Social and Medical Aspects of Drug Abuse

The phenomenon of drug abuse is part of the human experience that extends as far back in time as recorded history exists. Today, however, it has a new and much greater dramatic urgency. The reasons for this are multiple and worrisome. Last year, of the total of approximately 1.9 million total deaths that occurred in the United States, a conservative estimate is that more than one-quarter were premature deaths due to the addictive disorders. These include over 300,000 deaths related to cigarette smoking, which represents in many respects the prototypic addiction in this country; over 200,000 deaths related to alcohol, and many more related to mUltiple other drugs-licit and illicit-that are abused in this society. Twenty-five years ago, drug use was essentially unknown in our school age population. In 1960, a tragic increase of drug use in our young people began, so that by 1978 more high school seniors were current users of marijuana than of cigarettes. Despite the fact that the use of most drugs by high school populations appears to have peaked in the late 1970s and to be decreasing at the present time, most experts still believe that drug use by American young people represents the highest level of that found in any Western developed country. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Relationship of Biological Influences on the Subjective States of Addicts....Pages 1-7 Opiate Receptors and Opioid Peptides: Are They Involved in Drug Addiction?....Pages 9-20 Applications of Human Behavioral Pharmacology to the Problems of Drug Addicts: A Brief Review....Pages 21-27 Conditioned Taste Aversions and the Regulation of Drug-Taking Behavior....Pages 29-49 Behavior in Excess: An Examination of the Volitional Disorders....Pages 51-58 Maintenance of Behavior by “Schedules”: An Unfamiliar Contribution to Maintenance of Abuses....Pages 59-66 Some Endocrine and Immunological Observations In Heroin and Methadone Maintained Opioid Addicts....Pages 67-75 Multiple Opiate Receptors....Pages 77-88 Behavioral Factors in Drug Dependence and Withdrawal: A Discussion....Pages 89-92 Epidemiology of the Current Heroin Crisis....Pages 93-99 Empirical Patterns of Heroin Consumption Among Selected Street Heroin Users....Pages 101-123 Social Stress and Drug Abuse....Pages 125-133 Psychiatric Disorders in Treated Opiate Addicts....Pages 135-144 Psychiatric Disorders in Treated Addicts: Discussion....Pages 145-155 Naltrexone: Current Clinical Investigations....Pages 157-167 Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutic Use of the Narcotic Antagonist: Naltrexone....Pages 169-183 Detoxification from Methadone Maintenance: Current and Innovative Approaches....Pages 185-196 Clonidine and Lofexidine: New Nonopiate Treatments for Opiate Withdrawal....Pages 197-204 The Swedish Methadone Maintenance Program....Pages 205-213 The Odyssey House Treatment Method....Pages 215-228 Research Design, Drug Use, and Deaths: Cross Study Comparisons....Pages 229-235 Back Matter....Pages 237-244