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Tag: death

  • About Addiction: School, prescriptions, heroin and morality

    It’s Monday and you get another great summary of news and research about addiction that have been making noise this week. If you care about addiction and about recovery, you know you want to stay abreast of what’s important and A3 wants to give you just that! So read on.. Recovery High: A new kind…

  • U.S. Drug overdose deaths are increasing

    The second leading cause of accidental death in the US is drug overdose (JAMA 2007). Prescription painkiller overdose deaths (opioid analgesics like OxyContin, Vicodin and methadone) account for nearly half of the 36,450 total fatal overdoses with 15,000 deaths that have claimed a number of celebrity lives including famous actor Heath Ledger (CDC 2011). With…

  • Saving lives made easy – Treating opiate overdose with intranasal naloxone

    Contributing co-author: Andrew Chen Imagine that you and your friend have been using heroin (or another opiate). A few hours go by and you notice your friend is progressively becoming more and more unresponsive. You check on him and find that his breathing is shallow, his skin is cold, and his pupils are constricted. You…

  • Amy Winehouse dead at 27 – Drug/alcohol overdose?

    Amy Winehouse, the soulful singer with the amazing voice and the troubled drug and alcohol use history is dead at 27, according to London Police. Sadly, Amy Winehouse’s celebrity has for the past few years been tied more to her drug and alcohol use than to her music. No one has reported on whether her…

  • Body image and medicalization: Socially relevant behavioral “addictions” beyond drug use

    We know that addiction can go beyond drug use, but are we becoming addicted to making our bodies perfect? I put “addiction” in parentheses here because I think it’s important to distinguish substance-related addictions from behavioral ones. There’s no doubt that people’s behavior can become compulsive in the same way addicts become compulsive about using,…

  • Alcoholism , Sniffing Bath Salts, and Prescription Medication Abuse

    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 …

  • Tobacco smoking alone isn’t enough: More than smoking important in lung cancer death

    Christopher Russell and Adi Jaffe The tobacco epidemic already kills 5.4 million people a year from lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. By 2030, the death toll will exceed eight million a year. Unless urgent action is taken tobacco could kill one billion people during this century. (The World Health Organization Report on the…

  • Black tar heroin – Pure Death

    Back in the 70s, heroin was mostly filler, and the good stuff was 5% pure or so. Nowadays a new, more potent, version of the stuff is killing people all around the country with widely varying purities as high as 90%. What makes black tar dangerous When heroin was weak, shooting it was the best…

  • 80s style is back, cocaine use included!

    Everyone knows that trends come back around, and with the resurgent popularity of gigantic sunglasses, eye-bleeding neon, electronic music and metallic spandex (or so we at A3 are told), it seems that the 1980’s have firmly replanted their flag in the public consciousness, down to a sequel to that seminal testament to 80’s excess, Wall…

  • Brittany Murphy dead at 32 – Anemia, pneumonia, and yes, drugs…

    Toxicology update Well, it seems the toxicology reports are in and Brittany’s death was, at least partially, caused by her taking of multiple prescription drugs. Still, it seems that she was trying to medicate a host of conditions brought on by her underlying anemia and pneumonia. It’s sad to think that this death could have…