edX Online
Instructor photo

Anna Lembke

Associate Professor and Medical Director of Addiction Medicine at Stanford University

Major works

  • Lembke, A. Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
  • Lembke, A. Time to Abandon the Self-Medication Hypothesis in Patients with Psychiatric Disorders. The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2012, 38(6):524-529.
  • Lembke, A. Why doctors prescribe opioids to known opioid abusers. New England Journal of Medicine. October 25, 2012; 367(17):1580-1581
  • Lembke, A. From Self-Medication to Intoxication: Time for a Paradigm Shift. Addiction, 2013; 108(4):670-671.
  • Humphreys, K., Lembke, A. Recovery oriented policies and care systems in the U.K. and the USA. Drug and Alcohol Review, 2014; 33 (1):13-18.
  • Lembke, A, Humphreys, K. A Call to Include People with Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders Alongside ‘Regular’ Smokers in Smoking Cessation Research, Tobacco Control, 2015;25(3):261-2.
  • Lembke, A., Humphreys, K., Newmark, J. Weighing the Risks and Benefits of Chronic Opioid Therapy, American Family Physician, 2016; 93(12):982-990.
  • Ogbonna, C., Lembke, A. Tapering Patients Off of Benzodiazepines, American Family Physician, 2017 Nov 1;96(9):606-608.
  • Prekupec, M.P., Sussman, R.S., Sher, Y., Lembke, A. Relapse on ketamine followed by severe and prolonged withdrawal: A cautionary case and review of potential medical therapies. J Nat Sci, 3(10):e450, 2017.
  • Lembke, A. The Opioid Epidemic is a Symptom of our Faltering Health Care System, The British Medical Journal, published online October 30, 2017 http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/10/31/anna-lembke-the-opioid-epidemic-is-a-symptom-of-our-faltering-healthcare-system/
  • Lembke, A. Ottestad, E., Schmiesing, C. Patients Maintained on Buprenorphine for Opioid Use Disorder Should Continue Buprenorphine Through the Perioperative Period, Pain Medicine, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1093/pm/pny019
  • Lembke, A., Papac, J., Humphreys, K. Our Other Prescription Drug Problem, NEJM, Feb 22, 2018.
  • Lembke, A., Humphreys, K. The Opioid Epidemic as a Watershed Moment for Physician Training in Addiction Medicine, Academic Psychiatry, 2018.
  • Harrison, T. K., Kornfeld, H., Aggarwal, A. K., & Lembke, A. Perioperative Considerations for the Patient with Opioid Use Disorder on Buprenorphine, Methadone, or Naltrexone Maintenance Therapy. Anesthesiology Clinics, 2018; 36(3), 345–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anclin.2018.04.002
  • Raheemullah, A., Lembke, A. Initiating Opioid Agonist Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in the Inpatient Setting: A Teachable Moment, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2019
  • Chou, R., Ballantyne, J., Lembke, A., Rethinking Opioid Dose Tapering, Prescription Opioid Dependence, and Indications for Buprenorphine, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2019; doi:10.7326/M19-1488
  • Lembke, A., How to Taper Long Term Opioid Therapy, American Family Physician, 2019 (in press)
  • Raheemullah, A., Lembke, A. Buprenorphine Induction Without Opioid Withdrawal: A Case Series of 15 Opioid-Dependent Inpatients Induced on Buprenorphine Using Microdoses of Transdermal Buprenorphine. American Journal of Therapeutics, 2019.
  • Maclean D, Gupta S, Lembke A, Manning CD, Heer J. Forum77: An Analysis of an Online Health Forum Dedicated to Addiction Recovery. ACM Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), https://idl.cs.washington.edu/papers/forum77/; 2015
  • Lembke, A., Cheng, Niushen. A Qualitative Study of Treatment-Seeking Heroin Users in Contemporary China, Addiction Science and Clinical Practice, 2015;10:23.
  • Chen, J., Humphreys, K., Shah, N.H., Lembke, A. Distribution of Opioids by Different Types of Medicare Prescribers, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2016; 176(2):259-261.
  • Lembke, A., Chen, J. Use of Opioid Agonist Therapy for Medicare Patients in 2013. JAMA Psychiatry, 2016;73(9):990-992. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1390

About me

Dr. Lembke was one of the first in the medical community to sound the alarm regarding opioid overprescribing and the opioid epidemic. In 2016, she published her best-selling book on the prescription drug epidemic, Drug Dealer, MD – How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It’s So Hard to Stop (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), which combines case studies with public policy, cultural anthropology, and neuroscience, to explore the complex relationship between doctors and patients around prescribing controlled drugs. Drug Dealer, MD has had an impact on policy makers and legislators across the nation.

Dr. Lembke has testified before Congress and consulted with governors and senators from Kentucky to Missouri to Nevada. She was a featured guest on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, MSNBC with Chris Hayes, and numerous other media broadcasts. Her book was highlighted in the New York Times as one of the top five books to read to understand the opioid epidemic (Zuger, 2018).

Using her public platform and her faculty position at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Lembke continues to educate policymakers and the public about causes of and solutions for the problem of addiction.

Courses and Programs taught by Anna Lembke