[Verse 1] In the consultation room where the afternoon grows still, An elder sits before you with a complicated history to fill, Alcohol can masquerade as sleep disorder, memory decay, So we reach for validated tools to cut through the display, The AUDIT-C asks just three things with elegant economy, How often, how much, and when did drinking reach a binge frequency, A score of three for women, four for men flags elevated ground, A brief but potent sentry where the hidden risks are found [Chorus] CAGE, AUDIT, MAST-G, SMAST, Four instruments that pull the curtain back, Cut down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener told, Two or more on CAGE means something to behold, MAST-G speaks in geriatric tongue, twenty-four items long, Ten items trimmed to SMAST-G when the session's time is short, Screen with rigor, screen with care, the evidence is strong, Substance use in older adults is never just a quirk [Verse 2] Now MAST-G was fashioned with the elder mind in mind, The Michigan original wasn't calibrated for their kind, Social isolation, falling down, blackout after two, These are geriatric signals standard tools would misconstrue, A score of five or higher on the MAST-G marks concern, The SMAST-G condenses this to questions swift and stern, Two affirmatives out of ten illuminate a path, Toward further clinical exploration, never toward rebuke or wrath [Chorus] CAGE, AUDIT, MAST-G, SMAST, Four instruments that pull the curtain back, Cut down, Annoyed, Guilty, Eye-opener told, Two or more on CAGE means something to behold, MAST-G speaks in geriatric tongue, twenty-four items long, Ten items trimmed to SMAST-G when the session's time is short, Screen with rigor, screen with care, the evidence is strong, Substance use in older adults is never just a quirk [Verse 3] Prescription misuse wears a respectable disguise, Benzodiazepines and opioids compound in gray disguise, Polypharmacy opens doors that blur the clinical scene, Is tolerance developing or is the dosage routine, Ask about the medicine cabinet, who prescribed and when, Whether pills are borrowed, stockpiled, used to quiet pain again, Beers Criteria flags the drugs that carry elevated threat, An older nervous system is a pharmacological net [Bridge] Cannabis complicates the portrait now, legality has shifted ground, Older adults report it for arthritis, sleep, and pain profound, Yet drug interactions with their cardiac and blood-thinning loads, Demand we ask directly, map the full picture of their roads, Dosing in the elder body, absorption rates run slow, Cognitive effects accumulate in ways we're just beginning to know, Never presume abstinence because the generation suggests, Ask the question plainly, hold the judgment, and address
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