Mark Greenwald
Wayne State University, MI·Pharmacology
Taking benzodiazepines (BZDs, anti-anxiety and sedative drugs such as alprazolam) together with opioids greatly raises the risk of overdose, disability and death. Little is known about which personal traits keep people using both, which could be targets for lowering that risk.
- Fields
Pharmacology
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
benzodiazepines
opioids
polysubstance use
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Measure from behavioral health treatment records how often patients use opioids, benzodiazepines (sedative anti-anxiety drugs) or both, and how each pattern relates to anxiety, depression, chronic pain and treatment outcomes.
- Characterize emotional, cognitive and behavioral deficits in newly admitted patients who use opioids, benzodiazepines or both, comparing simultaneous with separate use and accounting for alcohol use.
- Test whether more severe combined use in community volunteers links to greater emotional and cognitive impairment and to drug demand that changes little with price, using behavioral economic simulations.
- Test whether alprazolam plus morphine, compared with either drug or placebo, changes drug demand, avoidance versus reward seeking, and preference for immediate rewards across three behavioral choice tasks.
More about the research
This project studies combined BZD and opioid use at three levels: populations, clinic patients and controlled human laboratory experiments.
Why it matters
Combined benzodiazepine and opioid use is a major driver of overdose and death. By identifying the emotional and behavioral traits that sustain it, this work could point to better ways to treat people who use both drug types. Findings that span records, clinics and laboratory tests could also inform policies meant to reduce overdose, disability and death in this group.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Hillary Samples
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Public Health & Epidemiology
Assess trends from 2016-2025 in near-fatal and fatal overdose events among Medicaid-enrolled youth aged 12-29, broken out by drugs involved and intent and by age group spanning early adolescence through early adulthood.
Brandon Oberlin
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, IN·Psychology
Test whether 30 daily virtual reality encounters with digitally age-progressed Future Selves improve abstinence and alcohol use outcomes at 1 and 6 months in people in early recovery from alcohol use disorder, compared with a virtual reality control condition.
Eduardo Gallo
Fordham University, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether dopamine D2 receptors on cholinergic interneurons of the nucleus accumbens control impulsive choice, by using cell type-specific genetic tools in mice to both increase and decrease receptor levels and measuring performance on a delay discounting task.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.