Drug abuse affects virtually everyone in our society directly or indirectly. Seventy million adult Americans have used illegal drugs at some time in their lives. Drug abuse is now the single largest avenue in this country for the transmission of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis.
Addiction is compulsive, uncontrollable drug abuse in the face of negative consequences: losing one's job, family, friends, and health. Seventy percent of Federal and state prisoners are addicted to drugs.
Research has revealed how drug abuse causes both short-term and long-term changes in brain function. These long-term brain changes are visible to scientists who can "see" what is going on in the brain with new scanning techniques. These changes make it nearly impossible for someone addicted to drugs to stop using them on their own; they need to get treatment.
In a lecture at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), stressed that researchers have shown that there are effective treatments that can help people stop their addiction and prevent them from using drugs again. However, he said, these treatments must be made available to the fullest extent possible to those who need them and must be matched to the individual. Also, the treatments must address addiction as both a disease--in which the biology of the brain has changed--and as a behavioral disorder--which is greatly influenced by a person's surroundings. Because drug abuse is a chronic disease, treatment must often be long term to be effective.
One of the main goals in fighting drug abuse is to make sure that young people never start using drugs. Dr. Leshner pointed out that we now have programs based on research findings that can prevent drug use in children and adolescents. In particular, parents need to make it clear to their children that drug use is never all right. Moreover, research has laid out guiding principles that should be used in developing new effective prevention programs.--an NIH HEALTHWise report, July 1997
The brains of people addicted to drugs are different from those of non-drug-users. Addiction is not just a lot of drug use. Addiction results from a lot of drug use, but after you've taken drugs for awhile, you may reach a point where you can no longer control your craving for drugs; it is as if a switch has been flipped in the brain that cannot be flipped back. You need professional treatment to overcome these brain changes and stop returning to drugs. Whether or not a person will become addicted--and how fast and strongly--depends on many things, including his or her surroundings and personal history, what types of drugs are involved, and the way that person's body and brain respond to drugs. There are effective treatments for drug abuse and for drug addiction. NIDA supports research on drug abuse and addiction. NIDA also has a wide variety of free publications on drug use and prevention. Parents may be particularly interested in materials aimed at the young, for example, the pamphlet "Marijuana: Facts for Teens." For information on NIDA and its publications, and to view on-line publications, the NIDA internet homepage address is http://www.nida.nih.gov/. To find out more about the materials available and to order printed publications, videos, and posters contact: National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information P.O. Box 2345 Rockville, MD 20847-2345 1-800-729-6686. For more information, reporters can contact Charlotte Armstrong Writer/editor, NIH phone: 301-496-8855 fax: 301-496-0019 Charlotte_Armstrong@nih.gov
Addiction is not just a lot of drug use. Addiction results from a lot of drug use, but after you've taken drugs for awhile, you may reach a point where you can no longer control your craving for drugs; it is as if a switch has been flipped in the brain that cannot be flipped back. You need professional treatment to overcome these brain changes and stop returning to drugs.
Whether or not a person will become addicted--and how fast and strongly--depends on many things, including his or her surroundings and personal history, what types of drugs are involved, and the way that person's body and brain respond to drugs.
There are effective treatments for drug abuse and for drug addiction.
NIDA supports research on drug abuse and addiction. NIDA also has a wide variety of free publications on drug use and prevention. Parents may be particularly interested in materials aimed at the young, for example, the pamphlet "Marijuana: Facts for Teens." For information on NIDA and its publications, and to view on-line publications, the NIDA internet homepage address is http://www.nida.nih.gov/. To find out more about the materials available and to order printed publications, videos, and posters contact:
National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information P.O. Box 2345 Rockville, MD 20847-2345 1-800-729-6686.
For more information, reporters can contact
Charlotte Armstrong Writer/editor, NIH phone: 301-496-8855 fax: 301-496-0019 Charlotte_Armstrong@nih.gov
