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Category: Cocaine

  • Reduce HIV Transmission – Shooting up, clean needles, and addiction treatment

    Co-authored by: Jamie Felzer We’ve talked often on this  site about many of the negative things that often come along with heavy drug use. We’ve not yet talked about any of the factors that make injection drug use even worse. Users inject cocaine, crystal meth, and heroin, or any combination of these. Shooting up and…

  • Proteins and cocaine: Addiction is a disease, not a question of morality.

    While there are some people who still argue about whether drug addiction is a disease or a condition that results from the moral failing of an individual, most of the scientific community has long agreed that there are at least some influences on it that are far beyond a person’s control. I’ve mentioned the genetic…

  • California prison problems: Drug use policy gone awry

    Originally posted on Takepart: I’ve been aware of the unjust nature of our prison system for a while, but a recent NPR story I heard in the car brought the issue front and center again. This piece is a combination summary and extension of that story. Did you know that the US makes up 5%…

  • Give me SUGAR!!!! And a little food addiction on the side…

    So while we’re sitting here talking about drug addiction, quite a bit of research in the last few years has looked into food, and specifically high-sugar-content foods, as a possibly addictive substance (food addiction). The focus started when the new head of NIDA (The National Institute on Drug Abuse), Dr. Nora Volkow, who’s been doing…

  • Healthcare savings and alcohol and drug abuse treatment: Saving lives and money

    A recent paper put out by an initiative called Closing the Addiction Treatment Gap (CATG) talks about some of the cost savings benefits that go along with alcohol and drug abuse treatment. The numbers refer to current treatment methods, success rates, etc., so the savings should only go up as we become more successful and…

  • My Friend the sex addict part 2 – The ups and downs of sexaholics

    As you may recall from an earlier post, a friend of mine, Brian, has been struggling to get some control over his sex addiction. I had referred him to a number of clinics that treat sex-addiction specifically, and to Sex Addicts Anonymous (sometimes known as sexaholics anonymous) as a starting point. I’m not at all…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…