Pharmacological and Herbal Treatments, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and Combined Approaches in Opioid Use Disorder: A Narrative Review

Addiction to narcotics, also known as opioid use disorder, brings extensive harm and challenges to the patient and society. Therefore, researchers have continually sought to find more effective protocols for treating this disorder. Pharmacological treatments have long been used for this purpose. In addition, the effectiveness of psychotherapies, specifically cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), has always been reported in this regard. Accordingly, the present study focused on reviewing the existing findings in the mentioned field. To this end, reputable scientific databases were searched using selected keywords. The extracted findings were analyzed, categorized, and then edited in several stages. The obtained data demonstrated the efficacy of pharmacotherapy as a cornerstone of care for opioid-dependent patients. On the other hand, the findings revealed that the maintenance of treatment requires the prescription of psychotherapy, especially CBT. Therefore, the combined use of these two therapeutic approaches, in addition to the short-term effect, will also lead to long-term care for the patient. Given that controlling opioid dependence has considerable economic benefits for societies, designing and testing various combination protocols can be extremely cost-effective.