According to the Center for Addition & Mental Health (CAMH), online interventions can be effective for alcohol addiction.

In the first evaluation of its kind, CAMH, Canada’s premier research center for addiction and substance abuse, determined that online resources help to change problematic or dangerous drinking behaviours, and be greatly beneficial to public health.

In a recent survey, CAMH found that approximately 80% of problem drinkers have Internet access, a third of whom indicated that they would seek intervention help online.

Upon launching CheckYourDrinking.net, a short web-based intervention service, CAMH found that when problem drinkers, those at risk of alcohol addiction, were given access to the online screener, they reduced their consumption of alcohol by 30%, or six to seven drinks a week.

The reduction in alcohol consumption was also sustained at both the three-month and six-month follow up.

Results, published in Addiction, are, according to CAMH, comparable to face-to-face intervention services.

CheckYourDrinking.net leads to an anonymous online survey, which provides a comprehensive report on your alcohol use habits. The report compares your intake against the national average, lists the health and physical risks associated with your drinking habits, the amount of money spent in the last 12 months, as well as the number of calories and pounds associated with your alcohol intake.

Finally, it calculates the number of hours you’ve spent over the last year under the influence of alcohol and provides you with safer drinking guidelines allowing users to evaluate and judge their or their loved one’s drinking safely and privately.

CAMH hopes that the online resource will reduce alcohol consumption and help problem drinkers to seek out appropriate and necessary alcohol addiction treatment.

CheckYourDrinking.net hopes to fill a gap in alcohol addiction intervention services currently available. Seeking professional help, such as a residential addiction treatment center, is always optimum. However, there are often barriers, including the stigma of alcohol addiction and access to resources.

For a great majority of alcohol addicts, they have yet to recognize or acknowledge that their drinking has become a problem. Alcohol addiction can be hard to reconcile for both the functioning alcoholic and the family—there is always an excuse and justification for the excessive drinking. Thus, addiction treatment is left on the wayside.

A discreet, anonymous resource that provides a dry assessment of behaviour, without judgement, can be the impetus needed.

If you or your loved one is having difficulty with alcohol addiction , please call one of our experienced cousellors today. 1-866-330-9818

Source: ScienceDaily

From the January 10th 2009 issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter, research has found that women find it harder than men to recover from addiction.

Women, research shows, tend to progress more quickly from use to dependency and addiction, more quickly develop medical or social consequences from their addiction, and are more susceptible to relapse after a period of sobriety.

The reasons for the gender difference, on the other hand, are not yet clear.

However, researchers have found that a woman’s menstrual cycle appears to affect the craving and use of some illicit drugs. Studies have shown that during the luteal phase, quitting cocaine appears more difficult and less successful, whereas it is easier during the follicular phase. Hormonal fluctuations may, researchers have concluded, increase cravings for cocaine, as well as nicotine, affecting the initial phase of recovering from a cocaine addiction.

Conversely, men are more likely to be afflicted by addiction than women. For example, in the 2008 US National Survey on Drug Use and Health, it was found that 11.5% of males 12 years and older had a substance abuse or addiction problem, compared to 6.4% of females.

Women and Addiction Treatment Programs 
Researchers concluded that women are less likely to enter an addiction treatment program, but once there, are just as likely as men to recover.

Gender differences can and should, on the other hand, affect addiction treatment. Traditional addiction treatment programs were developed based on research on men. According to the Harvard Mental Health Letter, until the early 1990s, addiction research focused primarily on men. Now, however, agencies require federally funded studies to enroll more women.

Now there is a growing body of evidence that female addicts face challenges that male addicts simply don’t, especially in terms of familial responsibilities. The Harvard Mental Health Letter’s authors recommend a better appreciation of these gender differences in order to help women avoid the pitfalls of addiction, including relapse.

Source: The Harvard Mental Health Letter
Photo credit: Nevit Dilmen courtesy of Wikipedia

According to addiction workers, Winnipeg is seeing a dramatic rise in heroin use amongst inner-city drug users—a concerning trend.

Heroin use has always been extremely low in Manitoba, with abuse rates near zero. However recently, the province is seeing a trend in both increased heroin use and intravenous-drug users in the Winnipeg core.

Concerned health workers say that the trend means heightened risks of overdose, Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS among the region’s intravenous drug users.

Manitoba’s addiction workers are reporting:

• A rise in the number of opiate addictions in the last 12 months, most notably in the prescription painkiller Oxycontin
• A drastic increase in the number of heroin users in the last year

Opiate addiction started with middle-class suburban youth, but has since spread to the inner city. Meanwhile, the method of use has gone from snorting the drugs in powder form to injection.

Manitoba is seeing an increase in addiction and use of opiates of all kinds—not simply heroin, but other opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin and fentanyl.

As well, there seems to be an overall increase in intravenous drug use, where drugs that aren’t traditionally consider an intravenous drug, like fentanyl, are being used as such. It seems, reports one drug addiction worker, that Manitoban drug addicts are experimenting, possibly due to the relatively low availability of these drugs.

Furthermore, the province is experiencing a shortage of treatment spaces to meet this increased demand. There is currently anywhere from a three to 12-month wait for methadone treatment, a common addiction treatment method for opioid addiction from heroin to Oxycontin, with 147 individuals already on the wait list.

Some addiction workers fear the results of a province-wide systematic crackdown on prescription opiate use.

Some are asking if the government cracks down on the drugs, making them no longer as easily available or more risky to seek out, will these addicts turn to heroin to get their fix?

Does this perhaps already help to explain the current increase in heroin’s popularity?

Source: Winnipeg Free Press

Scientists in the UK are working on a synthetic alcohol to substitute alcohol, its negative effects, and consequences.

Alcohol is quickly becoming a top priority for the UK, a country synonymous with pubs and pints. Recently the NHS, the UK’s health department, released its annual study, Statistics on Alcohol: England, 2009, and found that there was more than 80,000 alcohol-related hospitalizations in 2007-08 and more than 6,500 alcohol-attributed deaths.

Now, synthetic alcohol is currently being developed by a team of scientists at the Imperial College London, led by Professor David Nutt.

Prof. Nutt is searching for a way to drink without getting drunk, where one could get and remain pleasantly and mildly inebriated and nothing more; where one could enjoy going out for a few pints without negatively impacting one’s health and society.

And what’s more, he envisions a world where one could simply pop a pill and be instantly sobered, able to drive home or continue on with the day.

The substitute alcohol mimics the feelings of slight inebriation, the “buzz”, without the drunkenness or hangover. What’s more, researchers are suggesting that this new alcohol could essentially be switched off with an instantaneous antidote pill.

The synthetic alcohol works like alcohol in the brain, targeting the same areas of the brain that triggers the feelings of wellbeing and relaxation. However, it does not affect the other areas of the brain—those that control mood swings and lead to addiction.

The synthetic alcohol is also, researchers say, much easier to flush from the body.

Because the synthetic alcohol is so focused in its effects on the brain, they argue, it can be easily controlled and even switched off instantly with the popping of a pill—one that renders the drinker immediately sober.

Synthetic alcohol, currently, is manufactured from benzodiazepines, specifically diazepam, the main ingredient in Valium.

Benzodiazepines, or benzos, are a family of prescription drugs. Most commonly known among them are Xanax, Rivotril, Valium, and Ativan. Benzos are depressants, reducing activity in parts of the brain resulting in a calming effect.

They are most commonly used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders, but have also been known to be used as a muscle relaxant and to treat alcohol withdrawal. Benzos have become safe and effective replacements for barbiturates, another family of highly addictive sedatives, although physical and psychological dependence remains a risk.

With the physical addiction, withdrawal symptoms will appear if the drug is stopped drastically and quickly. With the psychological addiction, a person will be compelled to seek out and use the drug despite no longer feeling its physical effects.

Benzo-derived synthetic alcohol, therefore, could be very controversial on many fronts. Although it appears to “cure” society’s ailments—the drunkenness, impaired driving, alcohol-related violence, alcohol-attributed deaths, and so on—it does not seem to take into account the individual’s ailments—the alcohol addiction.

Furthermore, many of these societal ailments are often the result of the individual’s addiction and substance abuse, neither of which is addressed by the “solution”. There needs to be consideration of the individual and an assessment of what drives their behaviour—what drives them to alcohol, where does the seeking derive from, what is at the root of consistent overuse or drunkenness. And with that some form alcohol addiction treatment.

A clinical trial for the alcohol substitute has yet to be sponsored, nor have any of the traditional alcohol makers shown any interest in the product, according to Professor Nutt.

Source: The Telegraph