Middle-aged women experienced increases in alcohol-related health complications during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new research led by a University of Pittsburgh physician-scientist and published today in JAMA Health ...
Apr 12, 2024
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In recent years, the popularity of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy has skyrocketed. While this new class of drugs, called GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs, are approved for use in diabetes and for weight loss, researchers have ...
Apr 11, 2024
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Using data from a top video game streaming service, Puneet Manchanda, Isadore and Leon Winkelman Professor of Marketing, and Ph.D. student Bruno Castelo Branco have challenged preconceived notions of high addiction rates ...
Apr 8, 2024
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A test to gauge if it's safe to prescribe a patient an addictive opioid may have been approved too soon by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, claims a letter sent to the agency by a group of experts.
Apr 5, 2024
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Ever want to scream during a particularly bad day, but then manage not to? Thank the human brain and how it regulates emotions, which can be critical for navigating everyday life. As we perceive events unfolding around us, ...
Apr 3, 2024
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Smoking weed will soon be legal for over-18s in Germany, but addiction experts are calling for more prevention efforts to ensure young people are protected from the dangers of cannabis use.
Mar 30, 2024
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Today, neurostimulation is used to treat a variety of human disorders, including Parkinson's disease, tremor, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome. A Mayo Clinic neurosurgeon and his colleagues believe one ...
Mar 15, 2024
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Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with suicide mortality, with a similar association seen across the sexes, according to a review and meta-analysis published online March 12 in JAMA Network Open.
Mar 13, 2024
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A major international study led by a Canadian psychologist sheds light on a hidden phenomenon: how problematic use of pornography is affecting people in different parts of the world, across various genders and sexual orientations.
Mar 4, 2024
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Although Dry January is behind us, the non-alcoholic beverage trend is showing no signs of slowing. Sales of alcohol alternatives are growing 20% every year.
Mar 1, 2024
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The term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence, such as: drug addiction (e.g. alcoholism), video game addiction, crime, money, work addiction, compulsive overeating, problem gambling, computer addiction, nicotine addiction, pornography addiction, etc.
In medical terminology, an addiction is a chronic neurobiologic disorder that has genetic, psychosocial, and environmental dimensions and is characterized by one of the following: the continued use of a substance despite its detrimental effects, impaired control over the use of a drug (compulsive behavior), and preocupation with a drug's use for non-therapeutic purposes (i.e. craving the drug). Addiction is often accompanied the presence of deviant behaviors (for instance stealing money and forging prescriptions) that are used to obtain a drug.
Tolerance to a drug and physical dependence are not defining characteristics of addiction, although they typically accompany addiction to certain drugs. Tolerance is a pharmacologic phenomenon where the dose of a medication needs to be continually increase in order to maintain its desired effects. For instance, individuals with severe chronic pain taking opiate medications (like morphine) will need to continually increase the dose in order to maintain the drug's analgesic (pain-relieving) effects. Physical dependence is also a pharmacologic property and means that if a certain drug is abruptly discontinued, an individual will experience certain characteristic withdrawal signs and symptoms. Many drugs used for therapeutic purposes produce withdrawal symptoms when abruptly stopped, for instance oral steroids, certain antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and opiates.
However, common usage of the term addiction has spread to include psychological dependence. In this context, the term is used in drug addiction and substance abuse problems, but also refers to behaviors that are not generally recognized by the medical community as problems of addiction, such as compulsive overeating.
The term addiction is also sometimes applied to compulsions that are not substance-related, such as problem gambling and computer addiction. In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
