A new study by researchers at Drexel University’s School of Public Health suggests that abuse of prescription painkillers may be an important gateway to the use of injected drugs such as heroin, among people with a history of using both types of drugs.  The study, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, explores factors surrounding young injection drug users’ initiation into the misuse of opioid drugs. Common factors identified in this group included a family history of drug misuse and receiving prescriptions for opioid drugs in the past. The results support a need for efforts to prevent misuse of prescription...

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...

Principles of Effective Treatment

Drinking alcohol leads to the release of endorphins in areas of the brain that produce feelings of pleasure and reward, according to a study led by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco. The finding marks the first time that endorphin release in the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal cortex in response to alcohol consumption has been directly observed in humans. Endorphins are small proteins with opiate-like effects that are produced naturally in the brain. “This is something that we’ve speculated about for 30 years, based on animal studies, but haven’t...

Giving Medicaid patients with substance abuse problems access to buprenorphine (Subutex, Suboxone) is ultimately less expensive than maintaining them on methadone, the experience in one state showed. Despite more frequent relapses into addiction, buprenorphine patients cost about $1,330 less per year than methadone patients when the drugs were used for maintenance treatment, Robin Clark, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts, and colleagues reported in the August issue of Health Affairs.   “Our paper shows that the cost concerns [that Medicaid systems have about buprenorphine] aren’t so valid if you look at everything...

How can we balance the risk of drug abuse with the suffering caused by untreated back pain? People living with serious back pain have to sort through a lot of mixed messages about opioid — or narcotic — painkillers. On the one hand, you’ve heard stories about the seeming epidemic of addiction to these drugs, like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. All those celebrities checking into rehab for painkiller addiction may give you the impression that the lure of these drugs is irresistible, that we’re all just a few pills away from addiction. But on the other hand, you might have heard that pain is chronically...

Researchers have shed new light on dopamine’s role in the brain’s reward system, which could provide insight into impulse control problems associated with addiction and a number of psychiatric disorders.  A joint study by the University of Michigan and University of Washington found that, contrary to the prevailing conception, differences in individuals’ styles of response to environmental cues can fundamentally influence chemical reward patterns in the brain. Deeper understanding of these differences between individuals may lead to new preventive tools or treatments for compulsive behavior. “We were able to answer...

In the United States today, there are more than two million jail and prison inmates, of whom about 15 percent have histories of heroin dependence. Few inmates receive drug abuse treatment while incarcerated or immediately upon release. Research has shown that this population, once released from incarceration, is at high risk of relapse to heroin use, criminal behavior, HIV infection and of overdose death, resulting in a terrible toll on the individuals, their families and our communities. The World Health Organization supports the international standard that prisoners have the right to access the health services that would be available to...

If you want to know how people become addicted and why they keep using drugs, ask the people who are addicted.  Thirty-one of 75 patients hospitalized for opioid detoxification told University at Buffalo physicians they first got hooked on drugs legitimately prescribed for pain. Another 24 began with a friend’s left-over prescription pills or pilfered from a parent’s medicine cabinet. The remaining 20 patients said they got hooked on street drugs. However, 92 percent of the patients in the study said they eventually bought drugs off the street, primarily heroin, because it is less expensive and more effective than...

A team of Duke University Medical Center and Australian scientists has found that addictive drugs may have hijacked the same nerve cells and connections in the brain that serve a powerful, ancient instinct: the appetite for salt. Their rodent research shows how certain genes are regulated in a part of the brain that controls the equilibrium of salt, water, energy, reproduction and other rhythms – the hypothalamus. The scientists found that the gene patterns activated by stimulating an instinctive behavior, salt appetite, were the same groups of genes regulated by cocaine or opiate (such as heroin) addiction. “We were surprised...