64. Alcohol, Opioid, and Combined Alcohol and Opioid Use Disorders Affect Shared and Unique Pathways: A Proteomic Analysis of Postmortem Brains

Polysubstance use is a common condition that leads to additional health and psychiatric risks. There have been extensive efforts to characterize the pathways that are altered in individual substance use but understanding the pathways that are altered in polysubstance use has been more limited, particularly in alcohol and opioid co-use. Epidemiological data demonstrate that in this population of polysubstance users, there are far more fatal outcomes due to the hypoxic respiratory failure that comes from the additive and synergistic effects of opioids with alcohol. As such, understanding the neural changes that occur in this subpopulation of users is important to prevent deaths and develop better methods for treating this population.