The music must change! Obsesssion, compulsion, shame an guilt in addiction

March 28th, 2011

Guest co-author: Jeff Brandler from Changeispossible.org

The nature of addiction is one of obsession and compulsion. Regardless of the substance, behavior, or process, the addicted person will continue to obsess (countless and endless thoughts) and have compulsions (repetitive actions). They will repeat this obsession-compulsion ritual over and over.

Imagine a radio station that plays the same song over and over. Imagine that song being a steady diet of thoughts, and feelings of guilt, shame, remorse and self-loathing (GSRSL). Imagine an endless supply of obsessive thinking and compulsive replays of the thing(s) that the addict did to start the song playing.

People get involved in all kinds of self-defeating/self destructive behaviors. There are numerous reasons for this. The top ones that I see are: addictive disorders, mood disorders, self-sabotaging behavioral and personality traits. The GSRSL is a constant loop. It never stops. The problem with it never stopping is that it creates more GSRSL. The more GSRSL, the greater the need for the behavior. The more behavior that happens, the more GSRSL that you need and so on and so on. Does your head feel like it wants to explode?

Obsession and Compulsion – An example

Let’s say I had a fight with my spouse. I decide to smoke a joint in order to relax, escape, or unwind. Afterwards, I feel a lot of GSRSL. I have guilty thoughts, feel embarrassed and shameful. I have remorse for what I did, and beat myself up unmercifully. So what do I do in order to stop this behavior? You got it, smoke another joint, or maybe have a drink, only to feel more GSRSL. In doing so I then have the trifecta GSRSL of before, during and after-The music must definitely change!!!!

Or, imagine an alcoholic who receive a 3^rd DWI citation after finally getting his license back following a 2 year suspension for his previous offenses. That’s some serious GSRSL. I have the most recent driving incident plus the 2 years where I lost my license swirling around my head like a blender. Talk about a bad song!!!! Please change the music!!!!

How does a person change this music?

It’s easy to change a radio station, but something that is so ingrained, so obsessive & compulsive is going to be much harder to change. Part of stopping this music is recognizing: 1) this is going to be hard to do 2) that I have been doing this for a while, and 3) it’s going to take some time to stop it. The key word that describes this is permission – I have to give myself permission to take the time that it’s going to take to make this major change. I’m also going to need to use a variety of approaches to change these thoughts and feelings (i.e. thought stopping, disputing irrational beliefs, identifying affirmations, (and using them regularly), and finding gratitude despite the pain).

Using this total package will be a first step towards change. It begins a long process of turning down the GSRSL music . I may need to also speak to a therapist to examine why I do these behaviors and what they are “wired” to. If in fact there is something biologically based, there may be a need for medication to “tune” these thoughts/feelings into healthier ones. Yes the music can change– It can go from “Comfortably Numb” to “Peaceful Easy Feeling”. The process of change is possible, but it’s going to take time and hard work.

Posted in:  Education, For addicts, Tips Tags: affirmation, Alcohol, change, cocaine, compulsion, dwi, gsrsl, guilt, music, obsession, obsession compulsion, permission, recovery, remorse, shame, weed

Alcoholism , Sniffing Bath Salts, and Prescription Medication Abuse

January 17th, 2011

If you care about addiction you’re going to want to read our weekly update from across the globe. It’ll make you smarter – promise (at least when it comes to alcohol and drug abuse issues)!

Drug Abuse – Vaccines to treat addictions, and Sniffing Bath Salts

Medical News Today-A biochemical breakthrough by researchers at Cornell  produces a unique vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine. Researchers believe the vaccine could be tailored to treat other addictions, such as to nicotine, heroin, and methamphetamine. While similar to other vaccine discussions we’ve had here, the method and generalizability here are of specific interest.

BBC News-Publicity of scholastic journals back fired on Dr. David E. Nichols as drug makers profit off his research findings. Dr. Nichols says while some drugs can be manufactured in the kitchen the scale to which these “legal high” drugs are produced indicates some small companies are involved.

Fox News.com- A new “drug abuse” trend of sniffing bath salts to try to get high is emerging in Louisiana and is creating a issue for the Louisiana Poison Center. It appears that more kids are attempting this “trend” resulting in of paranoia, hallucinations, delusions, as well as hypertension and chest pain. The problem’s gotten so bad in the state that the Governor had to make the active ingredient in the bath salts illegal. The bath salts contain a chemical called “Mephadrone and Methylenedioxypyrovalerone or MDPV, which is known to be a stimulant that may also cause paranoia and hostility.

Alcoholism – Studies and Personal Stories about alcohol

Science Daily- A new study has been conducted which shows that midlife alcohol consumption may be related to dementia which is often assessed about 20 years later. The study found that both abstainers and heavy drinkers had a greater risk for dementia and cognitive impairment than light drinkers. Again, it seems that drinking no-alcohol is associated with risk factors and outcomes that are not as ideal as moderate consumption and somewhat similar to heavy drinking.

Counselor Magazine Blog- Everyone loves watching a good and inspirational movie from time to time. The new movie “Country Strong” deals with many issues that everyday individuals face such as alcoholism, mental illness, co-dependency, ageism, and grief. These are elements that a person goes through when they are dealing with alcoholism. The movie depicts that alcoholism is a family disease and does not affect just the alcoholic. Another great point that the movie shows is that if there are underlying issues that are often not resolved that relapse is very common.

Prescription Drug abuse and death

Reuters- A new study has found that an increasing amount of individuals are dying from abusing and misusing prescription drugs as well as illegal drugs. In recent times deaths from “accidental poisonings” or overdose are more than ten times higher than they were in the late 1960s. This increase in drug deaths is higher across almost all age groups than it was in previous decades, especially amongst white Americans.

Chicago Sun Times- Prescription drug abuse is a growing problem in our country, and deaths from unintentional drug overdoses in the US have increased five-fold over the last two decades. The drugs that are commonly causing these deaths are particularly painkillers such as OxyContin (oxycodone), Vicodin (hydrocodone) and fentanyl. What many individuals do not realize is prescription drugs can be much more deadly than illegal drugs. In 2007 alone, abuse of prescription painkillers was responsible for more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. Prescription painkillers, most of which are opioids, are synthetic versions of opium used to relieve moderate to severe chronic pain, however in large and excessive quantities, they can suppress a person’s ability to breathe and are very dangerous when they are mixed with alcohol or other drugs.

Posted in:  Education Tags: about addiction, addiction, Alcohol, alcoholism, bath salts, BBC, cocaine, Country Strong, crystal meth, death, drug, drug abuse, Drugs, heroin, illegal drugs, methamphetamine, new study, nicotine, opiates, overdose, prescription, prescription drug, prescription drug abuse, prescription drugs, sniffing bath salts, stories, vaccine

Addiction Treatment Admissions in the United States: Everyone, meet TEDS

January 14th, 2011

Dirk Hanson

What a difference a decade makes.

Between 1998 and 2008, addiction treatment admissions in the U.S. increased markedly for methamphetamine (crystal meth), prescription opiates, and marijuana. Treatment admissions for alcohol and cocaine declined over the same period, while heroin admissions remained roughly the same.

The Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), which the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) uses to compile its report, includes only those addiction treatment facilities that receive state alcohol or drug agency funds, and which are represented in state administrative data systems. Despite this caveat, the TEDS study matters, because states use reports of this kind to shift limited resources from one treatment focus to another, based on demand. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in:  Drugs, Education, Treatment Tags: addiction, addiction treatment admissions, admission, admission rate, admissions, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, legalization, marijuana, methamphetamine, opiate, prescription drugs, SAMHSA, TEDS, treatment, treatment admission, treatment admission rate, treatment admissions

Loss, but not absence, of control – How choice and addiction are related

January 3rd, 2011

In a recent post the notion that “loss of control” is an addiction myth was raised by our new author, Christopher Russell, a thoughtful graduate student studying substance abuse in the U.K. Though I obviously personally believe in control- and choice-relevant neurological mechanisms playing a part in addiction, this conversation is a common one both within and outside of the substance abuse field. Therefore, I welcome the discussion onto our pages. I’d like to start out by reviewing some of the more abstract differences between my view and the one expressed by Christopher and follow those with some evidence to support my view and refute the evidence brought forth by him.

Addiction concetualization – Philosophical and logical differences and misinterpretations

One of the first issues I take with the argument against control as a major factor in addiction is the interpretation of the phrase “loss of control” as meaning absence, rather than a reduction, in control over addiction. Clearly though, one of the definitions of loss is a “decrease in amount, magnitude, or degree” (from Merriam-Webster.com) and not the destruction of something. Science is an exercise in probabilities so when scientists say “loss”, they mean a decrease and not a complete absence in the same way that findings showing that smoking causes cancer do not mean that if an individual smokes they will inevitably develop cancerous tumors. Similarly, the word “can’t” colloquially means having a low probability of success and not the complete inability to succeed. Intervention that improve the probability of quit (like bupropion or quitlines for smoking) success are therefore said to cause improvements in the capacity for quitting.

Next, Christopher wants scientists to identify the source of “will” in the brain but I suggest that “will” itself is simply a term he has given a behavioral outcome – the ability to make a choice that falls in line with expectations. In actuality, “will” is more commonly used as a reference to motivation, which while measurable, isn’t really the aspect of addiction involved in cognitive control. Instead, what we’re talking about is “capacity” to make a choice. The issue is a significant, not semantic one, since the argument most neuroscientists make about substance abuse is that addicts suffer a reduced capacity to make appropriate behavioral choices, especially as they pertain to engaging in the addictive behavior of interest. If someone is attempting to get into a car but repeatedly fails, we say they can’t get in the car (capacity), not that they don’t want to (will). Saying that they simply “don’t” get in the car doesn’t get at either capacity or will but instead is simply descriptive. I don’t believe that science is, or should be, merely descriptive but instead that it allows us to form conclusions based on available information.

That there is a segment of individuals who develop compulsive behavioral patterns tied to alcohol and drug use and who attempt to stop but fail is, to my mind, evidence that those individuals have a difficulty (capacity) in ceasing their drug use. Their motivation (will) to quit is an aspect that has been shown to be associated with their probability of success but the two are by no means synonymous. It is important to note, and understand, that the attribution for the performance should not fall squarely on the shoulders of the individuals. We humans are so prone to making that mistake that it has a name, “The fundamental attribution error,” and indeed, individuals who show compulsive, addictive, behavior do so because of neuropharmacological, environmental, and social reasons in addition to the complex interactions between them all. But no one is disputing that and in fact, the article used by Christopher to point out the notion of a “tipping point” in addiction directly points out that fact in the next paragraph (Page 4), which he chose not to reference or acknowledge.

“Of course, addiction is not that simple. Addiction is not just a brain disease. It is a brain disease for which the social contexts in which it has both developed and is expressed are critically important… The implications are obvious. If we understand addiction as a prototypical psychobiological illness, with critical biological, behavioral, and social-context components, our treatment strategies must include biological, behavioral, and social-context elements.” (Lashner, 1997)

Lastly, Christopher’s philosophical musings are interesting, but they seem to stray away from trying to find an explanation for behavior and instead simply deconstruct evidence. In a personal communication I explained that while most addiction researchers understand that addiction, like most other mental health disorders is composed of a continuum of control ranging from absolute control over behavior to no control whatsoever (with most people fitting somewhere in the middle and few if any at the extreme ends), categorization is a necessary evil of clinical treatment. The same is true for every quantitative measure from height (Dwarfism is sometimes defined as adults who are shorter than 4’10″) to weight (BMI greater than 30 kg/m²). I think it’s equally as tough to argue that someone with a BMI of 29.5 is distinctly different from an individual with a BMI of 30 as it is to argue that there is no utility in the classification. Well, the same applies for addiction, although Christopher apparently categorically objects to classification and believes it has no utility or justification.

Now for the evidence – “Choice” and “control” are not the same as “will”

Some people quit, even without help – Christopher and a number of the people he cites in support (Peele, Alexander), suggest that because some people do stop using that it can’t be said that there is a problem with any individuals’ capacity to stop. The problem with that argument is that it supposes that everyone is the same, a fact that is simply not true. As an example I would like to suggest that we compare cognitive control with physical control and use Huntington’s Disease (HD or Huntington’s Chorea) as an example.

HD patients suffer mental dementia but the physical symptoms of the disease, an inability to control their physical movement resulting in flailing limbs often referred to as the Huntington Dance, are almost always the first noticeable symptoms. Nevertheless, HD sufferers experience a number of debilitating symptoms that originate in brain dysfunction (specifically destruction of striatum neurons, the substantia nigra, and hippocampus) and that alter their ability (capacity) to control their movements and affect their memory and executive function leading to problems in planning and higher order thought processes. So, while it is true that most people can control their arm movements, here is an example of individuals who progressively become worse and worse at doing so due to a neurophramacological disorder. There is currently no cure for HD but some medications that help treat it no doubt restore some of the capacity of these patients to control their movements. If a cure is found it would be difficult to say, as Christopher suggests of addiction, that the cure does not affect the capacity of HD patients to control what they once could not. I chose HD for its physiological set of symptoms but a similar example could easily be constructed for schizophrenia and a number of other mental health disorders (including ADHD and addiction). Importantly, cognitive control is a function of brain activity, activity that can become compromised as the set of experiment I will discuss next show.

An experiment conducted at UCLA (1) has shown that cocaine administrations reduced animals’ ability to change their behavior when environmental conditions called for it. Even more meaningful was the finding that once animals are exposed to daily doses of drugs, the way their learning systems function is altered even when the drugs themselves are no longer on board and even when the learning has nothing to do with drugs per se.

In the experiment, conducted by Dr. David Jentsch and colleagues, monkeys were given either a single dose (less than the equivalent of a tenth of a gram for a 150lb human) or repeated doses (1/8 to 1/4 of a gram equivalent once daily for 14 days) of cocaine. The task involved learning an initial association between the location of food in one of three boxes and then learning that the location of the food has changed. We call this task reversal learning since animals have to unlearn an established relationship to learn a new one.

Obviously, the animals want the food, and so the appropriate response once the location is changed is to stop picking the old location and move on to the new one that now holds the coveted food. This sort of thing happens all the time in life and indeed, during addiction it seems that people have trouble adjusting their behavior when taking drugs is no longer rewarding and is, in fact, even troublesome (as in leading to jail, family breakups, etc.).

In the experiment, animals exposed to cocaine had trouble (when compared to control animals that got an injection of saline water) learning to reverse their selection when tested 20 minutes after getting the drug, which is not surprising but still an example of how drug administration can causally affect an individual’s ability to make appropriate choices. As pointed above, the most interesting finding had to do with the animals that got a dose of cocaine every day for 14 days. Even after a full week of being off the drug, these animals showed an interesting effect that persisted for a month – while their ability to learn that initial food-box association, they had significant trouble changing their selection once the conditions changed. Remember, this effect was present with no cocaine in their system and with learning conditions that had nothing whatsoever to do with cocaine.

If that’s not direct evidence that having drugs in your system can alter the way your brain makes choices, I don’t know what is.

Another study conducted by Calu and colleagues with rats found similar (or even more pronounced) reversal learning problems after training the animals to take cocaine for themselves, clarifying that it is the taking of cocaine and not the method that causes the impairments.

Another entire set of studies has shown that stimuli (also known as cues or triggers) that have become associated with drugs can bring back long-forgotten drug-seeking behavior once they are reintroduced. This was shown in that Calu paper I mentioned above and in so many other articles that it would be wasteful to go through all the evidence here. Importantly, this evidence shows that drug associated cues direct behavior towards drug seeking in a way that biases behavior regardless of any underlying will. My own research has shown that animals who respond greatly to drugs (nicotine in our case) likely learn to integrate more of these triggers than animals who show a reduced response, indicating once again that these animals bias  their behavioral selection towards drug-seeking more than usual. While we have more studies to conduct, we believe that genetic differences relevant to dopamine and possibly other neurotransmitters important for learning (like Glutamate) are responsible for this effect.

While we can’t do these kinds of experiments with people (research approval committee’s just won’t let you give drugs to people who haven’t done them before), there is quite a bit of evidence showing an association between trouble in reversal learning and chronic drug use in humans (see citation 3 for example) as well as research showing very different brain activity among addicted individuals to drug-associated versus non-drug cues (like seeing a crack pipe versus a building). All this evidence suggests that drug users are different in the way they learn generally, and more specifically about drugs, than individuals not addicted to drugs. When it comes to genetics, we know quite a bit about the  association between substance abuse and specific genes, especially when it comes to dopamine function. As expected, genetic variation in dopamine receptor subtypes important in learning about rewards (D4 and D2) has been revealed to exist between addicts and non addicts. Without getting into the techniques and analysis methods involved in these genetic studies, their sheer number and the relationship between substance abuse and other impulse disorders points to a direct relationship between drug use disorders (and possibly other addictive disorders) and a reduced capacity to exert behavioral control. Less capacity for control is what researchers have found sets addict apart from non-addicts.

Summary, conclusions, and final thoughts

In closing, there are undoubtedly imperfections about the ways we diagnose addiction. It would probably be nice if we could figure out a way to incorporate what we know about the continuous nature of the disorder with the need for clinical delineation of who requires addiction treatment and who doesn’t. Addiction researchers are far from the only ones who wonder about this question though (the same issues are relevant for schizophrenia, depression, and nearly every mental health disorder) and I am certain that better and better solutions will emerge.

However, the discussion of stigma in this context needs to allow us to discuss the reality of addiction without having to resort to blaming and counter-blaming. If I describe the Toyota Prius as being slow but incredibly efficient I am no more stigmatizing than if I describe a Ferrari as being incredibly fact but wasteful in terms of fuel. The same applies, or should apply, to health and mental health diagnoses – Just because an individual is less able to exert cognitive control over impulses should not by definition call into question their standing as a human being. We are complex machines and by improving our understanding of the nuts and bolts that make us function we can only, in my opinion, improve our ability to make the best use of our capabilities while understanding our relative strengths and weaknesses. Any other way of looking at it seems to me to be either wishful (I can do anything if I want it badly enough) or defeatist (I will never be anything because I’m not good at X) and neither seem like good options to me.

Citations:

1) Jentsch, Olausson, De La Garza, and Tylor (2002): Impairments of Reversal Learning and Response Perseveration after Repeated, Intermittent Cocaine Administrations to Monkeys. Neuropsychopharmacology, Volume 26, Issue 2, Pages 183-190

2) Calu et al (2007) Withdrawal from cocaine self-administration produces long-lasting deficits in orbitofrontal-dependent reversal learning in rats. Learning & Memory, 14, 325-328.

3) Some evidence in humans from Trevor Robbins’ group: Reversal deficits in current chronic cocaine users.

Posted in:  Education Tags: addiction, addictive, ADHD, Brain, capacity, cocaine, cognitive control, compulsive, control, depression, dopamine, drug, drug use, genetic differences, glutamate, hd, hippocampus, huntington's disease, learning, mental health, mental health disorders, motivation, obesity, peele, reversal learning, schizophrenia, science, striatum, substance abuse, substnatia nigra, treatment, triggers, UCLA, will

Harm reduction – Why the bad press for addiction treatment that works?!

October 31st, 2010

How many of you think that giving a crystal meth user condoms will increase their drug use? Probably not many. What if instead the question had to do with giving that same user clean needles rather than having them share a dirty one? Or having him reduce his drug use instead of stopping completely? I bet there would be a little more disagreement there.

Some of you may have heard of the harm-reduction approach to drug abuse counseling and treatment, but many of you likely haven’t because the term itself is essentially taboo in the United States. The idea is to approach the patient (or client) without the shaming or expectations of abstinence that normally come with drug treatment. Instead, the counselors hope to reduce as much of the negative things associated with the drug use.

For example, almost all drug injecting users end up with hepatitis C due to dirty-needle sharing. As in the above example, harm reduction practitioners would seek to provide users with clean needles, thereby reducing needle sharing and the transmission of disease. Risky sexual behavior is often associated with methamphetamine, and crack use; instead of targeting the use itself, often, interventions attempt to reduce unprotected sex, reducing HIV transmission in the process.

Harm reduction has many supporters, but unfortunately, there are at least as many people who are against it. The claim is that harm reduction doesn’t stop drug use, and that we shouldn’t be in the business of making drug use easier. In fact, though they have no data to support it, some people argue that giving users clean needles is likely to exacerbate their drug use. My argument is that life as a drug user is pretty difficult as is, and if we can provide a way to show drug addicts that people actually care about their well-being, we might help some of them see the light.

Even more to the point, my thinking is that HIV, Hepatitis C, and other conditions often helped by harm-reduction, have to be considered as additional societal costs of drug abuse. If harm reduction helps us tackle those collateral costs, I’m all for it as an additional tool.

The bottom line is this: If we can use multiple tools to solve a problem, why limit ourselves unnecessarily to only one? If harm reduction helps, why not use it in conjunction with abstinence treatment?

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it’s time for us to stop resorting to ridiculous moral judgments and start focusing on solving the problem. If we can help an addict use less, use fewer drugs, or use more responsibly, I say we should go for it!!!

Posted in:  Drugs, Education, For others, Opinions, Sex, Tips, Treatment Tags: clean needles, cocaine, condom, condoms, cost, crystal meth, drug, drug abuse, drug use, harm, harm reduction, harm reduction help, hepatitis, heroin, HIV, meth, needle sharing, reduction, Speed, syringe, use, users clean needles

About Addiction: Prescription drugs, Alcohol prices, and prevention among teens

October 3rd, 2010

You know you care about addiction, and you know you love reading addiction news and research - A3 does it all for you and gathers things up in a nice little package we call our weekly “about addiction” post. It’s the fastest way to get the information you want, even if you didn’t know it was out there!

Prescription Drugs, drug safety, and sales

Reuters- Walgreen’s offers its customers a convenient way of disposing of their prescription drugs. This allows individuals to safely dispose of unwanted or expired drugs. The way that the program works is to place the unwanted prescription drugs in an envelope and send it to a medication incinerator. Controlled substances however are excluded from the program, I guess they’re afraid of bags of heroin and cocaine showing up at Walgreen offices?

Wales online- After being bugged to see if a man was in possession of illegal drugs, a number of men were sentenced to 48 years in jail for selling heroin. This undercover investigation lasted for six months, revealing a magnificent economy of drug use, abuse and profit.

Discovery News- Authorities discovered that eight illicit drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy, and methamphetamines, were detectable in the waterways of a Spanish national park. They’re worried about the threat of the drugs’ side effects to animals, but I have to say it makes me wonder why so many drug addicts are dumping their drugs there…

Alcohol Prices

Telegraph (U.K.)- A “price fixing”  system for alcohol prices has been suggested in the U.K., which is supposed to help reduce binge drinking encouraged by bottom priced alcohol. Economics experts in England suggest that all the policy will likely do will be increase profits for store that sell cheap alcohol. If our work here is any indication though, driving alcohol price up (as much as 100% in some stores) will certainly have an effect on some drinkers.

Health Day- Tax increases in alcohol prices may aid in alleviating alcohol problems. A study was conducted which showed that increasing the alcohol prices will result in significant reductions in many of the undesirable outcomes associated with drinking. So next time you go to buy alcohol and the price is too high just think of all the help you’re providing the community.

Addiction interventions and addiction treatment of teens

Time to act!- Perhaps one of the most important ways to prevent an addiction from happening is to catch it in its early stages and prevent it from ever developing. This website promotes primary prevention of as a means of addiction intervention and urges parents to act as soon as possible if you think your child is using drugs or alcohol.

DBtechno- Children who have regular meals are less likely to drink (read our coverage of teen drinking). This was attributed to parents having better, more consistent, interactions with their children at the dinner table. Kids who did not eat regular meals were twice as likely to drink and use cigarettes. Talk about a great way at starting on an addiction intervention early on in life – a nice relaxing dinner, and maybe some dessert…

ABC News- This article tells of the ill effects that alcohol can have to a child when alcohol is consumed during pregnancy. It tells the story of one family who could not stand their child’s “out of control behavior” likely brought on by FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Read All About Addiction’s coverage of drinking during pregnancy.

Addiction Inbox- A great article using Dock Ellis’ perspective on LSD. Ellis is now speaking to inmates in correctional facilities, telling his story of how he was addicted to drugs and alcohol while playing baseball.

Posted in:  Education Tags: ABC, about addiction, addiction, Alcohol, alcohol prices, alkohol, cocaine, drinking, Drugs, FAS, heroin, intervention, LSD, pregnancy, prescription drugs, prevention, tax, taxes, teen drinking, teens

About Addiction: DUI, Psychedelics, Smoke, and the Brain!

August 23rd, 2010

You know it and love it – here is our weekly post about addiction research, news, and more interesting tidbits from the wonderful world of the internet. I guarantee you’ll know more about addiction, drugs, and the brain, after reading it!

DUI because you think you’re sober? Check your BAC

Science Daily- A study found that people recover their subjective feeling of sobriety before they recover functions important for driving, showing that the perception of intoxication is a bad indicator of ability to drive. A BAC of 0.02 doubles the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash among 16- to 20-year old males and this increases to nearly 52 times when the BAC is between 0.08 percent and 0.10 percent. It seems that portable BAC monitors might be a good idea to reduce DUI accidents.

Psychedelics and High-Tech Pills

Common Dreams- Scientists are giving psychedelics another look as a possible tool in psychotherapy. Many psychedelics like LSD and MDMA have been used in psychological-treatment settings before and the Swiss apparently think we should be giving them another turn. The researchers there focus on the effects of psychedelics on the brain systems involved in depression mainly. Who knows, maybe you’ll be given a little LSD or MDMA pill before beginning a weekly therapy session in the future. Probably not in the U.S. though…

Magic “smart” pill- How wonderful would it be if there was technology that alerted you as to when you are supposed to take a pill? A “smart pill” which would text individuals when they need to take it is being tested in the UK, so it may be a reality in the future! Just think about it, all those people who have to take some sort of ADHD pill won’t forget now that their pill sends signals to their phone – “Don’t forget to take meeeee!!!”

Cigarette Smoke

Science Daily- According to physician-scientists at New York-Presbyterian Hospital exposure to even low-levels of cigarette smoke, including second hand smoke, may put people at risk for future lung disease such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). While research showing that second hand smoke is dangerous isn’t new, this new group showed alterations in the genetic functioning of cells in the airway of those exposed. The researchers do point out that the alterations are less pronounced than in heavy smokers but say that even such low levels of smoke exposure can increase disease risk.

Brain Chemistry and regulation of cocaine intake

NIDA-  A regulatory protein, called MeCP2, that is found in the brain and best known for its role in a rare genetic brain disorder may play a critical role in cocaine addiction by regulating cocaine intake and perhaps in determining vulnerability to addiction. The researchers here found a complement to earlier NIDA research showing that as brain miRNA-212 levels increase, cocaine intake decrease. Apparently, it’s the balance between miRNA-212 and MeCP2 that is important.

Posted in:  Education, Links Tags: about addiction, addiction, addiction research, BAC, Brain, cigarette smoke, cocaine, cocaine intake, pill, psychedelics, second hand smoke, smoke