaviors Research, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC
  • Robert Trestman, M.D., Ph.D., Chair, Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
  • 2021 CPDD Travel Award for Early Career Investigators
  • 2020 CPDD Travel Award for Early Career Investigators
Publications

Craft, W.H., Dwyer, C.L., Tomlinson, D.C., Yeh, Y.-H., Tegge, A.N., Bickel, W.K. (2023). Rate-dependent effects of narrative interventions in a longitudinal study of individuals who use alcohol. Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research. https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.15020

Bickel, W.K., Tomlinson, D.C., Craft, W.H., Ma, M., Dwyer, C.L., Yeh, Y-H., Tegge, A.N., Frietas-Lemos, R., Athamneh, L.N. (2023) Predictors of smoking cessation outcomes identified by machine learning: A systematic review. Addiction Neuroscience, 6, 100068.

Dwyer, C. L.*, Craft, W. H.*, Tegge, A. N., Yeh, Y.-H., & Bickel, W. K. (2023). Utility of the 5-trial adjusting delay task in screening for high delay discounting rates: A cohort study of individuals reporting harmful alcohol and tobacco use. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000623

Freitas-Lemos, R., Tegge, A. N., Athamneh, L. N., Yeh, Y.-H., Craft, W. H., Stein, J. S., Smith, T. T., Stepanov, I., Rees, V. W., Cummings, K. M., O’Connor, R. J., Shields, P. G., Hatsukami, D. K., & Bickel, W. K. (2023). Is perception reality? Associations among “light” cigarettes and number of cigarettes smoked per day. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 244, 109709.

Athamneh, L.N., King, M.J., Craft, W.H., Freitas-Lemos, R., Tomlinson, D.C., Yeh, Y.-H., Bickel, W.K. (2023). The Phenotype of Recovery IX: The Associations Between Remission Status, Discounting Rates, CHAOS, Recovery Capital, and COVID-19 Stressors among Individuals in Recovery from Substance Use Disorders. Substance Use & Misuse.

Craft, W.H.*, Shin, H.*, Tegge, A.N., Keith, D.R., Athamneh, L.N., Stein, J.S., Ferreira, M.A.R., Chilcoat, H.D., Le Moigne, A., DeVeaugh-Geiss, A., Bickel, W.K. (2022). Long-term recovery from opioid use disorder: recovery subgroups, transition states, and their association with substance use, treatment, and quality of life. Addiction.

Mistretta, E. G., Craft, W. H., Davis, M. C., McClure, S. M., & Bickel, W. K. (2022). Delay discounting in adults with and without chronic pain: Differentiation across commodity and sign. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. 

Keith, D. R., Tegge, A. N., Stein, J. S., Athamneh, L. N., Craft, W. H., Chilcoat, H. D., Le Moigne, A., DeVeaugh-Geiss, A., & Bickel, W. K. (2022). Struggling With Recovery From Opioids: Who Is at Risk During COVID-19? Journal of Addiction Medicine. 

Freitas-Lemos, R., Tegge, A. N., Craft, W. H., Tomlinson, D. C., Stein, J. S., Bickel, W. K. (2022). Understanding data quality: Instructional comprehension as a novel metric in crowdsourced investigations of behavioral economic cigarette demand. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Yeh, Y.-H., Freitas-Lemos, R., Craft, W.H., Bickel, W.K. (2022). The relationship between nonsystematic delay discounting and low-quality survey responses in a sample of smokers: ROC curve analysis. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Keith, D.R., Tegge, A.N., Athamneh, L.N., Freitas-Lemos, R., Tomlinson, D.C., Craft, W.H., Bickel, W.K. (2022) The Phenotype of Recovery VIII: Association Between Delay Discounting, Recovery Capital, and Length of Abstinence Among Individuals in Recovery from Substance Use Disorders. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.

Craft, W. H., Tegge, A. N., Keith, D. R., Shin, H., Williams, J., Athamneh, L. N., Stein, J. S., Chilcoat, H. D., Le Moigne, A., DeVeaugh-Geiss, A., Bickel, W. K. (2022). Recovery from opioid use disorder: A 4-year post-clinical trial outcomes study. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 234, 109389.

Craft, W. H., Tegge, A. N., Freitas-Lemos, Roberta, Tomlinson, D. C., Bickel, W. K. (2022). Are poor quality data just random responses?: A crowdsourced study of delay discounting in alcohol use disorder. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Craft, W. H., Tegge, A. N., Athamneh, L. N., Tomlinson, D. C., Freitas-Lemos, R., & Bickel, W. K. (2021). The phenotype of recovery VII: Delay discounting mediates the relationship between time in recovery and recovery progress. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 108665.

Bickel, W. K., Freitas-Lemos, R., Tomlinson, D. C., Craft, W. H., Keith, D. R., Athamneh, L. N., Basso, J. C., & Epstein, L. H. (2021). Temporal Discounting as a Candidate Behavioral Marker of Obesity. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.07.035

Craft, W. H., Tegge, A. N., Bickel, W. K. (2021). Chronic pain and COVID-19: The association of delay discounting with perceived stress and pain severity. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000479

Craft, W. H., Tegge, A. N., Bickel, W. K. (2021). Narrative theory IV: Within-subject effects of active and control scarcity narratives on delay discounting in alcohol use disorder. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000478

Athamneh, L. N., Freitas Lemos, R., Basso, J. C., Tomlinson, D. C., Craft, W. H., Stein, M. D., Bickel, W. K. (2020). The phenotype of recovery II: The association between delay discounting, self-reported quality of life, and remission status among individuals in recovery from substance use disorders. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology.

Stein, J.S., Craft, W.H., Paluch, R.A., Gatchalian, K., Greenawald, M.H., Quattrin, T., Mastrandrea, L.D., Epstein, L.H., Bickel, W.K. (2020) Bleak present, bright future: II. Combined effects of episodic future thinking and scarcity on delay discounting in adults at risk for type 2 diabetes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Craft, W.H., Tegge, A.N., Bickel, W.K. (2020). Episodic future thinking reduces chronic pain severity: A proof of concept study. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 215, 108250.

Bickel, W. K., Athamneh, L. N., Snider, S. E., Craft, W. H., DeHart, W. B., Kaplan, B. A., & Basso, J. C. (2020). Reinforcer Pathology: Implications for Substance Abuse Intervention. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences.

Bickel, W.K., Athamneh, L.N., Basso, J.C., Mellis, A.M., DeHart, W.B., Craft, W.H., Pope, D.A. (2019). Excessive Discounting of Delayed Reinforcers as a Trans-Disease Process: Update on the State of the Science. Current Opinion in Psychology, 30, (February): 59–64.

Oral Presentations

Craft, W.H. (2020, December). Temporal Discounting in Chronic Pain. Oral Presentation at the Cultural Selection and Behavioral Economic Research Symposium, Oslo, Norway.

Craft, W.H. (2020, August). Delay Discounting and Episodic Future Thinking. Oral presentation at the Research Group on Culture, Language, and Symbolic Behavior Research Symposium, Sao Carlos, Brazil.

Craft, W.H. (2019, September). Experimental Interventions to Improve Behavioral Health. Carilion Opioid-Related Research Interest Community Meeting, Roanoke, Virginia, USA.

Poster Presentations

Craft, W.H., Tegge, A.N., Le Moigne, A., DeVeaugh-Geiss, A., Chilcoat, H.D., Bickel, W.K. “Pain in Recovery from OUD: The Importance of Acute and Chronic Pain”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2022.

Tegge, A.N., Craft, W.H., Shin, H., Keith, D.R., Athamneh, L.N., Stein, J.S., Ferreira, M.A.R., Chilcoat, H.D., Le Moigne, A., DeVeaugh-Geiss, A., Bickel, W.K. “Long-term Recovery from Opioid Use Disorder: Identification of Recovery Profiles and their Association with Opioid Use, Treatment, and Quality of Life”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2022.

Goslow, A., Tegge, A.N., Freitas-Lemos, R., Tomlinson, D.C., Craft, W.H., Deveaugh-Geiss, A., Chilcoat, H.D., Bickel, W.K. “Buprenorphine misuses in opioid use disorder: subgroups, motivations, and opioid demand”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2022.

Yeh, Y.-H., Tomlinson, D.C, Freitas-Lemos, R., Craft, W.H., Bickel, W.K. “The Relationship Between Nonsystematic Delay Discounting and Low-Quality Survey Responses in a Sample of Smokers: ROC Curve Analysis”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 2022. 

Craft, W.H., Tegge, A.N., Bickel, W.K. “Within-Subject Administration of Active and Control Scarcity Narratives: Effects on Delay Discounting in Alcohol Use Disorder”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, June 2021. 

Craft, W.H., Tegge, A.N., Bickel, W.K. “Episodic Future Thinking Reduces Chronic Pain Severity”. The College on Problems of Drug Dependence Annual Meeting, Hollywood, Florida, June 2020. 

Craft, W.H., Tegge, A.N., Bickel, W.K. “Episodic Future Thinking in Chronic Pain Patients: Effects on Pain & Delay Discounting.” Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program Annual Open House, Blacksburg, Virginia. October 2019.

Craft, W.H., Stein, J.S., Paluch, R., Epstein, L.H., Bickel, W.K. “Impulsive Choice in Prediabetics: The Effects of Episodic Thinking and Negative Income Shock.” Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program Annual Open House, Blacksburg, Virginia. October 2018.

  • Volunteer judge for Virginia State Science and Engineering Fair 2018-2020