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Treatment & Detox Guide
The new smoking ban battleground: detox clinics
Derek Laughlin, a 40-year-old former crack addict from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, found the cravings unbearable. Hours into treatment last year at a Surrey, B.C., short-term detox centre, on a staff-supervised walk around the block, he fell behind the group to search the pavement for discarded cigarette butts. Overcoming his crack habit was tough, but simultaneously….
Legal drugs spark a boom in pill popping
MY “LEGAL ecstasy party pills” arrive in small, white medicine containers, complete with recommended dosage and a safety seal. “Herbal supplements,” reads the package, but these drugs promise far more – guaranteeing to “add extra kick to your partying” by meddling with the body and mind. It’s a drug high, but one that “will not….
Finally, a little honesty about America’s inept war on drugs
Finally, after America has frittered away billions of taxpayer dollars arming Latin American death squads, airdropping toxic herbicide on equatorial farmland, and incarcerating more of its own citizens on nonviolent drug charges than any other industrialized nation, two political leaders last week tried to begin taming the most wildly out of control beast in the….
Do I Have an Alcohol Use Disorder
People who drink hazardous amounts of alcohol are at risk of becoming physically dependent, psychologically overwhelmed and essentially paralyzed by alcohol use disorder. The World Health Organization has developed a method of assessment and screening that helps to identify alcohol use disorder in heavy drinkers. This test, known widely as AUDIT or the Alcohol Use….
Feds fail to use effective drug treatment plans in prison
Despite 20 years of scientific evidence showing that drug treatment programs work, the feds fail to offer enough of them to prisoners, according to a new study. Currently 7.1 million adults – over 2 percent of the population — in the U.S. are locked up or on probation; about half of them suffer from some….