Signs Of Addiction Research Articles

The Opioid Epidemic: What Pakistan can Learn from the US

The Opioid Epidemic: What Pakistan can Learn from the US

The Meaning of Family in Fighting the Pathological Habit of Smoking Electronic Cigarettes

Abstract Among the important pathological phenomena for our contemporary social life, among others, workaholism, internetoholism, addiction to mobile phones as well as drug addiction are listed. Smoking electronic cigarettes should also be regarded as an element of the phenomena exhibiting signs of addiction. Currently there are no formal restrictions that would not allow their use in public places. Their smoking is therefore dependent on the education and personal culture. Research conducted by the author of this paper confirms that the most important transmitter of culture is still the immediate family. In families then one should seek an ally in education to ensure that electronic cigarettes should not be smoked in public areas. The conclusion is therefore that education regarding treatment of electronic cigarettes as something bad and inappropriate should also cover the parents.

Notions of Video Game Addiction and Their Relation to Self-Reported Addiction Among Players of World of Warcraft

In this study, 438 players of the online video game, World of Warcraft, completed a survey about video game addiction and answered an open-ended question about behaviors they considered characteristic of video game addiction. Responses were coded and correlated with players’ self-reports of being addicted to games and scores on a modified video game addiction scale. The behaviors most frequently mentioned as characteristic of addiction included playing a lot and games’ interfering with other activities, especially socializing or work. Few players mentioned such signs of addiction as withdrawal symptoms or tolerance, and some thought it was not possible to become addicted to video games. Self-reported addiction to video games correlated positively with perceptions that video game addiction involved playing a lot or playing to escape problems, and correlated negatively with perceptions that addiction involved games’ interfering with other activities or not being able to stop play. Implications for assessment are discussed.

Des conduites à risques aux assuétudes comportementales : le trouble addictif au danger

Several studies show that playing a dangerous sport has a direct influence on the emotional state of athletes. Engaging in such behaviour would not only reduce negative affect but also produce a positive affect that does not equate only relief but an “extraordinary experienced”. Notwithstanding the unique qualities of these sports, it is likely that some subclinical individual characteristics such as sensation seeking, emotional–behavioural deregulation can promote a self-reinforcement of these practices or even facilitated the installation of an addictive tendency. Risk and intense sensation are also at the heart of dangerous games. Four points seem to motivate these practices: risk-taking, intensity, loss of consciousness, and the “wake survival”. In addition, practitioners are characterized by a more severe depressive symptomatology than non-practitioners. Some of these depressive elements are probably anterior to the game, but it is also possible that others are the consequence; this has the effect of strengthening the emotional–behavioural addiction. Through these extreme sports and games of non-oxygenation, the level of danger appears to be a real source of excitement. Playing with death is going to give inner magnitude to the experience. Without the sense of risk, the practice of the activity would not make sense. Psychological functioning of these sports and these “players” is based on the need to be stimulated, to be excited by the risk or even the fear in order to be appeased. Also, treat the danger, but also and mainly deal with emotions. The danger as a means of activation may fill in a toxic function of emotional and behavioural self-regulation including a risk that this excitation will self-sustained. Indeed, some of these athletes and these “players” increase their practice and push the safety threshold by adopting behaviours more and more risky in order to experiment higher sensations. When some semiological clues characterize the practice of risky activities like the repetition of a dangerous situation, loss of control, the invasion of the psychic life, time spent at the expense of social, family and school activities… they may reflect a real addiction to danger. It therefore becomes necessary for the clinician and the researcher to identify all these prodromal symptoms and signs of addiction. Criteria for the diagnosis of Addictive Disorder to Danger are proposed and discussed.

Natural addiction: a behavioral and circuit model based on sugar addiction in rats.

The distinction between natural addiction and drug addiction is interesting from many points of view, including scientific and medical perspectives. "Natural addictions" are those based on activation of a physiobehavioral system, such as the one that controls metabolism, foraging, and eating to achieve energy balance. "Drug addictions" activate many systems based on their pharmacology. This review discusses the following questions: (1) When does food produce a natural addiction? Sugar causes signs of addiction if the scheduling conditions are appropriate to cause binge eating. (2) Why does addictive-like behavior result? Bingeing on a 10% sucrose solution repeatedly releases dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, and it delays the release of acetylcholine, thereby postponing satiety. Opioid involvement is shown by withdrawal caused by naloxone or food deprivation. Bingeing, withdrawal, and abstinence-induced motivation are described as the basis for a vicious cycle leading to excessive eating. (3) Which foods can lead to natural addiction? A variety of sugars, saccharin, and sham feeding are compared with bingeing on high-fat diets, which seem to lack sugar's opioid-withdrawal characteristic. (4) How does natural food addiction relate to obesity? Low basal dopamine may be a common factor, leading to "eating for dopamine." (5) In a neural model, the accumbens is depicted as having separate GABA output pathways for approach and avoidance, both controlled by dopamine and acetylcholine. These outputs, in turn, control lateral hypothalamic glutamate release, which starts a meal, and GABA release, which stops it.

Just say NO to equifinality

Received 19 April 2007 Accepted 24 April 2007 Beven’s (2006) commentary on the uncertainty in hydrological modelling seems to have touched a bit of a nerve in the hydrological community. However, while there may be different definitions for uncertainty (Montanari, 2007), different approaches to quantifying it (Todini and Mantovan, in press), and calls for more effort in evaluating it (Hall et al., 2007), there is no denial that uncertainty is an inherent and unwelcome attribute of all predictions. This conversation about adapting to the rude reality of uncertainty could be misconstrued as an admission that we have reached a limit in hydrology, where improvements in the value of our predictions are less a function of theoretical advances or of further field observations and experimentation and more a function of advances in numeric methods or computing horsepower. Furthermore, young hydrologists overhearing this discussion may be excused if they mistook the reaction to Beven’s call for strategically advancing the science and ethics of hydrology as an argument for devising ever more elegant and sophisticated apologies for shortcomings in our hydrological predictions. This current focus on how to maximize the usefulness of models in the context of uncertainty is pragmatic. However, optimizing the present value of model output does not preclude a vision of the future where models are not only useful but are also truthful. Uncertainty is frustrating hydrologists in a way that is similar to the way that microbes frustrated medical science before the discovery of antibiotics. We need to find ways to move beyond mere treatment of symptoms to resolution of underlying pathologies. Like most hydrologists, I believed that I used parameters responsibly. I discovered my addiction to poorly defined parameter ranges almost by accident. A colleague wrote an R script, which made it easy to produce dotty-plots of my calibrations showing parameter identifiability. My first reaction was denial, that there must be a problem with the objective function, but gradually I have come to the realization that I have a history of parameter-abuse. Accepting that I suffer from equifinality was the first step on the long road to recovery. The signs of addiction are subtle but recognizable. Hydrographs that are just a little too good, where the uncertainty in model predictions is less than the uncertainty in the driving force data. Axis-scaling that is a little too compressed, hiding inconsistencies in the model fit. You may recognize these symptoms in your colleagues but deny that you too, keep a flask of parameter ranges in a desk drawer that you sip generously from when faced with a difficult hydrograph. The wrack and ruin of parameter abuse is wide-spread. We need to be particularly concerned about the effect our example has on young hydrologists who are just now trying to learn how to calibrate responsibly. We need to provide alternatives to parameter abuse. A priori parameter identification (e.g. Wagener and Wheater, 2006) and development of observation systems that will support increased understanding and the development and testing of hydrologic theories and organizing principles (e.g. McDonnell et al., 2007) are the basis for the first of the four-pillars approach of Prevention, Treatment, Harm

What can we do in secondary prevention of cigarette smoking?

Cigarette smoking kills about six million smokers per year worldwide, and the cigarette has become a symbol of threat to mankind, particularly in industrialized countries. Tobacco smoking causes signs of addiction due to nicotine, but it is the inhaled and exhaled smoke that causes damage to health if cigarette smoking is continued for one or more decades. It is very difficult to attain a high efficacy of stopping smoking using methods of primary prevention in children and young adults. Secondary and tertiary prevention methods use medical and psychological support to the smoker (behavioural and aversion therapy) as well as medical advice in combination with drugs such as nicotine replacement or bupropion. Using a combination of these methods can increase effectiveness up to 45%. Use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in combination with medical advice is the method of smoking cessation recommended by the World Health Organization. Bupropion causes several severe side effects which are not observed with NRT. This article reviews various NRT formulations, including chewing gum, patch, nasal spray, tablet and inhaler, and our experience of using NRT in medical practice, such as adverse events, withdrawal symptoms and the efficacy of NRT in patients with coronary heart disease (angina pectoris, cardiac arrhythmias, etc.), are briefly mentioned. Overall, we need greater efforts in practising primary and secondary prevention among current and future physicians to solve the health problems associated with tobacco use in many nations.

An argument for early and appropriate intervention with juvenile sexual offenders

As interest and concern regarding children and young people who sexually victimise other children continue to grow, common questions asked in this context relate to whether or not such behaviour constitutes a developmental phase. Are children exhibiting sexually aggressive behaviour or merely experimenting? Will they grow out of it? Should we intervene? Have they been abused and, if so, is there a link? This article reviews what is known about juvenile offenders, their offence characteristics and offence dynamics. A number of theoretical models are presented which can be used to explore the significance of sexually aggressive behaviour and. the processes informing such behaviour. Finkelhor's (1984) ‘Four Pre‐conditions’ Finkelhor and Browne's (1986) ‘Four Traumagenic Dynamics’ Carnes (1983) ‘Signs of Addiction’ Ryan and Lane's (1991) ‘Sexual Abuse Cycle’, and Rasmussen, Burton and Christopherson's (1992) ‘Trauma Outcome Process’. Utilising ‘guidelines for assessment’ developed by Groth and Lorendo (1981), the case history of an adult offender is used to highlight some of the published findings and to illustrate the importance of comprehensive assessment.

A Biomedical and Feminist Perspective on Women's Experiences with Weight Management

Weight concerns and dieting have become so normative for U.S. women that weight is the lens through which experience is viewed. The obsession with weight and dieting among women is considered by feminists to be one result of the oppression by women resulting from questionable weight standards and weight control programs that foster a view of overweight as a sign of addiction and lack of control. Feminist critique is used to deconstruct both the literature related to weight standards and health and the research on weight loss/weight management. Feminist and ethnographic methods are used to describe successful and unsuccessful experiences with weight management of 20 Euro-American women who had participated in a 1985 weight study and agreed to be reinterviewed. Success at weight management was examined from a biomedical perspective using Body Mass Index (BMI) norms and from a feminist perspective using participants' subjective definitions of success. Based upon BMI, only 8 members of the study group were defined as successful, whereas based upon the women's perspectives, 11 members were successful. Participants' definitions of successful weight management were divergent from biomedical definitions and could be categorized into three perspectives: biomedical, reframed normal weight, and holistic. Women who ascribed to the biomedical definition of success embodied the cultural ideal of thinness by adhering to an underweight weight norm. Participants using the reframed normal weight definition of success rejected biomedical weight norms and created their own weight norms. The holistic perspective on success involved the use of a broader, health-focused definition of successful weight management and offers some directions for revising current health promotion care relative to weight.