Showing posts with label drug news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drug news. Show all posts

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Random Notes from the College on Problems of Drug Dependence


Opening day addresses at the annual meeting.

(These are notes on research in progress, not findings written in stone).

--NIDA director Nora Volkow talked up buspirone (Buspar) as a treatment for cocaine addiction, and referred to favorable results on buspirone for cocaine self-administration in monkeys in a large clinical trial. Also, different vaccine strategies are in the works, including different pharmacological approaches to blocking specific dopamine transporter molecules.

--Edward Sellers of DL Global Partners, a drug research consulting firm, emphasized the importance of enzyme variations in smoking. Variants of the CYP2A6 enzyme of metabolization allow us to identify “slow metabolizers” who respond well to placebo or nicotine patch therapy, and other smokers who don’t.

--Sherry McKee of the Yale University School of Medicine reminded everyone that cigarette smokers—even very light smoking “chippers”— are far more likely to have concurrent drinking problems than non-smokers. Smoking helps drinkers drink more and longer. To demonstrate such “potentiated reinforcement,” she showed a delightful video of her child eating cookies, then craving a glass of milk, then succumbing to another round of cookie consumption…

--Jack Henningfield of Pinney Associates, and former NIDA research chief, said that the reason the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) became an agency focused on “one molecule” is because Senator Harold Hughes, recovering alcoholic from Iowa, and Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, wanted it that way.

--David Penetar of Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital added more evidence of the link between alcohol and cigarettes, noting that “90 per cent of smokers drink,” and that smokers are three times as likely to be alcoholics than non-smokers. He pointed to research documenting a disturbing “increased desire to drink” when wearing a nicotine patch. With a patch, subjects reported feeling the effects of alcohol sooner and longer.

Photo Credit: http://www.thejournalshop.com/

Sunday, May 22, 2011

An Assortment of Drug-Related Articles


Misc. Stuff Etc.

In this post, I offer up an assortment of links to articles, mostly by me, and other related material, so that I can put checkmarks after a few items on the official Addiction Inbox to-do list, here on the official Addiction Inbox plexiglass clipboard. So let’s see….

* Here’s an article I wrote awhile ago for Brain Blogger, called "Why Do Schizophrenics Smoke Cigarettes?" The comments alone are worth a look. Spoiler: Schizophrenics smoke cigarettes because nicotine helps quell both audio and visual hallucinations.

* One of the very early posts here at Addiction Inbox, called "Marijuana Withdrawal," transformed itself into a self-help support board over time, with lengthy and enlightening comments appended to a short original post about the symptoms of marijuana dependency. The post has accumulated more than 1,000 comments at this writing, and is still going strong. Have a look here.

* The title of the Dutch study, published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, is unambiguous: “Alcohol Portrayal on Television Affects Actual Drinking Behaviour.” But the dirt, as always, is in the details. My article at Adi Jaffe’s All About Addiction site.

* This feature of mine about synthetic marijuana products like “Spice” ran last month at The Fix, where I am now serving as senior contributing editor. 

* I contributed a comment or two to this follow-up piece on synthetic cannabis that ran in the New York Daily News.

* Also at The Fix, that irritating fraud James Frey gets his ass totally kicked by Time Healthland’s Maia Szalavitz, who demands that he apologize to addicts for all the harm he has done their cause in this article. Great stuff. 

* Here’s a hard-hitting excerpt from James Brown’s phenomenal addiction memoir, This River, which redeems the entire genre from the likes of James Frey. Read the harrowing “Instructions on the Use of Heroin.”

* Science of Blogging is a great site that regularly features interviews with, you guessed it, science bloggers. Travis Saunders was kind enough to do a Question and Answer session with me recently.

And here are a dozen recent blog posts by yours truly over at the The Fix:

2C-E, a research hallucinogenic best left to the professionals, may have killed two people in Oklahoma.

Almost 30 states now intend to test welfare recipients for drug use.

From the Hold Steady to the Rolling Stones to Nine Inch Nails: best all-time recovery songs.

Lawmakers argue over how to do the right thing for people who do the wrong thing.

As bodies pile up in Mexico's drug war, murdered children account for over 1,000 deaths.

The internet giant may pony up some serious dough for promoting prescription-pill abuse.

Provocative Penn psychologist wonders what would happen if our health care system treated diabetics like it treats most addicts. Nothing good.

Cigarette trafficking is now so lucrative that organized drug and gun smuggling operations want in on the action.

How does alcohol affect memory? New research suggests that students perform much better on tests when their "memory states" match.

For over 30 years, a charismatic Vietnam vet and mercenary named Gordon Baltimore helped hardcore addicts recover with a controversial regimen at a Thai monastery. A former heroin addict, he died last week at the age of 60

An American "charity" is paying thousands of U.S. drug addicts not to have children. Buoyed by its success, the group has moved on to Britain. Now Denmark may be taking up the trend.

An officially-sanctioned injection site for heroin and cocaine addicts in Vancouver prompts a dramatic fall in death rates. So why is the Canadian government so dead-set against it?

Thank you and good night.

Photo Credit: http://www.thinkstockphotos.com/

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