Does cannabis matter anymore? Cannabis use has been falling steadily for a few years; a trend seized on by the government as ‘proof’ that their policy of prohibition is working (Release 2014). At the same time the number of people seeking treatment due to problems with cannabis is on the rise. So how do we make sense of these counter intuitive trends?
A group of experts drawn from across the UK gathered at the University of York to share their ideas, here is a summary of the day.
What are the latest drug market trends and what are the factors driving them? What drugs are causing the most concern today? What are the most recent developments in drug prevention, treatment and policy? These, and other, questions will be explored by the EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) on 7 June in its annual overview of the European drug situation
The reinforcement learning theory of drug addiction has been influential for decades.1 Under this framework, drugs trigger dopamine (DA) release and exert their reinforcing effects through the mesolimbic pathway.1 This model can account for compulsive drug-seeking behaviors in addiction. However, many empirical findings remain unaddressed. In particular, accumulating evidence suggests that DA, delivered by either addictive drugs2 or by pharmacological treatments, such as the nicotine replacement therapy,3 is not sufficient to reduce craving. Craving persists even after compulsive drug-taking behavior stops,3 suggesting that craving and drug-seeking behavior are 2 distinct processes, despite the fact that they are often homogenized in laboratory settings......Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology 24.1 (Feb 2016): 38-47.
The nonmedical use of prescription drugs is a widely recognized public health issue, and young adults are particularly vulnerable to their use. Behavioral economic drug purchase tasks capture an individual’s strength of desire and motivation for a particular drug. We examined young adult prescription drug purchase and consumption patterns using hypothetical behavioral economic purchase tasks for prescription sedatives/tranquilizers, stimulants, and opiate pain relievers. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
Commentary to: Can new psychoactive substances be regulated effectively? An assessment of the British Psychoactive Substances Bill. Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors (Jul 19, 2018). DOI:10.1037/adb0000382
Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at elevated risk for alcohol use problems, a relationship commonly explained by using alcohol to cope with unpleasant symptoms of PTSD. However, patterns of alcohol use motives, more broadly, have not been well characterized in veteran samples, nor have they been evaluated in the context of other relevant factors, such as normative personality traits. The aims of the present study were to identify empirically derived drinking motive and personality typologies to determine whether these typologies differ as a function of PTSD status (i.e., nontrauma control, trauma exposed−no PTSD, and PTSD) and to evaluate associations between typology and PTSD symptom severity and alcohol consumption, respectively. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Substance use and binge drinking during early adolescence are associated with neurocognitive abnormalities, mental health problems and an increased risk for future addiction. The trial aims to evaluate the protective effects of an evidence-based substance use prevention program on the onset of alcohol and drug use in adolescence, as well as on cognitive, mental health and addiction outcomes over 5 years. Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
In the (in press) issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research a study by C. Cherpitel, et al. examines alcohol dose response for alcohol‐related injury for 18,627 injured patients from 22 countries, taking into account each country's detrimental drinking practices (DDP) and the restrictiveness of alcohol control policies (using the International Alcohol Policy and Injury Index, IAPII) (Cherpitel et al., 2019). The authors hypothesised that a dose‐response relationship would be observed, and that all causes of injury would be greater in countries where DDP was greater and where alcohol policies were least restrictive. . To read the full article, log in using your NHS Athens details. To access full-text: click “Log in/Register” (top right hand side). Click ‘Institutional Login’ then select 'OpenAthens Federation', then ‘NHS England’. Enter your Athens details to view the article.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether, controlling for genetic effects, drug abuse was transmitted within families as predicted by a contagion model. . Login at top right hand side of page using your MPFT NHS OpenAthens for full text.
Open access. Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is a debilitating, sometimes fatal eating disorder (ED) whereby restraint of appetite and emotion is concomitant with an inflexible, attention-to-detail perfectionist cognitive style and obsessive-compulsive behaviour. Intriguingly, people with AN are less likely to engage in substance use, whereas those who suffer from an ED with a bingeing component are more vulnerable to substance use disorder (SUD).
Open access. Despite the link between stress and addictive behavior in adulthood, little is known about how early life stress in families predicts the early emergence of substance use in adolescence. This study tested a developmental cascade model, proposing that early stressful life events and negative parent‐child interaction covary, and both disrupt the refinement of inhibitory control, which evolves into problem behavior in middle/late childhood and subsequent substance use exploration in early adolescence.
Nurses who steal and misuse prescription drugs recover better if they are treated like people who are addicted rather than thieves, a Scandinavian study shows.
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In this article, we discuss the ethical dimensions for the prescribing behaviours of opioids for a chronic pain patient, a scenario commonly witnessed by many physicians. The opioid epidemic in the USA and Canada is well known, existing since the late 1990s, and individuals are suffering and dying as a result of the easy availability of prescription opioids. More recently, this problem has been seen outside of North America affecting individuals at similar rates in Australia and Europe. We argue that physicians are also confronted with an ethical crisis where a capitalist-consumerist society is contributing to this opioid crisis in which societal, legal and business interests push physicians to overprescribe opioids. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Corporations use a range of strategies to dispute their role in causing public health harms and to limit the scope of effective public health interventions. This is well documented in relation to the activities of the tobacco industry, but research on other industries is less well developed. We therefore analysed public statements and documents from four unhealthy commodity industries to investigate whether and how they used arguments about complexity in this way.
Open Access Article
Psychoanalytic Psychology Vol. 35, Iss. 2, (Apr 2018): 270-279.
With compulsive hoarding now forming a discrete diagnostic category, there has been a recent increase in its visibility in both the clinical and the cultural milieu. However, understanding of the meaning and possible emotional underpinnings of hoarding lags behind. . To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
BPS blog post. Over the past decade, neuroimaging studies have provided new insights into how psychoactive drugs alter the brain’s activity. Psilocybin – the active ingredient in magic mushrooms – has been found to reduce activity in brain regions involved in depression, for example, while MDMA seems to augment brain activity for positive memories.
Now a new study sheds some light into what’s going in the brain when people smoke cannabis – and it turns out that the effects can be quite different depending on the specific strain of the drug. The research, published recently in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, suggests that cannabis disrupts particular brain networks – but some strains can buffer against this disruption.
We aimed to explore the experiences with health and social services of men who had histories of problem gambling and housing instability in Toronto, Ontario.
Probability discounting refers to the effect of outcome uncertainty on decision making. Using probability discounting, we examined the degree to which self-identified chronic pain patients (CPP) were likely to try a novel analgesic medication given increasing addiction risk. We postulated that propensity for opioid misuse, trait impulsivity, and previous opioid experience would be positively associated with likelihood of risky medication use. Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
To estimate temporal trends in adolescents’ current cigarette, alcohol and cannabis use in Europe by gender and region, test for regional differences, and evaluate regional convergence.. Please contact the library to request a copy of this article - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai