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It’s challenging for some to understand why addiction affects one individual and not the next. In fact, even doctors and treatment professionals are sometimes at a loss of words when it comes to explaining the science behind addiction and what it is that makes some people become addicted to drugs or alcohol while others steer clear of the problem. Scientific advances have helped doctors, treatment professionals and others to better understand the science behind addiction and continued research embarks on the consistent journey to discover more about what it is that causes addiction and addictive behaviors.
People of all ages suffer the harmful consequences of drug abuse and addiction.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA, estimates that the total cost of addiction to drugs, alcohol, nicotine and illegal substances is upwards of half a trillion dollars each year in America alone. This includes the impact that drug abuse and addiction has on the economy, the criminal implications that arise from addiction, the medical needs that result and the overall social impact of addiction. More than half a million people die as a result of addiction related causes each year in the United States.
There are a number of ways that science has helped to provide solutions for those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Scientists study the ways that drugs, alcohol and other substances affect the brain and how these chances impact human behavior. The information that is gained helps in making better judgment calls when it comes to addiction treatment and also when it comes to finding new methods of helping people to effectively recover.
Addiction is a chronic disease that is characterized by changes in the brain which result in a compulsive desire to use a drug. Through science, it has been determined that an individual’s risk of becoming addicted can be influenced by a number of factors including both genetics and environmental influence. Addiction science focuses on taking a closer look at how all of these factors, everything from biology to the environment to family, influence people to used drugs or alcohol and to potentially become addicted.
Problem drinking comes in a range of severity and demographic subtypes but is quite common and substantially undertreated, according to several recent studies. There are two main disorders: alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence. The former is less severe and is marked by drinking that leads to at least one of four problems: physically risky behavior….
A drink is always welcome, but just how much alcohol can the body handle in a lifetime? Thirty-five-year- old Anusha Sangwan would go out five nights a week and end up drinking anywhere between 2-3 cocktails per night. “We’d party a lot in college and having two drinks every night didn’t seem like a lot….
A Seminar released on June 13, 2008 in The Lancet discusses nicotine addiction, and the potential for reducing its disease burden and death toll by improving public knowledge and using treatments individual to patients. This includes the potential creation of an antinicotine vaccine. Nicotine is a stimulant classically found in tobacco, and its chronic addiction….
Twin research projects have offered both present and future hope to people suffering from alcohol addiction. US researchers say that epilepsy drug topiramate boosts general health as well as cutting the craving for drink. A UK specialist said the potential side-effects of topiramate still merited caution. A separate project showed that a single injection of….
Miller Jordan Jr. never gave up on his only son. The Clarke Central High School assistant principal tried for years to get treatment for Miller Jordan III’s mental illness. But the younger Jordan stabbed his father and grandfather to death Dec. 30 – hours after doctors sent Jordan home from a hospital where he told….
Call it the chicken-and-egg debate of the addiction world: Cocaine addicts are known for being frenetic, but which came first, the behavior or the habit? New research indicates that, at least in rats, it’s the behavior that begets addiction. What’s more, the study has pinpointed the character trait–impulsiveness–that is responsible for developing true drug dependence…..
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….
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….
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….
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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