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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…
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More addiction cures: Early promise for Risperidone in crystal meth addiction
A recent open label study found some support for the effectiveness of a Risperidone injection, given once every 2 weeks, in reducing crystal meth (speed) use. The 22 patients who participated reduced their weekly crystal meth use from an average of 4 times per week to only 1 time per week. The difference between those…
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Is opiate pain medication safe for addicts? Part II
In our previous article on pain medication and addicts we looked at how common opiate prescriptions are among people who are, or ever have been, identified as having substance abuse issues. We saw that although clinicians are often aware of the problem of possible prescription addiction developing, the issue of managing pain often results in…
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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…
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Correlation, causation, and association – What does it all mean???
A comment posted by a reader on a post reprimanded me for suggesting that marijuana caused relationships to go bad. In this instance the reader was mistaken, as I had specifically used the word “associated”, but the comment made me think that maybe I should explain the differences between correlation, causation, and association. I’m a…
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Opioid prescription overdose and abuse – Staying safe while reducing pain
A new article just published in JAMA (see here) reports a strong relationship between high-dose opiate prescribing and accidental overdose deaths. The authors focused on a sample of Veterans and found that those prescribed more than 50mg of morphine per day, or the equivalent of other opiate drugs, we much more likely to die of…
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A new candidate for ADHD medication: Amantadine and the rise of non-stimulants
It is well known that ADHD diagnoses and substance abuse problems are closely associated. It is estimated that substance abuse problems including dependence are up to twice as common among individuals with ADHD, which is not surprising given the impulsivity factor involved in ADHD. The problem is that until recently, most medications for ADHD have belonged…
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The Myth Of “Loss of Control” As A Scientific Truth Of Addiction
All About Addiction aims to be a place where an open conversation about issues relevant to addiction can be discussed. To that end, the following is a piece from Christopher Russell that challenges the notion that people in some way lose control over their behavior suggesting instead that their seemingly compulsive behavior is actually volitional.…