Substance Abuse/Addiction

“Underscoring the incredible momentum to legalize marijuana is the misconception that the drug can’t hurt anybody,” Dr. Sushrut Jangi writes in the Boston Globe. “It can, especially young people.” He suggests that the biochemistry of marijuana effects "systems ordinarily involved in healthy behaviors like eating, learning and forming relationships” and “throws the finely tuned system off balance.”

New research is investigating how “poverty reduction promotes cognitive and brain development.”

Medscape Psychiatry reports that the “man-made epidemic” of opioid abuse in the United States is the result of over-prescription and poor research.

New York State has investigated five large insurance companies for violating state and federal mental health parity laws by illegally denying to cover claims for behavioral health conditions and drug abuse treatment, according to a report by North County Public Radio (ncpr).

This month’s issue of JAMA Psychiatry ran an editorial commenting on recent research revealing that the majority of youth prescribed antipsychotics have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

On Tuesday, NPR told the story of DeAngelo Cortijo. DeAngelo became a foster kid at age 3 after his mother attempted suicide. He was “diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive disorder or posttraumatic stress disorder,” and was prescribed “a combination of antipsychotics, antidepressants and stimulants, and was told that taking them was his only hope of being normal.” Through equine therapy, DeAngelo was eventually able to get off all of his medication. Now, California is hoping to pass reforms that would prevent foster kids, like DeAngelo, from being “prescribed antipsychotic drugs at double to quadruple the rate of that not in foster care.”

Parents Opposed to Pot, a group opposed to the legalization of marijuana, criticizes a recent University of Pittsburgh study which found no correlation between pot use and mental health. They contest the results and insist that since the long-term study began in 1987, “skunk” or high THC pot has been on the rise.

Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School, has printed a critique listing 20 flaws to a recent study finding no differences in physical or mental health problems between users and non-users of marijuana.

A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey of 1000 US primary care physicians found that many do not understand basic medical facts about the addictive nature of the opioids they are prescribing.

An equal percentage of young people will start misusing ADHD-related and other stimulant drugs for the first time at age 13 as will start at age 20.

Researchers believe that they have gained a clearer understanding of how cocaine, amphetamines and related psychostimulant drugs "disrupt the normal functioning of the dopamine transporter in the brain."

-What does the balance of evidence say about the relationship between cannabis use and increased risk of psychotic reactions?

-Nearly one in five families in New South Wales, Australia admitted that they give tranquilizing drugs to their children during long road trips.

About 17% of college students take stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall, primarily because they believe the drugs will help them improve their academic performance.

Instead of hope and enthusiasm for their futures, too many children now grow up believing they are inherently defective, and controlled by bad genes and biochemical imbalances. They are shackled by the idea that they have ADHD and then subdued by the drugs that inevitably go along with the diagnosis. Unless something intervenes, many of them will go on to pass their days on Earth in a drug-impaired, demoralized state.

-Dr. Lance Dodes and Dr. Joseph Nowinski debate the disease-based model of addiction and the 12-step approach in The Fix.

-University of Queensland addictions experts challenge last year's Nature editorial that claimed there is a scientific "consensus" that addiction is a brain disease.

When I was locked in a psychiatric hospital, I wasn't able to have much of a conversation with my parents about what was going on. Phone calls were tense and filled with silence, and as I stood at the ward payphone I was so confused and frozen in fear that each call just confirmed to them how lost I was. Every day as a patient centered around the various prescriptions I was on, and like so many people suffering in a psychosis, helping me became a wait to "find the right combination of medications."

On Substance.com, Maia Szalavitz discusses her own experiences with addiction, and examines the research that suggests addiction is less a chronic disease of the...

MIA Foreign Correspondent Peter Gøtzsche, author of the book Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime, was interviewed on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon...