New approaches for treating and preventing drug addiction range from low-tech – regular exercise – to high-tech such as experimental vaccines aimed at helping to prevent former drug users from relapsing. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is just as excited about both options. Of the two, though, exercise will probably….
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Canada’s Health Minister urgently needs an education in harm reduction. Announcing his intention to shut down Insite, the supervised injection facility serving drug addicts in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Tony Clement told the House of Commons health committee that “supervised injection is not medicine; it does not heal the person addicted to drugs.” Mr. Clement got….
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I have found really interesting article in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography from 1991. The author, J. David Brown, is Assistant professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University who had struggled for 13 years with substance abuse problems, then he went to rehab and after then, he started to be a counselor himself. He uses the….
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It’s the kind of tongue-in-cheek concept that might have percolated out of the subversive imagination of R. Crumb, underground cartoon chronicler of the 1960s. Grandma and Grandpa are passing the time in their rockers—and passing a joint back and forth as they recall their youthful marijuana-smoking days in Haight-Ashbury. In fact, according to three investigators….
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While Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) has existed for more than 70 years, and is the most commonly sought source of help for alcohol-related problems in the United States, there is little “hard scientific evidence” showing that AA and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) can improve substance-use outcomes. This study examined how helpful AA and NA may be for….
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Senate Health Committee expected to consider bill that would cause facilities to prove they meet certain licensing requirements. A bill that would create more hurdles for drug and alcohol programs seeking licenses from the state is making its way through the California State Assembly. Assembly Bill 2903 would make recovery homes offer proof to the….
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A new documentary looks at how people of different religions deal with the faith-based elements of Alcoholics Anonymous. Having been born in Akron, OH, the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, filmmaker Josh Gippin was well acquainted with the organization. But it was only more recently, as he jumped into a documentary about AA entitled God As….
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A new study conducted on mice has shown that a seizure drug, called gabapentin, could act as a potential therapy for alcoholism by reversing cellular effects. In the study, alcohol-dependent rodents receiving gabapentin drank less alcohol, and this led the scientists to say that gabapentin normalizes the action of certain brain cells altered by chronic….
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Afghanistan supplies virtually all of the world’s illegal opium. Last year, the country’s drug trade was a $4-billion business, half of which alone was produced in the south where the fighting against the Taliban insurgency is the fiercest. Getting Afghanistan to rid itself of poppy is a pillar of U.S. policy there, because the Taliban….
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Broward agency disputes it’s overstaffed and calls for review by consultants Broward County taxpayers could be spending too much to run a recovery center for drug addicts. A scathing report by county auditors last week charged that treatment at the Broward Addiction Recovery Center is about twice as costly as the national average. Too few….
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