College students who take stimulants such as Adderall to get an academic edge might be setting themselves up unknowingly to a vicious cycle of substance abuse and addiction.
Articles on Addiction
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What exactly is addiction? What role, if any, does choice play? And if addiction involves choice, how can we call it a “brain disease,” with its implications of involuntariness?
We don’t know enough about the people who use painkillers non-medically to make the judgement that there is a natural transition from legal to illicit drug use.
Many of us are becoming addicted to social media, and it’s having a negative impact on our lives. Here are some tips to help you take back control.
Changing drugs laws can have some very unexpected consequences.
Addicted to the internet? Perhaps not …
We are witnessing widespread abuse of legal, prescribed drugs that, while structurally similar to illicit opioids such as heroin, are used for sound medical practices. So how did we get here?
There are scores of reasons why people get hooked on drugs. But governments play a key role, too.
TV networks and streaming services are encouraging viewers to binge-watch their favorite shows. But findings from a recent study point to a potential public health concern.
Drugs, coffee, television – they can all be described as ‘addictive’. But when do they become a problem?
Be careful: many of us have tried at least two of them.
Engineered to exploit human compulsions, the Internet competes for our attention, while teaching us to need it.
Internet addiction has the same symptoms as any substance abuse disorder. Trying to stop its use can lead to moodiness or even depression.
A sea change in pain treatment helped create the opioid abuse epidemic, and another sea change in how doctors view chronic pain could help curb it.
Dopamine: a powerful substance that is much more than just a pleasure chemical.
Harm minimisation policies should seek to reduce the poker machine gambling of everyone, not just problem gamblers.
Why have the demographics of heroin use changed so much? For that, we can look to dramatic increase in prescriptions for opioid painkillers, such as Oxycontin or Vicodin.
The basic characteristics of pokies, combined with constantly refined game features, provide a stimulus to the brain that, in many cases, leads to a form of addiction.
Stigma toward heroin use might prevent a lot of people from using the drug, but these attitudes don’t help people who are dependent.
The way you take a drug affects how much of it gets to your brain, and how rapidly drug levels rise and fall.
Top contributors
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Honorary Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, University of York
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Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University
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Director of the International Gaming Research Unit and Professor of Behavioural Addiction, Nottingham Trent University
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Professor in Substance Use, Liverpool John Moores University
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Director, Turning Point and Monash Addiction Research Centre, Monash University
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Professor in Criminology, Loughborough University
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Addiction Psychiatrist, Associate Professor, Monash University
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Emeritus Professor, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland
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Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer and Research Supervisor, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney
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Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Policy, UMass Amherst
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Researcher, Digital Wellbeing, Western Sydney University
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Associate Professor of Sociology, Bentley University
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Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney
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Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Bayes Business School, City St George's, University of London
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Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University