Almost one million American are addicted to heroin, painkillers and other opioids but the pity is that most of them are not receiving any treatment.

Opiate substitutes with psychological counseling are considered an effective treatment for the addicts. Methadone and levo-alpha-acetyl methadol (LAAM) were among those available drugs and only some licensed treatment clinics were authorized to give these drugs out. Limited treatment slots, perceived stigma and inconvenience are among those factors that force addicts to avoid opiate treatment programs.

continue reading Usability of Drug Detox programs for drug addicts

It is beyond doubt that drug-addiction always plays havoc with the life of the addict as well as with the society in which he lives. It not only spoils all the social norms but also causes irreparable loss to its victims generation after generation. No society has ever been able to heal itself from the wounds caused by drug addiction on the part of its individuals. The most damaging impacts of drug addiction on a society are as follows.

Poorest moral values

A drug addicted society is severely deteriorated on moral grounds. Drug addicts never care for any moral values whatsoever. Committing a crime is their second nature and they never feel reluctant towards this whenever they are bent upon satisfying their addict of drugs. The devellish urge to take drugs steers them to violate all the moral ethics and they fulfill their cheapest objectives crushing over all the moral and human considerations. Such a society always remains backward and mean mentally and spiritually, and its individuals always lack in the enlightenment of progress as they are all the time lagging behind the modern world.

continue reading Severe Social Impacts of Drug Addiction

Drug Addiction for some refers to a disease while many believe that it is just a matter of will or choice. We take addiction to be learned behaviour. However the contemporary science has tried to shed light on the pathological background of the addiction, giving a new thought to the world. It suggests that like another disease, it is a brain disease that develops over time. Repeatedly using drugs brings certain fundament structural and functional changes in the brain that continue long even after the individual stops using them.

The evidence suggests that these long-lasting brain changes are responsible for the distortions of cognitive and emotional functioning that characterize addicts. It is as if drugs control the brain’s natural motivational control circuits, resulting in drug use becoming the sole, or at least the top, priority for the individual.

There is much public debate on this brain-based view of addiction as some people wrongly think that it somehow releases the addicts from responsibility point of view, for their own behaviour. However in spite of this belief, the biological and behavioural explanations are not only an alternative way to understand this phenomenon, they are in fact an incorporate part of the whole picture.

continue reading Drug Addiction or Disease