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Treating alcohol withdrawal with benzodiazepines – Safe if mindful
Contributing co-author: Andrew Chen Alcohol withdrawal can be extremely unpleasant (see here for an overview). Symptoms vary from person to person, but most people will experience some negative symptoms of alcohol withdrawal if they try to stop drinking after long term use. Mild to moderate symptoms include headache, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, rapid heart rate, abnormal…
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Rubber-band addiction recovery – No shame
There’s a specific issue that keeps coming up with nearly every addiction client I work with who is in early recovery. Regardless of whether they’re trying to stop unhealthy alcohol or drug use, sex or gambling behavior, or anything else, this issue keeps returning. It doesn’t even seem to matter if this is their first…
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About Addiction: Alcohol, Legalization, Internet-Addiction, the Drug war, and Teen Drug Use
a couple weeks away, A3 Link posts are back with a brand-new set of addiction article straight off the press! With election season gearing up we have some news regarding new laws on the ballot for legalization in some states, as well as internet-addiciton being deemed an official diagnosis in the new DSM, and everything…
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Adderall use and college students
All About Addiction has profiled stories of college addiction in the past, but most have centered on illegal drugs and the rampant problem of alcohol abuse. Education blogger Valerie Harris joins the community today to talk about a very disturbing new trend: the rise of “study aid” dependencies, usually in the form of prescription ADHD…
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About Addiction: food, treatment, babies and teens
Our weekly About Addiction summaries are back! Make sure to tune in for the latest in research and news coverage of the drug abuse and drug addiction landscape. This time we’re talking about the food and drug addiction connection, drug using baby boomers, accidents, addicted babies, and drug using teens during summer breaks. If you…
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Is abstinence the only option? Moderate alcohol drinking is possible and there’s help
I can’t even think of how many times I’ve heard the notion that complete, total, abstinence should be the only goal for all people who abuse drug or alcohol. This idea is so pervasive that most addiction treatment providers actually expel clients for relapsing, a notion that makes no sense to me especially if you…
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About Addiction: Synthetic drugs, binge drinking, and recovery
You didn’t think we’d let you go a whole week without giving you another of our amazing updates about addiction news and research from around the globe did you? I’m sure you didn’t, and you were right! Here we are again with some good old discussions of marijuana, alcohol binge drinking, and other issues relevant…
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Internet addiction – Epidemic or fad?
By Adi Jaffe, Ph.D., and Yalda Uhls, MA, MBA 1 in 3 people consider the Internet to be as important as air, water, food and shelter. Given how intensely people feel about this technology, is it any wonder that some psychologists are convinced that Internet addiction is a real pathology? True, claiming that people are…
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Loss, but not absence, of control – How choice and addiction are related
In a recent post the notion that “loss of control” is an addiction myth was raised by our contributing 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…