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Category: Drugs

  • Managing Opiate Addiction During Pregnancy

    By Lisa Simpson According to figures from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 5% of pregnant women in the US use illicit drugs, which rises to just over 20% in the under 18 age group. While heroin is used by only around 0.1% of women during pregnancy, a further 1% admit to using opiate…

  • 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…

  • Quitting smoking without help is hard: Effects of motivation and other personality factors

    Quitting smoking without help is hard: Effects of motivation and other personality factors

    Quitting smoking is hard, but that suggestion probably isn’t terribly exciting all on its own since most of our readers probably knew it already. Still, while we’ve talked about quitting smoking using nicotine replacement and medication, we haven’t really touched the subject of all those people out there who just decide to give quitting smoking…

  • Teens and drugs: Drug use statistics and treatment that works

    Here are some drug use statistics: Over 80% of teens engage in some form of deviant behavior (1). Over 50% of high-school seniors admit to having used drugs (2). Only 10%-15% of the population develop drug addiction problems related to their drug use (1). The question is: If the majority of teens experiment with drug…

  • Bath Salts – Pressing the Issue

    Q &A – Dr. Adi Jaffe PhD Interviewed By Tony O’Neil of The Fix “A man was attacked on the side of the highway, authorities find the attacker eating a the victims face, and only after multiple bullet wounds is the attacker stopped.” This Zombie-like behavior is common in Hollywood scary movies, but as of late…

  • DARE – Drug Abuse Prevention that doesn’t work

    DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is the largest school-based drug abuse prevention program in the United States. 80% of school districts across the country teach the DARE curriculum, reaching an estimated 26 million children (1). Every year, over $1 billion goes into keeping the program running. A billion dollars may be a small price to…

  • Is opiate pain medication safe for addicts? Part I

    A recent user question on VYou (see my response here) addressed the issue of prescribing addicts with opioid pain medication. Since prescription medication abuse and addiction is on the rise and getting more and more attention in the media every year, the question of whether addicts in recovery, or people who have dealt with substance…

  • Forgetting astrocytes – marijuana, memory, and the brain

    My favorite thing about science are those discoveries that remind us we simply don’t know everything. A recent article by a group of researchers from Canada, China, and France (see original research article in the journal Cell here and a nice summary here) summarizes findings that reveal some surprises about the ways marijuana use affects…

  • 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…

  • Heavy alcohol users Vs. Addicts – Stress response

    I can’t even count how many times I’ve talked about the difference between alcohol or drug users and alcoholics or addicts (see here, here, and here for some examples and keep reading). The quick summary: Many people use drugs and many abuse them at times, a small percentage meet criteria for addiction at some point…