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Author: igntd

  • Michael Jackson’s death – A sign of prescription abuse trouble

    Rumors are floating around regarding Michael Jackson’s use of prescription sedatives and its possible role in his death. Propofol (or Diprivan) is a non-barbiturate sedative used for anesthesia induction in surgeries. The fact that Michael had this drug at all is perplexing as its use is carefully monitored and highly dangerous. Along with his Diprivan…

  • Clubs, drugs, and dancing – Crystal meth, and club drug use

    Anyone involved with the dance/rave/club culture knows that drugs often go hand in hand with music and dancing. Club drugs, as well as alcohol and drug abuse, are often rampant in the social groups full of excited club goers. Previous academic studies supported this notion but could not distinguish if the drug use took place…

  • Addiction brain effects : Opiate addiction – Heroin, oxycontin and more

    Okay, we’ve talked about crystal meth and cocaine and how they affect the brain during drug use. As I mentioned, both cocaine and meth interfere with the way the brain stores and cleans up important neurotransmitters, including, most importantly, Dopamine and Norepinephrine. The class of drugs known as opiates, which includes morphine, heroin, codeine, and…

  • More CPDD Addiction research: Addiction, exercise, recovery!

    Okay, this is probably the last addiction research update I will give focusing on the Reno conference. The rest of the stuff I learned will be incorporated into future posts. I’ve written before about the relationship between exercise and recovery (see here) and I will surely write more since for me, it was a big…

  • Links of the week

    Guess what? It’s that time again. Here are some posts by other writers that offer good help for addicts. I know I’ve been slacking on these, but I’ve simply had too many of my own cents to add. It happens often. Trudging the gentle path: Being an atheist in recovery Spiritual River: A new recovery…

  • The brain addiction connection : Crystal meth, and our friend dopamine

    We’ve talked about the general way in which neurons in the brain communicate with one another and then reviewed the ways in which cocaine messes some of the basic processes that the brain depends on. It’s time to move on to another drug, and since the brain-addiction connection is similar for meth and cocaine, it…

  • More drug addiction research from CPDD: Teenage smoking, childhood trauma, and marijuana withdrawal

    Today, I’ll give a short summary of a few interesting talks I saw at the conference: Teenage smoking – Children of mothers who used drugs during pregnancy had abnormal stress hormone levels. When assessed over time, their abnormal stress response was associated with an earlier onset (age of first use) of cigarettes smoking and an…

  • Latest drug addiction research from CPDD: Drug use patterns among adults

    I’m currently attending the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) in Reno, NV. Since there’s so much drug addiction research being presented here, I figured I would post a daily update with some of the things I found most interesting. There’s absolutely no way for me to see all the…

  • Proposition 36 – California’s Addiction Treatment Under Attack!!!

    If you’re not from CA, you may not know about proposition 36. It’s a law, passed by voters in 2000, that mandates treatment, not incarceration, for people arrested on drug charges. Defendants can chose whether to accept it or not if they’re eligible, and before I get angry responses from my “red-state” readers, only non-violent,…

  • The brain-addiction connection: Cocaine, dopamine, and more

    Okay, so we’ve covered how the brain’s neurons communicate with one another normally; now let’s learn about how drugs mess things up to produce their specific effects. Since the brain-addiction relationship is different for different drugs, we’ll do this one by one, starting with cocaine: Cocaine One of the most commonly abused drugs, cocaine interrupts…