Mark S. Gold

Gold earned his bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and graduated from the University of Florida College of Medicine with his medical degree.[5][6] He then completed a psychiatry residency and fellowship at Yale School of Medicine.[7]

Since beginning his career in research at University of Florida in 1970, he has authored over 1,000 scientific articles, chapters, and abstracts published in journals for neuroscientists and health professionals, with collaborators at Yale, Princeton, and Washington University in St. Louis.

In addition to conducting research, Gold was a distinguished professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, community health, and family medicine at UF. He became interim chairman and then chair of the UF Department of Psychiatry in 2008. During his tenure, he founded the Division of Addiction Medicine and its treatment program, the Florida Recovery Center.[8] He also started laboratory studies in the UF McKnight Brain Institute on a wide range of topics with mentees, including second-hand tobacco smoke, sugar and drug self-administration, and fentanyl and opioid drug-induced anhedonia and reversal. From 2011-2014, Gold was the 17th University of Florida Distinguished Alumni Professor, where he had university-wide responsibilities and was honored by UF Dean Michael Good at the university's 2011 homecoming game.[9][10][11]

After retiring as a full-time academic in 2014, he has continued teaching, research and writing as a University of Florida Emeritus Eminent Scholar, clinical professor at the University of Southern California, Tulane University, and the Washington University School of Medicine Departments of Psychiatry.[12] Dr. Gold is an active member of the National Council at the Washington University School of Medicine’s Public Health Institute.[13]

Gold’s work has focused on developing scientific laboratory models for understanding drug, food, and other addictions that have led to new treatments. Gold was a lead researcher in the discovery of clonidine’s efficacy in opiate withdrawal and a rationale for opiate withdrawal symptomatology.[3][14] Clonidine was the first non-opioid medication to reverse acute opioid withdrawal symptoms.[15] He also co-authored the dopamine depletion hypothesis (Patent #4/312,878) for cocaine addiction and anhedonia.[4] His work helped lead to a new understanding of how cocaine is addicting and the physiology of cocaine craving and “crashing.”[16]

Gold developed addiction-based models for understanding hedonistic overeating, food addiction, and the development of new therapies. He is co-editor of the 2012 textbook, Food and Addiction, published by Oxford Press, and has worked to evaluate the hypothesis that hedonistic overeating is a pathological attachment to food like any other addiction.[17][18][19]

His group had the first report in the medical literature on crack, addiction to second-hand tobacco, and cannabis smoke.[20][21] Gold has also researched methamphetamine and, with NIDA’s Jean Lud Cadet M.D., described the drug’s long-lasting effects in a series of studies from rodents to human post-mortem;[22][23][24] physician and health professionals who have become addicts and their outcomes after treatment;[25][26][27] and internet and other behavioral addictions.[28] Additional research interests include the role of exercise in neurodegeneration and recovery, treatment-resistant opioid use disorders, and reward deficiency syndrome.[29][30][31]

Gold was the Chief Scientist working on national and global research on addiction and its effects. He was chief scientist of the Afghanistan National Urban Drug Use Survey for the US State Department and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The survey identified second- and third-hand opium exposure among children in Kabul and other urban Afghan areas.[32]

Gold also studied smoking, as well as second- and third-hand tobacco smoke, with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and FAMRI. He has extended this model to study cannabis smoke and withdrawal. He worked with the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, Media Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, the Betty Ford Center Foundation in the area of drug use and youth and the DEA Museum, where he was a founding director.[33][34]

Gold has received numerous recognitions for his work, including Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha;[35] Addiction Policy Forum Pillar of Excellence Award for research;[36] the John P. McGovern Award for his contributions to public policy, treatment, research and addiction prevention;[37] National Association Addiction Treatment and Policy Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Chinese National Academy of Sciences, International Scientist Award.[38] At the University of Florida, Gold was named a Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar and University Distinguished Professor.[39] He was given Inventor Awards from UF’s Office of Technology Transfer and the annual White Coat Ceremony was named in his honor.[40][41]

Gold continues to analyze and present epidemiological research on the opioid and emerging cocaine epidemics and behavioral addictions.[42][43] He has written and lectured on responses to reduce overdose deaths, medication-assisted therapies, and opioid use disorders.[44][45] He regularly lectures at medical schools; Grand Rounds;[46][47] and national scientific meetings on opioids, cocaine, and the bench-to-bedside science in eating disorders, obesity, and addictions.[48][49][50] Recently, he was editor of the World Federation of Neurology's Journal of Neurological Sciences Special Issue on Addiction Medicine 2020.[51]