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Helping Others Helps Teens Stay On The Road To Add…

A new study of teens undergoing substance abuse treatment finds helping others helps the adolescent helper by reducing cravings for alcohol and drugs, a major precipitator of relapse. These novel findings stem from the “Helping Others” study led by Maria Pagano, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
 
Results of this large investigation involving 195 substance dependent juvenile offenders reveal that helping others in 12-step programs significantly improves adolescent treatment response. Featured in the November issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, this…

Heavy alcohol consumption linked to lung cancer

Heavy alcohol consumption may be linked to a greater risk of developing lung cancer, while higher BMI and increased consumption of black tea and fruit are associated with lower risk of the deadly disease. In three separate studies presented at CHEST 2011, the 77th annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), heavy alcohol consumption was related to increased risk of lung cancer, while specific ethnic groups, including African American men and Asian women, had slightly higher risks for lung cancer. Conversely, black tea consumption was shown to reduce lung cancer risk in nonsmoking women, while higher BMI and increased…

Number Processing in Children With ADHD and Alcoho…

In children, the brain is in a constant state of flux as it analyzes and evaluates stimuli from the environment. Fetal alcohol exposure and ADHD represent two disorders that can affect children’s ability to learn and process information from a very young age.
 Both ADHD and fetal alcohol exposure are linked to poor academic performance in cognition and attention, so the researchers decided to try to pinpoint the exact brain areas affected by each disorder with the hope that this research could lead to the creation and development of new and improved treatments.
The results will be published in the March 2011 issue of Alcoholism:…

Alcoholic Progression

Question: What do they mean when after being sober for years, if you start drinking again, your drinking will take off as though you haven’t been dry at all? In fact some say that it is worse, like if you were drinking all those dry years too. I am not planning to do this but a couple of members in my AA group described this, and I just wanted to check it out. I also wonder if you could explain why this happens?
Answer: Your friends represent the profound wisdom of AA. Over the years and with thousands and thousand of years in recovery, it has been observed that when the occasional person who, after many years of abstinence from alcohol,…

Parents Key In Keeping Kids Off Of Alcohol

Parents Key In Keeping Kids Off Of Alcohol

When the Economy Is Down, Alcohol Consumption Goes…

Previous studies have found that health outcomes improve during an economic downturn. Job loss means less money available for potentially unhealthy behaviors such as excessive drinking, according to existing literature on employment and alcohol consumption. A new study by health economist Michael T. French from the University of Miami and his collaborators has concluded just the opposite–heavy drinking and alcohol abuse/dependence significantly increase as macroeconomic conditions deteriorate.
 
French and his team found that binge drinking increased with a rise in the state-level unemployment rate. Driving while intoxicated and…

People born after World War II…

Drinking can be influenced by both personal and societal factors, including economic fluctuations, political instability, and social norms. These factors, in turn, can vary among countries and time periods, leading to different “drinking cultures.” A review of 31 peer-reviewed and published studies looked at birth-cohort and gender differences in alcohol consumption, alcohol disorders, and mortality. Analysis showed that people born after World War II are more likely to binge drink and develop alcohol use disorders (AUDs), and that the gender gap in alcohol problems is narrowing in many countries.
Findings will be published in…

Comorbidity: What is it?

Comorbidity is a topic that our stakeholders––patients, family members, health care professionals, and others––frequently ask about. It is also a topic about which we have insufficient information, and so it remains a research priority for NIDA. This Research Report provides information on the state of the science in this area. And although a variety of diseases commonly co-occur with drug abuse and addiction (e.g. HIV, hepatitis C, cancer, cardiovascular disease), this report focuses only on the comorbidity of drug use disorders and other mental illnesses.*
To help explain this comorbidity, we need to first recognize that drug…

Booze a Bad Mix With Poor Impulse Control

In a long-running, prospective cohort study among people seeking help for alcohol-related problems, those with poor impulse control had an increased risk of dying, according to Daniel Blonigen, PhD, and colleagues at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif.
The effect was independent of the risk associated with alcohol use disorders, Blonigen and colleagues reported online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
Both impulsivity and alcohol use disorders are known to increase the risk of premature death, the researchers noted, and alcohol use increases impulsive behavior. But there has been no research on…

Emerging Drug of Abuse: OXI

It’s cheaper, perhaps more powerful and definitely more dangerous than even crack cocaine. The new illicit drug is “oxi,” known, The Rio Times of Brazil notes, “as the drug of death” because those hooked on it often die within a year. But what it amounts to before death is an attempt by users to turn themselves into insensible zombies.
One Brazilian user of the drug described the experience to Al Jazeera reporter Gabriel Elizondo. Oxi, the user said, “is to make my mind go to sleep.”
Derived from cocaine, oxi (short for oxidado or “rust”) may also contain kerosene or gasoline as well as acetone, battery acid or…