Background: Guidelines recommend symptom triggered therapy for management of alcohol withdrawal. The most commonly use assessment scale is the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment, Revised (CIWA-Ar). CIWA-Ar has been criticized however for relying on patient self-report, and alternative scales have been developed that incorporate vital signs to be more objective, including the Minnesota Detoxification Scale (MINDS) [...]

Background: Since the 1960s, benzodiazepine therapy has been the standard of care for alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) [1]. Recently, phenobarbital-based withdrawal has re-emerged as a potentially safer and more effective option that can decrease admission rates when given in the emergency department (ED) [2-7]. Thus, many academic medical centers (AMCs) have switched to phenobarbital for [...]

Case Presentation: A 42 year-old man with a past medical history of alcohol use disorder, depression and prior suicide attempt who was admitted to psychiatry after a gabapentin overdose while intoxicated. His home medications included sertraline, naltrexone, and gabapentin. Ethanol level on admission was 204 mg/dL. Sertraline was continued and he was started on trazodone [...]