Download Free The Enigma Of Drug Addiction Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Enigma Of Drug Addiction and write the review.

Substance use disorder is a legitimate medical disorder with its locus in the pleasure centers of the brain. People who have addictions frequently also have medical and psychiatric comorbidities that complicate their addictions. With perseverance, all of these challenging disorders can be prevented and treated. Prevention can be classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary. The sine qua non of treatment and prevention is the biopsychosocial model. Classification is crucial in science. As an example, the DSM-5 publication has been an important scientific achievement. In it, Substance- Related and Addictive Disorders can be diagnosed using the four Cs: craving, control (loss of), compulsion, and use despite negative consequences. Thanks to pharmacogenetics and epigenetics in the future, the high risk for different addictions can be clarified. Tragic cases of celebrities can be changed, and their triumphs celebrated instead of their deaths mourned from substance use disorders. Examples of tragic cases in the past are Ernest Hemingway, whose family also suffered five suicides (including Hemingway himself), and Eugene ONeill with three suicides in his family. On the other hand, Bob and Bill W., Betty Ford, and Robert Downey Jr. and Drew Barrymore all succeeded in their fights against addiction. As far as I know, Hemingway and ONeil were never told they had an alcohol use disorder and were never referred to AA. Although it is speculation, if both authors and their families were treated with lithium (used for mania first in Australia in 1949 and approved for the treatment of mood disorders in the United States in 1972) or, in the future, ketamine, their suicides could have been prevented. Bob Smith and Bill Watson, who experienced a spiritual transformation experience, were able to abstain from alcohol for the rest of their lives. Evidence-based studies can be used along with FDA-approved addiction medication as part of the biopsychosocial model. For alcohol use disorders, three medications are recommended: disulfiram, acamprosate, and naltrexone. The key is determining which medication is indicated for a specific patient. For cocaine and stimulant use disorders, FDA-approved medications for the treatment of ADHD are an alternative for patients trying to self-medicate with cocaine. For opiate use disorders, three other medications are also FDA-approved: naltrexone, methadone and buprenorphine. I favor buprenorphine due to the fact that is a partial mu blocker (the mu receptor is the most important analgesic opiate receptor)the risk of respiratory depression in cases of overdosing is low, and the success rate is high. Buprenorphine can be paired with naloxone, which is an opiate blocker, to prevent the illegal distribution. Kits with naloxone, Evzio (brand name of naloxone 0.4-milligram auto-injector), are being distributed to patients and family members, making it a life-saving medication similar to EpiPen for the treatment of anaphylactic shock. In order to diminish the risk of diversion, many deterrent techniques are being developed by manufactures of opiates. All these precautions will be almost superfluous if an implantable version of buprenorphine becomes available. Effective and updated medical education is the best antidote against stigma. Above all, all patients with substance use disorders should be treated with respect and humane care.
"This essay reveals how a global "New Drug History" has evolved over the past three decades, along with its latest thematic trends and possible next directions. Scholars have long studied drugs, but only in the 1990s did serious archival and global study of what are now illicit drugs emerge, largely from the influence of the anthropology of drugs on history. A series of key interdisciplinary influences are now in play beyond anthropology, among them, commodity and consumption studies, sociology, medical history, cultural studies, and transnational history. Scholars connect drugs and their changing political or cultural status to larger contexts and epochal events such as wars, empires, capitalism, modernization, or globalizing processes. As the field expands in scope, it may shift deeper into non-western perspectives, a fluid historical definition of drugs; environmental concerns; and research on cannabis and opiates sparked by their current transformations or crises"--
The history of an unnatural disaster—drug overdose—and the emergence of naloxone as a social and technological solution. For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys—an ugly death awaiting social deviants—neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose prevention has become the unlikely object of a social movement, powered by the miracle drug naloxone. In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned—and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and “reversal” after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction. Liberated from emergency room protocols and distributed in take-home kits to non-medical professionals, it also became a tool of empowerment. After recounting the prehistory of naloxone—the early treatment of OD as a problem of poisoning, the development of nalorphine (naloxone's predecessor), the idea of “reanimatology”—Campbell describes how naloxone emerged as a tool of harm reduction. She reports on naloxone use in far-flung locations that include post-Thatcherite Britain, rural New Mexico, and cities and towns in Massachusetts. Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists—whom she calls the “protagonists” of her story—Campbell tells a story of saving lives amid the complex, difficult conditions of an unfolding unnatural disaster.
'The third in a series explicating the criminal mind, this volume summarizes observations, interpretations, and conclusions derived from a study of 121 criminal men who used drugs and/or alcohol to excess. Originally set in writing by Yochelson before his death in 1976, the materials were edited and updated by Samenow for publication. Systematic, probing and repeated interviews were used as the vehicle for gathering information on common mental themes among men apprehended and sentenced for criminal acts.... Yochelson and Samenow attribute crime to a series of early irresponsible choices that predate drug use among drug-using criminals. Personality and personal choice variables are conceptualized as critical in initialing and maintaining use. In what is called an indiscriminate search for excitement, drug-using criminals are characterized as expanding their criminal repertoire while excusing their actions by rationalizations sometimes invented by sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Although these ideas are of considerable interest, the real value of the text lies in its intriguing presentation of drug-user thinking. Specifically, three chapters are well worth reading. The description of mental activities associated with such constructs as 'the high,' 'the nod,' and 'the rush' are probably on target for many drug users, whether criminal or not. The chapter explaining drugs as facilitators offers several notions worthy of systematic inquiry, as does the one devoted to principles for encouragement of behavior change. Of perhaps greatest benefit to most readers are caveats regarding management of drug users in what may be seen as a cognitive-behavioral framework. Yochelson and Samenow contend that drug-using criminal men represent the architects of their criminal life-styles and that it is they themselves who can correct irresponsible thoughts and behaviors through application of logic over emotion.' DContemporary Psychology A Jason Aroson Book