As I have emphasized in previous chapters, the actual withdrawing of opiate from an addict is simply one stage, and by no means the most important stage in the rational consideration and handling of a case of narcotic drug addiction. The fact that a patient is using an opiate drug, and that he uses, within reasonable limits, a larger or smaller amount of that drug, is a matter of very minor importance as compared with his general functional, nutritional, and metabolic efficiency. This is true as a general proposition in the handling of any case of narcotic drug addiction, and is vastly more true in the handling of cases of other conditions or diseases, operative or otherwise, that are complicated by narcotic drug addiction-disease. The physician or surgeon should realize that the use of a narcotic drug by a patient under his care is of very little immediate importance compared with the satisfactory recovery of his patient from the condition for which he is treating him. The physician or the surgeon who has in his care a narcotic drug addict whom he is treating for another disease condition should remember that the patient’s recovery from the condition for which the doctor was consulted, depends to a great extent upon the amount of functional balance and organic and metabolic adequacy which exists in that patient, and he should realize that functional balance and organic and metabolic adequacy in a narcotic addict are largely under the control of, and vary with the extent to which that patient is kept in, adequate narcotic drug balance. The establishing and maintaining of adequate drug balance, therefore, is one of the most important elements to be considered in the conduct of a case of narcotic addiction undergoing operation or treatment for a condition other than the cure of his addiction. In handling such a patient, the physician or surgeon should completely put out of his mind any idea of at the same time trying to “cure” the addiction with which his patient is afflicted. I have repeatedly heard of many, and have personally come into contact with cases where the physician or surgeon was trying to withdraw opiate drug from a patient with addiction-disease, as an incidental in the course of treatment of other disease conditions. There are cases of addiction-disease in which this may be successfully accomplished. In the majority of cases, however, this procedure is too harmful to be anything but condemned. Not only will the surgeon or physician ordinarily fail in his attempt to remedy the addiction condition, but he may very severely handicap his other work on that patient and very seriously jeopardize the success of his efforts in the remedy of the condition which he was originally called upon to treat.