A year ago, a booze-fueled spring break trip was all the news when two Portland State University basketball players got into a drunken brawl in Mexico. That donnybrook drew lots of attention because athletes were involved. But it was otherwise unremarkable: Studies show that, while students don’t necessarily drink more on spring break, those who….
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Dr. Charles S. Lieber, who overturned conventional wisdom by demonstrating that alcohol is a toxin that can damage the liver and that alcoholism is a disease that can be treated, died March 1 at his home in Tenafly, N.J. He was 78 and had been battling stomach cancer. Before his work in the 1970s, researchers….
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Alcoholism, like many addictions, is a disease of reinforcement. When you take drugs or alcohol, you feel better and when you stop drinking, you miss the feeling. By this same mechanism, the people you associate with can start to reinforce your drinking behavior. Even though, for many, alcoholism ends up being a disease of solitude….
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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….
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Not all drug treatment centers are effective at treating all types of addictions. Some people require a special approach to drug treatment and will even attempt multiple drug treatment programs before finally finding one that truly works for them and their addiction. Sometimes, no matter how hard an individual ties, a drug treatment center may….
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