We Restore Hope -

Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat…
~Nicholas Gordon, poemsforfree.com

A woman in England who bit a woman on the side of her face at a New Year’s Eve party was sentenced last week. The judge told her she was lucky not to have received a jail sentence.

Victoria Nevill admitted assaulting Sarah Piggott. She bit Piggott three times on her face. Nevill was given a four-month sentence, suspended for 18 months. She also must attend an anger management program.

The judge told Nevill that she was “lucky not to be going to prison immediately. You have got a drug addiction and it would be nice to think this was entirely out of character due to drink.”

The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen. ~Sarah Brown

A new study found that chronic alcohol consumption reduces the number of new brain cells that form in the hippocampus of adolescent rhesus monkeys. This finding suggests these cells are vulnerable to alcohol and their presence may be essential for preventing alcohol dependence.

The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2009, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

“We’ve found a potential mechanism for alcohol’s harmful effects on the hippocampus and other brain regions associated with executive function and memory,” said Chitra Mandyam, Ph.D. of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and lead author of the study.

“This may lead to more effective medications for helping alcoholics overcome their addiction.”

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. ~Marshall McLuhan

A new study of rats has found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a commonly available and generally nontoxic amino acid derivative, reverses changes in the brain’s circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. The reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus providing protection against relapse.

“Our finding suggests a promising therapeutic strategy for cocaine addiction, for which there is no approved treatment,” said lead author Khaled Moussawi of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug characterized by frequent relapses. Recent advances in brain imaging are helping scientists to find out what happens in the brain when an addicted person is exposed to the drug-associated “cues” that trigger craving and lead to relapse. They’ve found that repeated exposure to psychoactive drugs such as cocaine causes an imbalance in the brain circuits regulating reward and cognitive control.

A new study of rats has found that N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a commonly available and generally nontoxic amino acid derivative, reverses changes in the brain’s circuitry associated with cocaine addiction. The reversal appears to lessen the cravings associated with cocaine, thus providing protection against relapse.

“Our finding suggests a promising therapeutic strategy for cocaine addiction, for which there is no approved treatment,” said lead author Khaled Moussawi of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug characterized by frequent relapses. Recent advances in brain imaging are helping scientists to find out what happens in the brain when an addicted person is exposed to the drug-associated “cues” that trigger craving and lead to relapse. They’ve found that repeated exposure to psychoactive drugs such as cocaine causes an imbalance in the brain circuits regulating reward and cognitive control.

www.Thetreatmentcenter.com

Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language. ~Gail Godwin

The U.S. government wants drug companies to make a vaccine for drug addiction.

Convinced of the need for new and better treatments for addiction, the government is focusing its efforts on vaccine development as a new way to treat and possibly prevent addiction to a range of addictive substances.

“It’s a perspective that is very different from what we’ve operated on in the past,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Volkow said the agency intends to piggyback on the frenetic investment by drug companies in vaccine development.

Volkow has to first tempt drug companies to develop the vaccines by funding expensive clinical trials.

People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don’t you say the good now days? ~Robert M. Young

There is plenty of evidence for the genetic influence of alcohol dependence, and continuing studies are actively looking for specific genes that may confirm this increased susceptibility. While it is well-known that individual risk is increased with the number of relatives struggling with alcohol dependence, scientists have been unable to identify who among these people might have a greater or lesser risk than others.

An article appeared in Biological Psychiatry where researchers evaluated and identified childhood risk factors for the development of future substance use and abuse.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are. ~Honore de Balzac

Epileptic seizures are the most dramatic and prominent aspect of the “alcohol withdrawal syndrome” that happens when a person abruptly stops a long-term drinking habit. Researchers have shown that the flow of calcium ions into brain cells via calcium channels plays an important role in the generation of alcohol withdrawal seizures, because blocking this flow suppresses these seizures. But do the changes in calcium currents contribute to alcohol withdrawal seizures or are they a direct result of the seizures?

Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., found that the enhancement of calcium channels occurs prior to the start of alcohol withdrawal seizures.

The study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

www.thetreatmentcenter.com

If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it. ~Anthony J. D’Angelo

More than half of sudden infant deaths involve babies who share a bed or sofa with a parent, and alcohol or drug use by parents appears to be a factor in many of the cases, according to a new study from England.

Researchers analyzed 80 cases of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in southwest England between January 2003 and December 2006. Of the deaths, 54 percent occurred while parent and child were sharing a bed or sofa. Parental use of alcohol or drugs before falling asleep occurred in 31 percent of the cases.

One-fifth of babies were found with a pillow and one-quarter were swaddled, the study noted. The study included a number of different social groups, and the results suggest that the risk factors were similar throughout the community.

The safest place for an infant to sleep is in a bassinet or crib. The study authors, from the University of Bristol and the University of Warwick, urged parents to never put themselves in a situation where they might fall asleep and never co-sleep if they have been using drugs or alcohol.

Depression is rage spread thin. ~George Santayana

The use of cocaine doubled in Mexico over the past six years, partly because the drug become more available. The overall use of illegal drugs increased only slightly, according to the Health Department’s 2008 national addictions survey.

The report said 2.4 percent of Mexicans aged 12 to 65 used cocaine in 2008, compared to 1.2 percent in 2002. The consumption of all illegal drugs in Mexico jumped to 5.7 percent from 5 percent.

Carlos Rodriguez, president of the National Addictions Council, said the increase in cocaine use was in part because the drug became more abundant in Mexico after increased security in the United States made it tougher for traffickers to smuggle shipments over the border.

The report said the states of Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located, and Tamaulipas, across from Texas, have the highest use of illegal drugs – just over 11 percent of their populations.

President Felipe Calderon has opened dozens of drug rehabilitation centers while aggressively pursuing drug traffickers.

Calderon deployed 45,000 soldiers and federal agents after taking office in December 2006 to drug problem areas. The gangs used unprecedented violence, including beheadings, killing more than 13,500 people.

www.thetreatmentcenter.com

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. ~Kurt Vonnegut

A vaccine to treat cocaine dependence appears to reduce the use of the drug in a small group of people who get a high anticocaine antibody levels in response. Only 38 percent of vaccinated individuals produced high enough antibody levels and those who did maintained them for only two months.

About 2.5 million Americans are dependent on cocaine, but only 809,000 receive treatment. One of every three drug related emergency room visits are attributed to cocaine addiction. The Food and Drug Administration has not approved any pharmacological therapies for cocaine abuse. Behavioral therapies have a wide range of effectiveness. Studies have suggested that high levels of anticocaine antibodies in the blood can inactivate cocaine before the brain is affected, reducing feelings of euphoria without causing any psychoactive effects or harmful physiological interactions.

You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who cannot repay you.

Ruth Smeltzer

North Americans and Australians are among the countries that use marijuana the most, according to a paper published in The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Association.

It is estimated that more than 8 percent of people ages 15-64 in the United States, Canada and Australia use marijuana at least once a year. Europe was next the annual usage data, followed by the Middle East and Asia. Marijuana use in Africa was still low compared to other geographic regions.

The study was conducted by the the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center of the University of New South Wales, in collaboration with the University of Queensland.

The study also traces a number of adverse effects to marijuana use including an increased risk of car accidents, impaired respiratory function and heart disease. It also highlighted the effects of regular use on adolescent psychosocial development and mental health.

The Lancet study included an estimated from the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime that marijuana was used by 166 million people worldwide in 2006.
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