It would stand to reason that drug smugglers and dealers would not want to sell customers a product that can kill swiftly as living customers are much more profitable. According to a recent Google News piece, however, a form of ultra-potent heroin is being pushed for as little as $10 a bag.
As addiction can be all-consuming for the individual with the problem, health care professionals are consistently on the look out for new treatments that can have an impact. In a recent Associated Press piece, the author examined the potential of a once-a-month alcoholism shot to prevent heroin addicts from relapsing.
Read more about Scientists Explore Overlapping Treatments for Addiction
Teens that require treatment in the emergency department for drug-related injury are sending a signal for a cry for help. None are so urgent, however, as the signal indicated by a teen who arrives in the emergency department who has attempted suicide while using drugs.
Gil Kerlikowske, White House drug czar, is not wrong when he points the finger at Americans as being involved in the drug abuse problem. According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, the United States is a disproportionate global drug abuser.
Read more about White House Strategy for Tackling the Drug Problem: Is It Enough?
While it is easy to assume that everyone has the tendency to become addicted to one substance or another, why is it that some people develop significant problems while others are able to simply sample and be done? One consistency in the reality of psychoactive substances is that they manifest themselves in different people in different ways.
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The son of “Diff’rent Strokes” actress Dana Plato has committed suicide at age 25, almost 11 years to the day after his mother took her own life in May 1999. Tyler Lambert is said to have suffered from drug addiction and depression, and the anniversary of his mother’s dead was always the hardest time for him. Four years ago, Lambert filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his mother’s former fiancé, claiming that he didn’t act quickly enough to prevent her death.
Read more about Actress’s Son Ends Life After Struggling with Addiction, Depression
Two of the most challenging health problems in America today are drug abuse and obesity. The search for ways to unlock the secrets of both types of addiction may have just gotten a boost. Results of new research, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), show that some of the same brain mechanisms that fuel drug addiction in humans also accompany the emergence of compulsive eating behaviors and development of obesity in animals.
About the Study
The study, “Dopamine D2 receptors in addiction-like reward dysfunction and compulsive eating in obese rats,” conducted by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, Florida, was released in the online version of Nature Neuroscience (http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.2519.html) March 28, 2010, and will appear in the May 2010 print issue. When researchers gave rats unlimited access to high-fat food in varying levels, they found that unrestricted availability alone can trigger addiction-like responses in the brain, leading to compulsive eating behaviors and the onset of obesity.
Both obesity and drug addiction, say researchers, have been linked to a dysfunction in the brain’s reward system.
Overconsumption in both cases can trigger a gradual increase in the reward threshold. This results in the requirement of more and more palatable high-fat food or reinforcing drug to satisfy the cravings over time.
Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of NIDA, commenting in a press release on the study (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/niod-cmo032610.php) said, “This research opens the door for us to apply some of the knowledge we have gathered about drug addiction to the study of overeating and obesity.”
The study results appear to support the idea that type 2 dopamine receptors (D2DR) – brain receptors that have been shown to play a key role in addiction – also play a key role in the rats’ heightened response to food. As the rats became obese, levels of D2DR in the brain’s reward circuit decreased. This drop in D2DR, say researchers, is similar to what happens in humans addicted to drugs like heroin or cocaine.
Paul J. Kenny, one of the study’s co-authors and an associate professor at Scripps Jupiter, Florida research facility, points out the potential implications. “It is possible that drugs developed to treat addiction may also benefit people who are habitual overeaters.”
Paul Johnson, co-author and graduate student in the department of molecular therapeutics, has this to say: “Hopefully, this will change the way people think about eating. It demonstrates how just the availability of food can trigger overconsumption and obesity.”
Read more about Drug Abuse and Obesity: What Do They Have in Common?
Four decades after President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs," the White House on Tuesday announced a shift in national drug policy that would treat illegal drug use more as a public health issue and plunge more resources into prevention and treatment.
Pathological gambling, compulsive shopping, binge eating, and other impulse control disorders appear to be more common among individuals taking dopamine agonist medications for Parkinson’s disease, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Read more about Link between Parkinson’s Treatment and Compulsive Behavior