PHAR 562 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Nicotine Patch, Nicotine Gum, Addiction
12 Feb 2020
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Drug addiction: therapeutic avenues, pharmacotherapy, utility of animal models, smoking cessation. Drug problems are in part due to society. Bruce alexander: the currently dominant paradigm assumes that addiction is either an individual disease or an individual moral breach. Drug addiction might be higher in countries like usa (free-market economy), lower in countries like sweden (i. e. more prevalent in capitalist than communist/socialist countries) Old thought: promote total abstinence, treat withdrawal symptoms (detox: e. g. quitting alcohol cold-turkey withdrawal seizures. Current approach: focus on harm reduction & preventing relapse: e. g. switch from heroin to methadone, use clean needles, relapse rates are very high funded addiction treatment clinic (n=878) Rats in isolation consumed more morphine than rats in a colony. These would have impeded their ability to fight, have sex, participate in social cohesion : he even rejected the alternative explanation that isolated rats took more morphine in order to etc. relieve stress.
