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.
ADD Medication is a Cause For Concern
June 20th, 2008
ScienceDaily (June 17, 2008) — Concerned by the growing numbers of people using stimulant medications such as methylphenidate (MP)–either legally or illegally–to improve attention and focus, researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with the radiotracer fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) to assess the effects of the drug on brain function in the normal human brain.
“MP is often prescribed appropriately for individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who are unable to focus their minds in order to perform everyday tasks,” said Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Md. “We wanted to better understand how the drug works in ‘normal, healthy’ people when they are performing a cognitive task, as well as when they are not.”
Tramadol
June 6th, 2008
People ask often if Ultram is “addictive” and more often than not docotors will tell you it is not. That is because it has not been listed as a scheduled narcotic. If you read the information at the DEA site you might wonder why it is not.