Addiction Treatment Strategies – Part 10

…findings of the 22nd annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS), released by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation earlier this month, echo the reality that substance abuse treatment professionals see every day. The study shows that underage drinking has become more normalized among adolescents. Of those teens who reported alcohol use, 62 percent said they had their first full alcoholic drink by age 15, not including sipping or tasting alcohol. Of those teens who reported alcohol use, 25 percent said they drank a full alcoholic drink for the first time by age 12 or younger. Almost half of teens (45 percent)…

A team of Scripps Research Institute. This finding opens the door to the development of drugs to manage excessive alcohol consumption.
 ”Our focus in this study, like much of our lab’s research, was to examine the role of the brain’s stress system in compulsive alcohol drinking driven by the aversive aspects of alcohol withdrawal,” said Scripps Research Associate Professor Marisa Roberto, Ph.D., senior author of the study.
“A major goal for this study,” added Research Associate Nicholas Gilpin, Ph.D., the paper’s first author, “was to determine the neural circuitry that mediates the transition…

Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository (RUCDR) has received a $10 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to provide DNA extraction, basic genetic testing, and repository services for more than 46,000 saliva samples, in support of national research efforts to determine the genetic and environmental factors that lead to alcoholism.
 
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alcohol abuse and its related problems cost the United States billions of dollars each year in lost productivity; illness; property destruction, violence, and crime; and social welfare…

A new national study shows that from 2005 to 2009 there was a 55 percent increase in emergency department visits for drug related suicide attempts by men aged 21 to 34 — from 19,024 visits in 2005 to 29,407 visits in 2009. In 2009, there were a total of 77,971 emergency department visits for drug-related suicide attempts among males of all ages.
The report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that visits from younger adult males involving certain pharmaceuticals increased substantially.
Among males aged 21 to 34, emergency department visits for suicide attempts involving antidepressants…

Binge or “heavy episodic” drinking is prevalent during adolescence, raising concerns about alcohol’s effects on crucial neuromaturational processes during this developmental period. Heavy alcohol use has been associated with decrements in cognitive functioning in both adult and adolescent populations, particularly on tasks of spatial working memory (SWM). This study examined gender-specific influences of binge drinking on SWM, finding that female teens may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of heavy alcohol use.
 Results will be published in the October 2011 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical &…

Yes, alcoholism is a disease

Via Scoop.it – addiction treatment
We know that drinking too much alcohol is bad for us. It gives us hangovers, makes us feel tired and does little for our appearance – and that is just the morning afterwards.
Via www.addictionts.com
Related articles
How We Get Addicted (addictionts.com)
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“I don’t remember how I got home from the party.” This could be a text from last night to one hard-partying college student from another.
New research from Northwestern Medicine shows that 50 percent of college drinkers report at least one alcohol-induced memory blackout – a period of amnesia – in the past year during a drinking binge. Despite being fully conscious during such blackouts, students could not recall specific events, such as how they got to a bar, party or their own front door.
Published online in Injury Prevention, June 2011, the study found college drinkers who reported alcohol-induced memory…

Deaths related to prescription opioid therapy are under intense scrutiny, prompting those in pain medicine — clinicians, patient advocates, and regulators — to understand the causes behind avoidable mortality in legitimately treated patients. Studies reporting on statistics, causes, and adverse events involving opioid treatment are now available in a special supplement of Pain Medicine, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM).
Opioids are prescribed to treat moderate to severe pain and include extended-release opioid analgesic drugs such as methadone, morphine, and…

A new study has shown harmful prescription patterns of powerful painkillers among a substantial number of Ontario patients who received methadone therapy to treat their opioid addiction.
Methadone, which is a type of long-acting opioid, has proven to be an effective therapy for opioid dependence.
 
According to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), 18% of methadone maintenance therapy patients also received prescriptions for more than a week’s supply of other opioids.
“It is concerning when large quantities of these types of opioids are combined with…