Addiction Treatment Forum reports on substance abuse news of interest to opioid treatment programs and patients in methadone maintenance treatment.
Infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge that present complex information quickly and clearly. This compilation of infographics on addiction include:
Source: ScientificAmerican.com – April 20, 2012
So reliably relaxing are the effects of benzodiazepines that SAMHSA’s director of substance-abuse treatment, H. Westley Clark, says they’ve gained a reputation as “alcohol in a pill.” And their consumption can be equally informal. Just as friends pour wine for friends in times of crisis, so too do doctors, moved by the angst of their patients, “have sympathy and prescribe more,” says Clark. There are a lot more benzos circulating these days, and a lot more sharing.
http://nymag.com/news/features/xanax-2012-3/
Source: New York Magazine – March 18, 2012
The use of benzodiazepines among people who use illicit drugs is complex as reasons for use are not always straightforward and use does not necessarily infer abuse. On the other hand, higher dosing than prescribed is common among drug users (Nielsen et al. 2008) and use in combination with drugs such as heroin and alcohol is likely to promote adverse effects.
Source: McIlwraith, F., Hickey, S., and Alati, R. (April 2012). Benzodiazepine update: alprazolam and other benzodiazepine use among people who inject drugs. IDRS Drug Trends Bulletin April 2012, Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, The University of New South Wales.
Individuals suffering from mood and anxiety disorders such as bipolar, panic and major depressive disorders may be more likely to abuse opioids, according to a new study led by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who found that such disorders are highly associated with nonmedical prescription opioid use. The results are featured in a recent issue of the Journal of Psychological Medicine.
For the study, researchers examined individuals with mood and anxiety disorders and their association with nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid disorder.
“Lifetime nonmedical prescription opioid use was associated with the incidence of any mood disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and all anxiety disorders. Nonmedical opioid-use disorder due to nonmedical prescription opioid use was associated with any mood disorder, any anxiety disorder, as well as with several incident mood disorders and anxiety disorders,” said Silvia Martins, lead author of the study and an associate scientist in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health.
“However, there is also evidence that the association works the other way, too,” she said. “Increased risk of incident opioid disorder due to nonmedical use occurred among study participants with baseline mood disorders, major depressive disorder, dysthymia and panic disorder, reinforcing our finding that participants with mood disorders might use opioids nonmedically to alleviate their mood symptoms. Early identification and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders might reduce the risk for self-medication with prescription opioids and the risk of future development of an opioid-use disorder.”
Using data from the National Epidemiologic Study on Alcohol and Related Conditions, a longitudinal face-to-face survey of individuals ages 18 years and older between 2001–2002 and 2004–2005, researchers assessed participants for a history of psychiatric disorders.
Nonmedical use of prescription opioids was defined to participants as using a prescription opioid without a prescription or in greater amounts more often or longer than prescribed or for a reason other than a doctor’s instruction to use them. Logistic regression was used to determine whether lifetime nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid disorders due to this use predicted incident mood and anxiety disorders and the reverse. Researchers say they believe that these findings provide support for a bidirectional pathway between nonmedical prescription opioid use and opioid-use disorder due to nonmedical use and several mood and anxiety disorders.
Carla Storr, author of the study and an adjunct professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health, said, “With the current increased use of nonmedical prescription drugs, especially among adolescents, the association with future psychopathology is of great concern. Using opioids, or even withdrawal from opioids, might precipitate anxiety disorders, suggesting that there is a subgroup of people who are vulnerable to future development of anxiety disorders.” Individuals using prescription opioids need to be closely monitored not only for the possibility of engaging in nonmedical use but also for the development of co-morbid psychiatric disorders, she said.
Added Martins, “Additional studies are needed to examine the relationship between nonmedical prescription opioid use and prescription opioid-use disorder with mood and anxiety disorders since they could co-occur due to shared genetic or environmental risk factors.”
The study was written by Martins, M.C. Fenton, K.M. Keyes, C. Blanco, H. Zhu and Storr.
Source: John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health – March 5, 2012
Prescription drugs and alcohol can be a dangerous combination, Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse says. Painkillers and booze are perhaps the worst to mix, because both slow breathing by different mechanisms and inhibit the coughing reflex, creating “a double-whammy effect,” she says, that can stop breathing altogether. Alcohol also interacts with anti-anxiety drugs (including Xanax), antipsychotics, antidepressants, sleep medications and muscle relaxants—intensifying the drugs’ sedative effects, causing drowsiness and dizziness, and making falls and accidents more likely.
Source: ScientificAmerican.com – February 24, 2012
Because of the clamor for the drug, and concern over the striking number of overdoses involving Xanax in Kentucky and across the country, Seven Counties Services, Inc. took an unusual step— its doctors stopped writing new prescriptions for Xanax and its generic version, alprazolam, in April and plan to wean patients off it completely by year’s end.
The experiment will be closely watched in a state that has wrestled with widespread prescription drug abuse for more than a decade and is grasping for solutions as it claims more lives by the week. While Kentucky and other states have focused largely on narcotic painkiller addiction, experts say that benzodiazepines, the class of sedatives that includes Xanax, are also widely misused or abused, often with grim consequences.
Source: The New York Times – September 14, 2011
The number of patients admitted to substance abuse treatment who report benzodiazepine abuse tripled from 1998 to 2008, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reported in June. In 1998, benzodiazepines were involved—not necessarily as the primary drug of abuse—in 22,400 admissions. Ten years later, this number had grown to 60,200.
Benzodiazepines were rarely the only drug used, or even the primary drug. In 82.1 percent of the cases, benzodiazepines were the secondary drug of abuse, with opioids (54 percent) usually the primary drug—a pattern that roughly held true for nearly every age group except adolescents and those aged 45 and older (see chart).
One major public health concern with multiple drug abuse is the risk of overdose. The SAMHSA report notes that “abuse of benzodiazepines in combination with other substances can have severe and sometimes fatal consequences.”
The report, based on the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS), was released by SAMHSA in June 2011. The report collects information from providers on the primary substance of abuse, and up to two additional substances, at admission to treatment.
The TEDS Report, Substance Abuse Treatment Admissions for Abuse of Benzodiazepines, can be found at: http://atforum.com/addiction-resources/documents/TEDS028BenzoAdmissions.pdf.
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