What is This Thing Called Neuroplasticity?
And how does it impact addiction and recovery?Bielefeld, Germany—The first in an irregular series of posts about a recent conference, Neuroplasticity in Substance Addiction and Recovery: From Genes to Culture and Back Again. The conference, held at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University, drew neuroscientists, historians, psychologists, philosophers, and even a freelance science journalist or two, coming in from Germany, the U.S., The Netherlands, the UK, Finland, France, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere. The organizing idea was to focus on how changes in the brain impact addiction and reco...
Source: Addiction Inbox - January 16, 2014 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Who Smokes Dope, And How Much?
Marijuana stats skew perceptions of use.Most statistical surveys of marijuana focus on a single quantitative measurement: How many people are using? But there’s a problem: More marijuana use does not necessarily translate into more marijuana users. And that’s because a clear majority of the consumption, and black market dollars, come from the heaviest smokers. Drug policy researchers at the RAND corporation decided that frequency of use and amount of consumption were valuable parameters gone missing in most policy discussions. So they put the focus not just on use, but also on “use-days,” and pulled a number of bur...
Source: Addiction Inbox - December 27, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Holiday Decorating Abuse
America’s tragic seasonal illness.These victims spend the holiday season awash in replacement bulbs and outdoor extension cords, the sturdy cords in orange or blue, as they monitor their surroundings with pathological hypervigilance. A forlorn, out-of-control lightscape where a festival of moderate holiday dazzle used to reign. Oh, the humanity.Oh, sure, the perpetrators can be cited for various misdemeanors, but rarely are the over-displays removed by the appropriate authorities. And rarely can the disordered decoraters stay sober for, say, more than a year at a time….In the end, sometimes extreme and difficult mea...
Source: Addiction Inbox - December 22, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
What Mark Kleiman Wants You To Know About Drugs
The public policy guru guiding state legalization efforts.Mark A. R. Kleiman is the Professor of Public Policy at UCLA, editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, author of many books, and generally regarded as one of the nation’s premier voices on drug policy and criminal justice issues. Mr. Kleiman provides advice to local, state, and national governments on crime control and drug policy. When the state of Washington needed an adviser on the many policy questions they left unanswered with the passage of I-502, which legalized marijuana in that state, they turned to Kleiman. In the past two years, Kleiman has co-aut...
Source: Addiction Inbox - December 18, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Hazelden Offers Companion to the “Big Book”
New guide attempts a modest AA update.The founders of AA published their book, Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book) back in 1939. The world has changed a great deal since then, so it’s not surprising that there have been periodic calls for an update. Barring an official revision, which is unlikely, Hazelden, the Minnesota treatment organization, has published an updated companion volume to the Big Book. (Narcotics Anonymous published their version of the basic text in 1962). “The core principles and practices offered in these basic texts hold strong today,” says Hazelden, “but addiction science and societal norms ha...
Source: Addiction Inbox - December 8, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Addiction in the Spotlight at Neuroscience 2013
Testing treatments for nicotine, heroin, and gambling addiction.Several addiction studies were among the highlights at last month’s annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in San Diego. Studies released at the gathering including therapies for nicotine and heroin addiction, as well as some notions about the nature of gambling addiction. And now, as they say, for the news: — Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), the controversial technique being tested for everything from depression to dementia, may help some smokers quit or cut down, according to research coming in from Ben Gurion University in Israel....
Source: Addiction Inbox - December 2, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Built-In Advantages Give Big Tobacco an Edge in E-Cigs
The Big Three are now in it to win it. If there was ever any doubt that major tobacco companies have designs on the emerging electronic cigarette market, a recent roundup in the Wall Street Journal makes the case with ease, something that eager acolytes of e-cigs are anxious to avoid. No doubt about it, Big Tobacco wants in. Results from intensive test marketing in Colorado have, like a political primary, provided an early indication of where the popularity lies. Reynolds American, the nation’s 2nd largest tobacco company (Camel), led the, uh, pack with its offering, the Vuse e-cigarette, introduced in July. Vuse r...
Source: Addiction Inbox - November 24, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Author’s Debut is a Tough, Lyrical Addiction Memoir
"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going." –Prof. Irwin CoreyI’ve never made a secret of the fact that I don’t really like addiction memoirs—with notable literary exceptions, from Thomas de Quincey to William S. Burroughs, including worthy modern efforts from James Brown, Jerry Stahl, Sacha Z. Scoblic, and others. Writing well about addiction is a rare gift, and newcomer Jessica Hendry Nelson, in If Only You People Could Follow Directions: A Memoir, comes at the problem elliptically, in some cases deliberately pruned of strong emotion. This works in her favor, as she eschews over-the-...
Source: Addiction Inbox - November 14, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Grab Bag of Addiction Links
Recent reading from around the net.
Can Medical Marijuana and Recreational Marijuana Coexist?
“The Washington State Liquor Control Board released recommendations for what to do with the state's medical marijuana system now that recreational marijuana is legal.” [Atlantic Cities]
Premature claims of a cannabis addiction "cure"
“Have scientists found a ‘cure’ for marijuana addiction? New treatment blocks the kick that users get from the drug,” reports the Mail Online. Based on the evidence presented in the study, which involved animals, the answer to the Mail’s question is 'not yet'. [NHS Ch...
Source: Addiction Inbox - November 6, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Kratom: Mitragynine For Beginners
An organic alternative to methadone?
A disclaimer: Everything I know about kratom, I learned on the Internet and in science journals. I have no real world experience with this opiate-like plant drug, haven’t used it, don’t know very many people who have. Although it comes from a tree indigenous to Thailand and Southeast Asia, and has presumably been around forever, a recent journal article referred to kratom as “an emerging botanical agent with stimulant, analgesic and opioid-like effects.” Which makes it sound like a combination of heroin, amphetamine, and strong weed. In reality, however, it is evidently a fa...
Source: Addiction Inbox - October 25, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Spiced: Synthetic Cannabis Keeps Getting Stronger
Case reports of seizures in Germany from 2008 to 2011.
I wish I could stop writing blog posts about Spice, as the family of synthetic cannabinoids has become known. I wish young people would stop taking these drugs, and stick to genuine marijuana, which is far safer. I wish that politicians and proponents of the Drug War would lean in a bit and help, by knocking off the testing for marijuana in most circumstances, so the difficulty of detecting Spice products isn’t a significant factor in their favor. I wish synthetic cannabinoids weren’t research chemicals, untested for safety in humans, so that I could avoid hav...
Source: Addiction Inbox - October 7, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
State Marijuana Legalization: The Opposing Voices
Repeating Our Alcohol Mistakes?
A recent article in the always insightful Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Weekly, edited by Alison Knopf, concerns itself with the voices speaking out against Attorney General Holder’s announcement that federal authorities would not interfere with state efforts to legalize marijuana. It’s no secret that we here at Addiction Inbox have been longtime advocates for decriminalization along Dutch lines. So it’s high time we heard from some prominent dissenters on this issue.
Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., director of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) and former White House advisor on mariju...
Source: Addiction Inbox - October 2, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Dr. David Nutt on Alcohol
Rebutting industry myths.
A couple of years ago, the European Alcohol Policy Alliance, known as EuroCare, put together a brochure addressing the common messages the liquor industry attempts to drive home through its heavy spending on advertising. The messages are not just designed to sell product, but also to influence alcohol policy at the political level. According to EuroCare, the “industry”—the alcohol and tobacco companies—“has traditionally worked closely together, sharing information and concerns about regulation. They have used similar arguments to defend their products in order to prevent or delay re...
Source: Addiction Inbox - September 25, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Do Addicts Benefit From Chronic Care Management?
Controversial JAMA study questions orthodox addiction treatment.
What is the best way to treat addiction? The conventional wisdom has been to treat it with chronic care management (CCM), the same approach used for various medical and mental illnesses. But a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) purports to demonstrate that “persons with alcohol and other drug dependence who received chronic care management (CCM)” were no more likely to become abstinent that those who received nothing beyond a timely appointment with a primary care physician, and a list of addiction treatment resource...
Source: Addiction Inbox - September 22, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
Researchers Link Alcoholism and Binge Eating Behavior
Addiction and the role of genetic overlap.
More evidence has arrived, courtesy of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, demonstrating a genetic link between alcoholism and binge eating disorders.
In clinical practice, it is no secret that certain binge eaters and people with bulimia also show high rates of alcoholism. Various reasons have been suggested, but one of the obvious ones is that people prone to alcoholism are also genetically susceptible to certain kinds of eating disorders. A common set of genetic factors may convey these intertwined vulnerabilities to a subset of the population.
In ...
Source: Addiction Inbox - September 15, 2013 Category: Addiction Authors: Dirk Hanson Source Type: blogs
