Social and Medical Aspects of Drug Abuse

ISBN-13: 9789401163224 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 244 str.

G. Serban

Opis

The phenomenon of drug abuse is part of the human experience that extends as far back in time as recorded history exists. Today, however, it has a new and much greater dramatic urgency. The reasons for this are multiple and worrisome. Last year, of the total of approximately 1.9 million total deaths that occurred in the United States, a conservative estimate is that more than one-quarter were premature deaths due to the addictive disorders. These include over 300,000 deaths related to cigarette smoking, which represents in many respects the prototypic addiction in this country; over 200,000 deaths related to alcohol, and many more related to mUltiple other drugs-licit and illicit-that are abused in this society. Twenty-five years ago, drug use was essentially unknown in our school age population. In 1960, a tragic increase of drug use in our young people began, so that by 1978 more high school seniors were current users of marijuana than of cigarettes. Despite the fact that the use of most drugs by high school populations appears to have peaked in the late 1970s and to be decreasing at the present time, most experts still believe that drug use by American young people represents the highest level of that found in any Western developed country.

Spis treści

1 Relationship of Biological Influences on the Subjective States of Addicts.- 2 Opiate Receptors and Opioid Peptides: Are They Involved in Drug Addiction?.- 3 Applications of Human Behavioral Pharmacology to the Problems of Drug Addicts: A Brief Review.- 4 Conditioned Taste Aversions and the Regulation of Drug-Taking Behavior.- 5 Behavior in Excess: An Examination of the Volitional Disorders.- 6 Maintenance of Behavior by “Schedules”: An Unfamiliar Contribution to Maintenance of Abuses.- 7 Some Endocrine and Immunological Observations in Heroin and Methadone Maintained Opioid Addicts.- 8 Multiple Opiate Receptors.- 9 Behavioral Factors in Drug Dependence and Withdrawal: A Discussion.- 10 Epidemiology of the Current Heroin Crisis.- 11 Empirical Patterns of Heroin Consumption Among Selected Street Heroin Users.- 12 Social Stress and Drug Abuse.- 13 Psychiatric Disorders in Treated Opiate Addicts.- 14 Psychiatric Disorders in Treated Addicts: Discussion.- 15 Naltrexone: Current Clinical Investigations.- 16 Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Use of the Narcotic Antagonist: Naltrexone.- 17 Detoxification from Methadone Maintenance: Current and Innovative Approaches.- 18 Clonidine and Lofexidine: New Nonopiate Treatments for Opiate Withdrawal.- 19 The Swedish Methadone Maintenance Program.- 20 The Odyssey House Treatment Method.- 21 Research Design, Drug Use, and Deaths: Cross Study Comparisons.