The Recovery Project
April 22nd, 2009
More than 22 million Americans struggle with addiction¹. Millions more - family members, friends and colleagues - are touched by the disease.
The Recovery Project was created to break the stigma of addiction, raise national awareness that addiction is a treatable disease and prove that recovery is possible.
We celebrate people in recovery and pay tribute to those who support them: treatment providers, scientists, family and friends. We’re building a nationwide grassroots movement to ensure everyone knows that recovery is possible.
States Must Take the Lead
June 30th, 2008
State policies have a significant impact on the services performed by substance abuse treatment programs, and could play a key role in efforts to expand the use of research-based “comprehensive” treatment approaches, reports a study in the June issue of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment (JSAT).
“The states are uniquely positioned to institute specific policy proscriptions emanating from scientific research in the substance abuse treatment arena, indicating that a comprehensive approach…[is] associated with positive treatment outcomes and reduced recidivism,” according to the researchers, led by Jamie F. Chriqui, Ph.D., M.H.S., of University of Illinois at Chicago.
Marijuana can make some pain worse
June 24th, 2008
- MONDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) — Oral cannabis (a form of medical marijuana) was ineffective in treating certain types of acute pain and actually increased sensitivity to some other kinds of discomfort, say researchers at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
Their study included 18 healthy women who were given oral cannabis or a placebo. The women were then evaluated for heat and electrical pain thresholds in skin areas that had induced sunburn. This is an accepted method of assessing response to acute pain.
“The surprising result of our study was the absence of any kind of analgesic activity of THC-standardized cannabis extract on experimentally induced pain using well-established human model procedures,” study author Dr. Birgit Kraft said in a prepared statement. “Our results also seem to support the impression that high doses of cannabinoids may even cause increased sensitivity in certain pain conditions.”
The study is published in the July issue of the journal Anesthesiology.
The Candidates on Addiction
June 10th, 2008
Based on their records, neither John McCain or Barack Obama can really be considered a leader in the drug-policy arena. Still, both appear to have a broader and more nuanced understanding of addiction issues than their White House predecessor, and William Cope Moyers, vice president of external affairs at Hazelden, says that he has “never been more hopeful that addiction treatment will begin to get the attention it deserves, because we at least have two candidates who are aware of the issue.”
Family History of Alcoholism Puts Student Drinkers at Risk
June 8th, 2008
WEDNESDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) — College students with a “dense” family history of alcoholism have the highest risk of alcohol-use disorders, a U.S. study says.
While most university students tend to “mature out” of heavy drinking by the time they’re young adults, some develop alcohol-use disorders, or AUDs. Most genetic research on family history of alcoholism has focused on alcohol use by the parents, most often the father.
But this study found that the density of family history of alcoholism (FHA) is much more effective.