Drug Addiction

This study was performed to asses and establishes the prevalence of Polypharmacy in geriatric population in the Medicine ward of Rajah Muthaiya Medical College and Hospital, Annamalai University, during one year from January 2013 to January 2014. Demographic analyses of this prospective study revealed that out of 520 patients, 342 (65.76%) were males and 178 (34.23%) were females. All the collected prescriptions were scrutinized for Polypharmacy and were categorized as minor Polypharmacy -concurrent use of ≤ 5 drugs; and major Polypharmacy -concurrent use of > 5 drugs. Out of 502 Prescriptions 61(11.73%) prescriptions were minor Polypharmacy and 457(88.26%) prescriptions were major Polypharmacy. The maximum patients were in the age group of 60-64 (38.84%) range lead to a significant increase in the number of medications. The most common diseases associated systems were Cardiovascular system 147 (28.26 %) patients, and followed by Respiratory system 103(19.80%). Our results show that there is a higher prevalence of Polypharmacy among the males than females. The length of hospital stay of geriatric patients is increase in major Polypharmacy compare with minor Polypharmacy. The prevalence of cardiovascular drugs and respiratory drugs were often involved in Polypharmacy among geriatric patients. Polypharmacy is very common among geriatric patient and health care professional’s interventions to improve the optimal use of medication in geriatric could lead to reduction in the drug related problems associated with Polypharmacy.

N.B This is a significantly revised version of my earlier “Addiction within a Thomistic Philosophical Anthropology: A Conceptual Analysis.” When I wrote it I had only started thinking about addiction and my ideas have developed considerably as I have studied more neuroscience, psychology, and philosophical anthropology. Since I posted it in 2011 I have received many emails with questions, comments, suggestions and objections, all of which have been very helpful to me. We are all trying to understand what addiction is, and how we can help those who suffer from addiction. It is astonishing how difficult it is to find good philosophical literature on addiction, and many people are rightly interested in the problem. Given the amount of feedback I have received on the earlier version of this paper, that it has been cited in two MA theses that I know of, and that I do not know when I shall have time to complete the research required to make this paper worth publishing, I have decided to update the prior draft with this version. Some of the same ideas are treated briefly in one published paper of mine.1 This paper has since changed its title in order to reflect a more broadly Aristotelian approach. I decided that there is no reason for me to restrict my approach to Thomistic thought, and I think this general Aristotelian approach makes the paper’s appeal much broader. Some of the “Thomist” material, but not all of it, has been omitted from this draft. I will be happy to receive any correspondence concerning the account of addiction presented in this paper, but I might always be able to respond right away.

"Purpose

High childhood IQ test scores have been associated with increased alcohol dependency and use in adult life, but the relationship between childhood IQ and illegal drug use in later life is unclear.
Methods

Participants were 6713 members of the 1958 National Child Development Survey whose IQ was assessed at 11 years and had their lifetime illegal drug use measured at 42 years of age.
Results

In analyses adjusted for a range of covariates, a 1 SD (15-point) increase in IQ scores was associated with an increased risk of illegal drug use in women: ever using cannabis (odds ratio [OR], 1.30; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 1.16–1.45), cocaine (OR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.21–2.27), amphetamines (OR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.22–1.83), amyl nitrate (OR, 1.79; 95% CI, 1.30–2.46) and “magic mushrooms” (OR, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.18–1.98). Associations were of lower magnitude in men.
Conclusions

In this cohort, high childhood IQ was related to illegal drug use in adulthood."

""North America's first supervised injection facility—Insite—opened in Vancouver in 2003 under a special federal legal exemption. Insite has faced significant political and legal opposition, which culminated in a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling that ordered the federal Minister of Health to extend the facility's exemption and cited evidence that the facility is life-preserving and does not increase public disorder. Officials in several other cities have initiated or accelerated preparations for new facilities due to speculation that the ruling provides sufficient legal basis to expand supervised injection in Canada. However, a comprehensive assessment of the barriers and facilitators to supervised injection facility scale-up is lacking.

This policy case study reviews a corpus of jurisprudence, legislation, scientific research and media texts to: describe the role of evidence in legal and political decision-making around Insite; analyze the implications of the Insite decision for new facilities; and discuss alternative avenues for supervised injection facility expansion.

The Insite decision does not simplify the path towards new supervised injection facilities, but nor does it pose an insurmountable hurdle. Whether new facilities will be established depends largely upon how the Minister of Health interprets the ruling, the proponents' ability to demonstrate need and support from municipal and provincial governments and community members. Formally defining supervised injection as within nurses' scope of practice could further efforts to establish new facilities.

Additional court action may be required to establish a stable legal and policy basis for supervised injection facilities in Canada.""

""Addiction and drug abuse are pervasive in society, and can result in illness, legal and financial trouble, and even death for dependent users.  Licit substances, including alcohol, are widely available, easily obtainable, and relatively inexpensive.  More than 75% of Americans have used alcohol at least once in their lifetime, and more than half of adults are current drinkers.  Unlike most other drugs, alcohol may be health-promoting in low to moderate doses.
Excessive alcohol intake can cause serious immediate and long-term consequences to the drinker and to others.  There is substantial anecdotal, clinical, and some experimental evidence that environmental factors, especially stress and social environment, affect alcohol self-administration.  Stress often is
associated with increased alcohol consumption.  Social enrichment decreases drug self-administration, but there is mixed evidence regarding social enrichment and alcohol intake. These relationships lack experimental examination and the mechanisms underlying these relationships are not clear. The purpose of this
research project was to examine experimentally the individual and combined effects of stress and social enrichment on alcohol self-administration (in two-bottle choice and operant self-administration paradigms) and alcohol’s effects on dopaminergic and serotonergic responses in the brain (nucleus accumbens, ventral tegmental area, prefrontal cortex) and on psychological constructs (anxiety via open field center time and depression via forced swim test) in male Wistar rats.  The major hypotheses were: (1) stress would increase alcohol consumption and increase alcohol’s effects on the stress response; (2) alcohol
would decrease the biological and attenuate the psychological stress response; and (3) social enrichment would decrease alcohol consumption, attenuate the stress response, and attenuate alcohol’s effects on the stress response.

Hypotheses 2 and 3 were partially confirmed. The major findings of this experiment were: (1) stress is biologically and behaviorally disruptive; (2) alcohol is disruptive; (3) stress and alcohol seem to cancel each other out on the forced swim test; and (4) social housing alters brain neurochemistry and behavior.  These findings were consistent across many of the behavioral variables.  In
addition, this experiment demonstrates the value of combining behavior analyses with neurochemical analyses to gain a better understanding of how neurobiology might underlie behavior.""

"ABSTRACT. Objective: The current study had two key aims: (a) to
determine if Type D personality (the synergistic effect of negative affect and social inhibition) is associated with alcohol consumption in social drinkers and (b) to examine if this relationship is mediated by drinking motives. Method: In a cross-sectional study, 862 participants (206 men, 656 women, mean age 26.1 years) completed the Type D Personality Scale, the Drinking Motives Questionnaire, and the Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire. Results: Correlation analysis revealed that Type D personality was signifi cantly and positively correlated with alcohol dependence (r = .11, p < .001). In addition, regression analyses demonstrated that this relationship was fully mediated by coping and conformity drinking motives. Conclusions: The present study has identified a positive relationship between Type D personality and alcohol dependence in the general population. We have also shown that this relationship is mediated by coping and conformity drinking motives"

During recent decades, biomedical research has increasingly entered the press scene, particularly in media stories of healthy bodies and lifestyles. One of the fields where this is visible is in the discussion of alcohol consumption and problems, a field where references to biological sex differences are common. This paper analyzes how facts about sexed bodily difference are made real in Swedish newspaper stories of biomedical alcohol research. Our findings indicate that newspapers represent the body at different levels of abstraction; from detailed descriptions at the molecular level (hormones and genes), through discussion at the molar level (body parts, organs and disease), to more general discussion at the social level (inner nature, sensitivity, and responsibility). We also find a double metaphorical meaning of the word alcohol: alcohol is a solution (a soluble liquid) that also dissolves the dimorphism of bodily sex difference.

It is well recognized that there is a relationship between child abuse, mental illness, and alcohol and drug abuse. This article reports on the findings of a qualitative research project exploring the experiences of adult survivors of child abuse in alcohol and other drugs (AOD) services, as well as the experiences of AOD workers with this client group. The project complements existing research on the relationship between child abuse, AOD use and adult mental health; however, it uniquely explores these issues from the perspectives of clients and workers. This article will present three key research findings from this research project: making the links between abuse in childhood and AOD use as adults; compartmentalized service provision and rigid treatment paradigms; and lastly, constructing effective and comprehensive AOD services. The article concludes with an analysis of the skills and strategies required to better facilitate building a platform of care and treatment for adult survivors of child abuse within and across AOD and mental health sectors.