Directory — Health — Blog Details for "Addiction Inbox"

Addiction Inbox

Addiction Inbox
A review of news about addiction, alcoholism, drugs of abuse, and new scientific and medical treatment options. Website is based on the book, Addiction, The Search for a Cure, by Dirk Hanson.

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Articles

Book Review (Part 1): "Women Under the Influence"
2007-08-12 06:33:00
Women and Cigarettes: ?The Virginia Slims Woman is Catching up to the Marlboro Man.??Compared to boys and men, girls and women become addicted to alcohol, nicotine, and illegal and prescription drugs at lower levels of use and in shorter periods of time, develop substance-related diseases like lung cancer more quickly, suffer more severe brain damage from alcohol and drugs like Ecstasy, and often pay the ultimate price sooner. Yet 92 per cent of women in need of treatment for alcohol and drug problems do not receive it. Stigma, shame, and ignorance hide the scope of the problem and the severity of the consequences.? --Joseph A. Califano, Jr.?Women Under the Influence,? with a Foreword by former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano, appeared in print last year, but is well worth a second look. The result of studies undertaken at Columbia University?s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, and collectively written by that group, ?Women Under t...
More About: Women , Book Review , Review , Book , Part

Alcopops: California Cracks Down on Kid-Friendly Alcohol
2007-08-03 18:47:00
?Training Beers? and ?Girlie Drinks? Come Under FireIn June, the Calif ornia State Assembly passed the ?Alcopops Warning Label Bill,? requiring a warning label on the bubbly, sweetened, premixed alcohol drinks sold in mini-marts and gas stations and often indistinguishable from soda and juice drinks. Critics say that the beverages, which contain 5 to 8 % alcohol and are currently taxed as beer in California, are designed and labeled specifically to attract underage drinkers. The State Senate is currently considering the bill. Several states have already reclassified the drinks.In ?The Cost of Alcopops to Youth and California,? the Marin Institute, a California-based alcohol industry watchdog, claims that fruit-flavored alcopops ?fuel the underage drinking epidemic by serving as a transition or bridge from soft drinks to alcohol, especially for youth. The alcohol flavor is masked by sweeteners and young people report drinking alcopops because they are easier to conceal and ?go down ea...
More About: Alcohol , Friendly , Cracks

Media Suffers Attack of Cannabis Psychosis
2007-08-02 02:39:00
Bad Science Makes for Bad Science JournalismAccording to the London Daily Mail, smoking a single joint of marijuana increases your risk of developing schizophrenia by 41 per cent. The Mail quoted Professor Robin Murray of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who dutifully warned that the risk was perhaps even higher than that, due to the increasing use of what the newspaper termed ?powerful skunk cannabis.? The skunk effect, said Murray, meant that the study?s estimate that ?14 per cent of cases of schizophrenia in the UK are due to cannabis is now probably an understatement.?Marjorie Wallace of the mental health charity SANE told BBC News: ?The headlines are not scaremongering, but reflect a daily, and preventable, tragedy.?Wow. As Gertrude Stein once put it, ?Interesting if true.? But it?s not true at all, of course. Or, to put it more accurately: If it were true, there is no way in hell the meta study under question could be used to prove it.Speaking as a science journalist, ...
More About: Media , Cannabis , Attack , Atta

Minister Says Marijuana is a Sacrament
2007-07-28 02:33:00
That?s Reverend Stoner to you, brotherNice try, Craig X. Rubin. But the California courts aren?t buying it. Minister s, mail-order or otherwise, are unlikely to merit federal protection for the use of pot as a church sacrament.Ordained, as were so many of us, as a minister of the Universal Life Church, and thereby licensed to perform legal weddings and, in days gone by, to attempt conscientious objector status in military matters, Rubin was charged with possession with attempt to sell. The leader of the 420 Temple faces up to seven years in prison for dealing.The 41 year-old Rubin has no legal experience but is representing himself in the case. Not much is known about his court strategy, but a two-pronged defense appeared to be emerging: Rubin will argue that marijuana is the ?tree of life? mentioned in the Bible (if not in the movie, ?The Fountain,?) and that an officer held a shotgun to his head during the arrest. He is not contesting the allegation of possessing pot, which he said...
More About: Marijuana , Mari , Amen , Cram

A View From the Other Side: What Disease?
2007-07-26 00:42:00
A psychiatrist takes issue with the semantics of addictive disease in SLATE.See "Medical Misnomer: Addiction isn't a brain disease, Congress."By Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld
More About: Disease , View , Side , The Other , Ease

Food Addiction
2007-07-20 21:26:00
Carbohydrates on the Brain, Food Rehab in the FutureEarlier this month, Yale University hosted the first-ever conference on Food and Addict ion . Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse told the collection of experts on nutrition, obesity and drug addiction that ?commonalities in the brain?s reward mechanisms? linked compulsive eating with addictive drug use. ?Impaired function of the brain dopamine system could make some people more vulnerable to compulsive eating,? Volkow said.Moreover, animal studies and brain imaging research in humans strongly support the notion of food addiction. In particular, research has pointed toward a form of food addiction known as ?carbohydrate-craving obesity.? Dr. Mark Gold, chief of addiction studies at the McKnight Institute at the University of Florida, and a well-known authority on cocaine abuse, argued that ?failed diets and attempts to control overeating, preoccupation with food and eating, shame, anger, and guilt look like tradit...

What's Wrong With This Picture?
2007-07-15 03:39:00
A bit of cognitive dissonance, perhaps? The situation could easily be reversed, but cigarette manufacturers mostly advertise in magazines, not newspapers. Otherwise, we might be reading about the dangers of consuming too much alcohol in casinos, while looking at an ad for a new brand of cigarettes.
More About: Picture , Wrong

European Tree Yields New Alcoholism Treatment in Early Tests
2007-07-10 21:03:00
Anti-Smoking Drug Also Curbs Alcohol CravingA drug approved last year for smoking cessation has also shown promise for use against alcoholism, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), announced yesterday. Varenicline, currently marketed by Pfizer for smoking cessation under the trade name Chantix, dramatically curbed drinking in alcohol-preferring rats, according to the study, which will be published online this week by ?The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.? The synthetic drug was modeled after a cytosine compound from the European Labumum tree, combined with an alkaloid from the poppy plant.Since an estimated 85 per cent of alcoholics are also cigarette smokers, varenicline could have an immediate effect on this common dual addiction. The drug has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human use, so Pfizer is likely to be granted a speedy approval for the new indication, sources say. The drug is likely to join A...
More About: Treatment , Early , Tree , Tests

European Tree Yields New Alcoholism Treatment
2007-07-10 21:03:00
Anti-Smoking Drug Also Curbs Alcohol CravingA drug approved last year for smoking cessation has also shown promise for use against alcoholism, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), announced yesterday. Varenicline, currently marketed by Pfizer for smoking cessation under the trade name Chantix, dramatically curbed drinking in alcohol-preferring rats, according to the study, which will be published online this week by ?The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.? The synthetic drug was modeled after a cytosine compound from the European Labumum tree, combined with an alkaloid from the poppy plant.Since an estimated 85 per cent of alcoholics are also cigarette smokers, varenicline could have an immediate effect on this common dual addiction. The drug has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for human use, so Pfizer is likely to be granted a speedy approval for the new indication, sources say. The drug is likely to join A...
More About: Treatment , Tree , Alcoholism , Rope

Fearing Medicine
2007-06-28 00:58:00
By Dirk HansonHave Americans become afraid of their doctors?Once upon a time, Americans went to their doctors to get pills. Doctors complained that patients believed competent medical care consisted of being handed a prescription. In the absence of that piece of paper with the unintelligible signature, a patient was apt to claim that the doctor?s visit had been a waste of time. What was the point of seeing a doctor if the doctor didn?t give you anything that would cure what ailed you? That was then. Patients now demand that doctors and pill makers come clean about the safety of the products they offer (long overdue), and that the pills themselves be absolutely benign in their effects (utterly impossible). In ever-greater numbers, Americans are coming to fear prescription drugs. This condition, in extremis, is a phobia with a recognized set of diagnostic criteria: pharmacophobia?an abnormal fear of medicine.Today, Americans go to their doctors to be healthy and ?drug-free.? If they a...
More About: Medicine , Medici

New World Nicotine: A Brief History
2007-06-26 22:54:00
?Drinking the Smoke?The prototypically North American contribution to the world drug trade has always been tobacco. Tobacco pipes have been found among the earliest known Aztec and Mayan ruins. Early North Americans apparently picked up the habit from their South American counterparts. Native American pipes subjected to gas chromatography show nicotine residue going back as far as 1715 B.C. ?Drinking? the smoke of tobacco leaves was an established New World practice long before European contact. An early technique was to place tobacco on hot coals and inhale the smoke with a hollow bone inserted in the nose. The addicting nature of tobacco alarmed the early missionary priests from Europe, who quickly became addicted themselves. Indeed, so enslaved to tobacco were the early priests that laws were passed to prevent smoking and the taking of snuff during Mass. New World tobacco quickly came to the attention of Dutch and Spanish merchants, who passed the drug along to European royal...
More About: History , Nicotine , Brief

Does AA Work?
2007-06-25 04:06:00
Bill W., co-founder of AA(Adapted from "Addiction: The Search for a Cure.")Despite recent progress in the medical understanding of addictive disease, the amateur self-help group known as Alcoholics Anonymous, and its affiliate, Narcotics Anonymous, are still regarded by many as the most effective mode of treatment for the ex-addict who is serious about keeping his or her disease in remission. A.A. and N.A. now accept anyone who is chemically dependent on any addictive drug?those battles are history. In today?s A.A. and N.A., an addict is an addict. A pragmatic recognition of pan-addiction makes a hash of strict categories, anyway.Nonetheless, under the biochemical paradigm of addiction, we have to ask whether the common A.A.-style of group rehabilitation, and its broader expression in the institutionalized form of the Minnesota Model, are nothing more than brainwashing combined with a covert pitch for some of that old-time religion. As Dr. Arnold Ludwig has phrased it, ?Why should a...
More About: Work

Drug Rehab in China
2007-06-21 23:18:00
After two years of a nationwide ?people?s war? against drug addiction in China , government authorities are claiming major accomplishments?but treatment, which is mostly compulsory, remains limited and largely ineffective, Chinese doctors say.The Chinese surge against drugs was credited with numerous successes almost before it had begun. Zhou Yongkang, Minister of Public Security, told the official news agency Xinhua that officials had seized more than two tons of methamphetamine, and three million ?head-shaking pills?--otherwise known as Ecstasy tablets. Two years later, in June of 2007, Minister Yongang, claimed that the number of drug abusers in China had been cut from 1.16 million to 720,400 due to compulsory rehabilitation measures. ?The effort has yielded remarkable results,? Yongang told the China Daily. (Other drug experts estimate the number of Chinese drug addicts to be 3 million or more.)However, a recent paper co-authored by several Chinese physicians, published in the...
More About: Rehab , Drug Rehab , Drug

Is Marijuana Addictive?
2007-05-14 02:25:00
Marijuana may not be a life-threatening drug, but is it an addictive one? There is little evidence in animal models for tolerance and withdrawal, the classic determinants of addiction. For at least four decades, million of Americans have used marijuana without clear evidence of a withdrawal syndrome. Most recreational marijuana users find that too much pot in one day makes them lethargic and uncomfortable. Self-proclaimed marijuana addicts, on the other hand, report that pot energizes them, calms them down when they are nervous, or otherwise allows them to function normally. They feel lethargic and uncomfortable without it. Heavy marijuana users claim that tolerance does build. And when they withdraw from use, they report strong cravings.Marijuana is the odd drug out. To the early researchers, it did not look like it should be addictive. Nevertheless, for some people, it is. Recently, a group of Italian researchers succeeded in demonstrating that THC releases dopamine along the rewa...
More About: Marijuana , Mari , Addict

Speed Causing Strokes?
2007-04-12 22:32:00
During the cocaine boom of the 1980s, addiction researchers learned that cocaine was sometimes capable of setting off serious seizures in users. Now, a related effect has been tentatively identified in two methamphetamine abusers-- strokes caused by microscropic tears in major arteries of the neck.Although the study, published in the journal Neurology by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, documented only the two cases, both young subjects-- women aged 29 and 36--were free of other risk factors. Stroke neurologists took note. Neurologist Steven Cramer at the University of California, Irvine, quoted at scientificamerican.com, said: ?If I ever see any young person with a stroke--that is, anyone under 65--I?ll be sure now to do a toxicology screen.?Stimulants like speed and cocaine markedly increase blood pressure while constricting blood vessels. According to Wengui Yu, one of the authors of the study, such work may help doctors ?to better diagnose, tre...
More About: Speed

Book Review Neurobiology of Addiction. By Geor...
2007-04-06 05:17:00
Book Review Neurobiology of Addiction .By George F. Koob and Michel Le Moal.Academic Press(Elsevier), London, 2006.Over the past twenty-five years, the neurobiology of addiction has become established as an important arena of scientific study. In particular, the molecular adaptations the brain makes in response to addictive drugs has placed addiction squarely in the forefront of modern brain science.Dr. George F. Koob, a respected American alcoholism researcher of long standing, has put together an academic treatise beyond the expertise and the pocketbooks of most laypersons, but the book is of crucial importance in the burgeoningfield of addiction science.In Neurobiology of Addiction, Koob and co-worker Michel Le Moal review the neural and molecular mechanisms responsible for the effects of individual addictive drugs in five categories--psychostimulants, opium, alcohol, nicotine,and cannabis.Particularly well documented is the ?anti-reward? system, by which the abuse of addictive dru...
More About: Book Review , Book , Ology

Pot For Alzheimer's?
2007-03-24 21:58:00
An enzyme responsible for the malformed proteins characteristic of Alzheimer?s disease may be better suppressed by marijuana than by any other known treatment for the brain disorder, scientists say.Research published in the Journal of Neuroscience and Molecular Pharmaceutics showed that rats injected with the amyloid protein that forms Alzheimer?s plaques showed characteristic activation of immune cells and resulting inflammation and memory impairment, but animals receiving an additional infusion of cannabinoids show greatly reduced inflammation in the brain.Recently, researchers at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, showed that THC reduced Alzheimer?s-style clumping of proteins significantly better than donepezil and tacrine, two common treatment medications for Alzheimer?s. Inflammation of the Alzheimer?s kind leads to memory loss. Old lab rats get progressively worse at learning to solve mazes, but an injection of cannabinoids improves their learning rate markedly. ?T...

Coffee and Your Heart
2007-03-04 23:13:00
Recent research shows that coffee drinkers come in two flavors: ?fast? metabolizers and ?slow? metabolizers. People with a particular gene variant are more vulnerable to it?s effects. The gene in question controls the production of a key enzyme, known as CYP1A2, responsible for metabolizing coffee in the liver. People who inherit the slow version face a greater risk of non-fatal heart attacks at high levels of caffeine intake.?The association between coffee and myocardial infarction [heart attack] was found only among individuals with the slow CYP1A2 allele [gene variant], which impairs caffeine metabolismm, suggesting that caffeine plays a role in the association,? the authors wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).The University of Toronto?s Ahmed El-Sohemy, a co-author of the published study, told the Associated Press that metabolic differences might help to explain why previous studies of caffeine?s cardiovascular effects have proven to be contradictory...
More About: Coffee , Heart

More articles from this author:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5