v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Affordable Care Act Could Benefit Treatment of Co-Occurring DisordersAs this country moves into a new era of how we approach the treatment, prevention and administration of illness, we must keep the rubric of co-occurring disorders at the forefront. One would be hard pressed to find a higher rate of co-occurring disorders than in the field of behavioral health, where more than 70 percent of those treated for substance abuse also have a mental health disorder. Please click here to read the rest of the commentary by Andrew D. Kessler,  IC&RC’s Federal Policy Liaison and Founder of Slingshot Solutions, LLC. 'Good Samaritan' Laws Could Help Overdose Victims—If Only People Knew They...

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Morphine vs. cocaine: A different mechanism of addiction Morphine and cocaine both lead to addiction in part because of how they affect key reward areas in the brain. But a new study shows that they do this in very different ways -- knowledge that may eventually make treatments for addicts more specific and successful, but that also may complicate matters for people who take multiple drugs at once. Cocaine and morphine both have profound effects on the flow of dopamine -- a neurotransmitter scientists have consistently implicated in our sensations of reward in the brain. Signaling takes place when one...

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} College Binge Drinking: How Bad Is the Problem Really? There’s no shortage of media coverage of drunken excess on college campuses. Just this week, the New York Timesfilled us in on how social media facilitates students’ expedient drinking and hooking up — so much so that traditional collegetown bars are becoming obsolete and closing shop in towns like Ithaca, N.Y., home of Cornell University. Such extreme stories would have us believe that college kids are out of control, even drunker and higher than their parents before them. Actually, though, that’s not the case. Properly collected study data — which has gone unmentioned in recent media trend stories — suggest that...

Addiction treatment and other mental health professionals are accustomed to applying the diagnostic criteria published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in the 1994 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) and the 2000 "Text Revision" version of the same compendium (DSM-IV-TR), which updated the narrative material but kept the same diagnostic criteria. Criteria in the substance-related disorders section of DSM-IV are all the more familiar to veterans in the addiction field because they were barely changed from the criteria in the previous DSM, the 1987 "Revision" of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Version III (DSM-III-R). The names we give diseases are no more than useful categories for grouping individuals whose ailments have similar physical or behavioral manifestations or similar causes, and that respond to similar therapeutic or preventive efforts. Disease names and criteria to diagnose them evolve because scientific knowledge and technology evolve. Revisions of classifications...Original linkOriginal author:...

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Commentary: Prescription Drug Abuse and the Future of America By R. Gil Kerlikowske |Last month, I visited a fellow Medicine Abuse Project partner—Project Lazarus—an organization on the forefront of combating the prescription drug abuse problem. Project Lazarus is located in Wilkes County, North Carolina, an area of the country that has borne a disproportionately large part of the burden caused by medicine abuse. While there, I met a group of dedicated people working hard to reduce medicine abuse in the area and across the country—doctors, leaders and law enforcement officers. I have great admiration and respect for all of the people I met at Project Lazarus, but one individual in...

________________________________________Study Finds Secondhand Smoke Can Harm Newborn Brain Development A new study concludes that exposure to secondhand smoke can harm the developing brain of newborns. Researchers found exposure to active or secondhand smoke affected newborn babies’ ability to inhibit stimuli that can harm the central nervous system, according to HealthDay.The study, published in Early Human Development, included 282 healthy babies, who were examined two to three days after birth. The study found 22 percent of the mothers smoked during pregnancy, while 6 percent were exposed to passive smoke. Babies exposed to secondhand smoke had poor motor development. Those exposed to active smoking were less able to regulate motor and sensory behavior.“Newborns who have had intrauterine exposure to nicotine, whether in an active or passive way, show signs of being more affected in terms of their neurobehavioural development,” researchers Josefa Canals and Carmen Hernández said in a press release.________________________________________Synthetic drugs, real consequences: Fake...

v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Study Finds Active Participation in AA Aids in Long-Term Recovery Recovering alcoholics who help others in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) have better outcomes themselves, a new study concludes. Helping others increases the amount of time a person stays sober, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The findings come from a 10-year study, PsychCentral.com reports. The researchers examined the effects of Alcoholics Anonymous-related Helping (AAH). “The AAH findings suggest the importance of getting active in service, which can be in a committed 2-month AA service position or as simple as sharing one’s personal experience in recovery to another fellow sufferer,” lead researcher Maria Pagano said in a news...

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Search the Internet or type in "falling dominoes" on YouTube and you will be deluged with opportunities to watch videos, often set to music, of vast numbers of colorful rectangles knocking one another over. These productions are extravagant examples of the original "domino effect." They show domino tiles arranged in both straight lines and intricate patterns, each tile balanced on a narrow end with its rear flat facing the front flat of the next. As long as the distances between the tiles are shorter than their length, once the first domino is toppled, all the rest must fall. Or more accurately, all the rest usually fall; once in a while a chain reaction jams, the audience sighs, and the videographer cuts to dominoes that are falling.The middle and last dominoes in these arrangements fall because they are subject to laws of nature. Physics and gravity may not yield the results...Original linkOriginal...

The phenomenon of "bath salts" abuse and dependence is hard to believe. Nevertheless, since late 2010 young people and adults have been swallowing, smoking, sniffing, and injecting dangerous white or colored powders that they purchase from head shops, convenience stores, or the Internet.[NIDA Message] Colorful packages with catchy names such as Arctic Blast, Cloud 9, Ivory Wave, Snow Leopard, Vanilla Sky, and White Lightning may contain 50 milligrams or more of powder and sell for $25-50. They are labeled as bath additives (or glass cleaner or plant food) that are "not intended for human consumption." How this can be happening?Neurobiology helps explain it. Basically, addiction doesn't make sense: people with addiction pursue their relationship with a mood-changing chemical even when it ruins their body and other relationships. This happens because: (1) addictive substances provide reward and escape that condition the user to seek the substances over and over; (2) stopping...Original linkOriginal...