Dr. Eric C. Strain, M.D.

Eric Strain is The George E. Bigelow Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Director of the Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit at Johns Hopkins, and is also the Executive Vice Chair for Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He maintains an active research program in substance use related issues, provides clinical care to patients, teaches medical students and residents, and provides administrative supervision in the maintenance of current substance use treatment programs and the development of new substance use disorder initiatives at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Strain is the former Editor in Chief for the peer-reviewed scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, and edited, with Maxine Stitzer, the books Methadone Treatment for Opioid Dependence andThe Treatment of Opioid Dependence, and with Pedro Ruiz edited the fifth edition of Lowinson and Ruiz’s Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook. He was the lead in developing the first buprenorphine curriculum, which was subsequently used as the primary resource to train physicians in the use of this medication for the treatment of opioid dependence. He has served as the Chair of the Food and Drug Administration’s Drug Abuse Advisory Committee, the NIH ARM study section, and the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Addiction Psychiatry. In addition, he has served on the boards of The College on Problems of Drug Dependence (for which he is a Past-President), the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, and Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems. He also has served on various committees for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and is a frequent reviewer for scientific journals in the area of substance use disorders. Dr. Strain is the recipient of several competitive grant awards from the National Institute of Health, and has published extensively on substance abuse-related matters. His research areas have included topics such as the optimal mechanisms for treating patients with substance use disorders, including opioid and cocaine dependence, the relationship between substance use and other psychiatric disorders, the abuse liability of novel medications, and the development of new pharmacotherapies for substance abuse treatment (including opioids and alcohol). His studies have included medications such as buprenorphine, methadone and LAAM, pharmacotherapies for alcohol dependence, and non-pharmacologic treatments for substance use disorders. 

Email: estrain1@jhmi.edu