Drug Addiction Essay Example for Free

Drug Addiction Essay Drug Addiction The topic that caught my attention when I was reading my choices was â€Å"Drug Addiction†. Drug addiction is something that should not be taken lightly by anyone who has a family member or friend with this issue. We often wonder how and what make people turn into being a drug addict. â€Å"Drug addiction is rooted in long-term adaptations within the brain that promotes escalating drug use, difficulty quitting, and relapse—all despite the awareness of negative consequences.† With that being said I have always wondered what keep a person going back to their addiction and why can’t they quit. When I read the article and it mention how drug addiction is rooted a light bulb clicked in my head. When something is rooted inside of you whether it is for good or bad it is hard to break. â€Å"It was previously hypothesized that addiction was caused in part of an imbalance between an impulsive system that governs appetitive motivation and is driven by immediate rewards on the one hand and a reflective system that regulate and control impulsive according to future pleasurable or aversive consequences.† With this study they were able to predict the hypothesis and see what causes addiction to happen in some cases. I think that the method used in order to see how people become an addict was efficient and it was very precise that made the validity of the experiment a success. It is important to make sure that your study is conducted in a manner that will give you a pretty accurate result when using different research methods. Also in the study they took a small sample size of addicts who quit smoking after a brain injury and they had a criteria that asked them some simple question and due to such a small sample size they were not able to get the laterality effects could not be verified statistically due to the small sample size like I mentioned earlier. The results of this study gave great evidence that insula is critical for psychological processes that maintain addiction to cigarette smoke. I have known people to have drug addiction and it just hurt your heart when you see them all strung out and can’t even help themselves. I have had family members and friends who have battled with this addiction. I want to research this addiction so that I can learn how a person can overcome this type of addiction. Any addiction is hard to break it is going to take a lot of will power from the addict in order for them to be set free of this addiction. You never know what could have pushed the addict into becoming a drug  addict. I want to be able to relate to an addict whether it is a friend, family member or just someone in general whom I would want to be able to help them overcome this addiction. Drug addiction is the most common addiction and I feel that if we get the proper research on how to give treatment to an addict then maybe t heir chances of becoming free will be greater. I just want to be able to talk with them and see what I can do to help them overcome this disease. That is why it is important that we take all necessary measures when it comes to us trying to aid a person who is addicted to drugs. Drug addiction is something that I want to do research so we can come up with a method that can slow it down. I know that it can never exist but we could at least work on slowing it down. In the studies that I chose we will be dealing with how addicts can be treated to prescription pain medication. I hear some people talk about taking other people medication because they like the way it makes them feel and they become addicted to it. Addiction is bad whether it is drugs, food and or alcohol we all know how serious this can be to anyone. In this is article they are launching their large scale national study evaluating a treatment for addiction to prescription drugs. â€Å"NIDA’s National Drug Abuse Treatments Clinical Trials Network (CTN) is conduct ing the multi-site study known as the Prescription Opiate Addiction Treatment Study (POATS).† â€Å"This study is in response to the growing national problem of prescription drug abuse in this country. According to the 2005 National Survey on drug use and health the incidence of new nonmedical users of pain relievers is now at 2.2 million Americans aged 12 and older surpassing the number of new marijuana abusers (2.1million). In 2005, more than six million American’s reported current (in the past month) nonmedical use of prescription drugs – more than the number abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, and inhalants combined.† This clearly answers my question to how many people are addicted to prescription drugs versus to the other drugs. The data collected in this study shows that there are a lot of people addicted to prescription drugs and how it has increased and the results in this study show it. In this study the results showed that there were more people addicted to prescription drugs rather than your everyday drugs. I feel that this is giving everyone a clear view that prescription drugs that are for pain and can give you some kind of satisfaction can be a ddictive. This study covers a variety of areas like those addicted to painkillers and those who abuse painkillers due to nonmedical reasons. I found this study to be quite interesting because it will give us a general idea of the amount of people that are addicted to prescription drugs and those that take it for chronic pain and that are addicted. This study will enroll a total of 648 participants that will be carried out 11 sites around the country. The outcome of this study will be very efficient for all to know just how many people are suffering from being addicted to some type of drug. The second article let us know how much this disease is deeply rooted inside an addict’s brain. â€Å"Drug addiction is rooted in long-term adaptions within the brain that promotes escalating drug use, difficulty quitting, and relapse – all despite the awareness of negative consequences.† This article will answer my question as to why do addicts keep going back to that same drug trying to get the same high as the first time. In this study it will explain the role of the insula in drug addiction as well. I feel that all data collected from this article will be informative and the results of the study will be concise and easy to follow and understand. I just hope with my two studies that it will conform enough information about drug addiction to where it will give clarity to what steps we can take to stop this trend in drug addiction. When we look back at the studies done on this particular study you try and think back at all the methods that we have learned in this class. It really makes a difference when you read about a research design and now you are able to relate to the experimenter when you come across some of the studies. So far I think that the designs that the two studies I have written about couldn’t research it any better with the methods they have chosen. I came across another study entitled â€Å"Scientific and political challenges in North America’s first randomized controlled trial of heroin-assisted treatment of severe heroin addiction: Rationale and design of the NAOMI study.† This particular article consist of this study targeting long term opiod dependents who have tried treatments conveniently in the past that are not currently in treatment who currently inject heroin. Now the sample size was based off of the outcome of the response and the retention. There was said to be two primary variables in this study they were evaluated with an alpha threshold of 0.025 which determined about 114 evaluable patients per group which yielded about 80% power in order to  detect increase of 20% of retention and response rate amongst the experimental groups provided. I think with the methods that they used they will have a broader testing ground in order to determine if the treatments are helpful to those that are an addict. Th is study involves a meta-analysis of predictors of continued drug use during and after treatment of opiate addiction. In this study they used meta-analytic techniques in order to identify the risk factors that are given in this study. When it came to the design and measurements in this study it was a search of public literature that yielded 69 studies that reported some bivariate association between independent variables. I think when it comes to this type of research the clinicians and researchers try and make a way to prevent relapse and other issues that form when you become an addict. They want to try and come up with an intervention that will be able to help those that are in need. That’s why these studies are very important to them and taken very seriously. The studies in this research for meta- analysis were researched through computerized databases that is said to have indexed published scientific reports and many other sources in order to complete their research. I think as far as the methods that are being used couldn’t chose a better design to do There were also a total of six criteria’s that were met for the meta-analysis of this study. â€Å"The independent variable clearly specified a single patient –related construct, and not a conglomeration of multiple constructs. An example of a conglomeration is Suffet et.al’s (1978) â€Å"conventionality† variable that is based on four distinct constructs (level of heroin use intake to treatment, number of arrest, type of residence and employment). We excluded from consideration independent variables that referred to treatment program types, policies, practices, personal and setting.† This pretty much shows you the results and how they were able to determine if the treatment helped or not. In this study there were a total of 28 independent variables for which there was said to be two studies with the results on the relationship between the independent variable and continued drug use. This study has to do with cocaine addiction treatments to improve or reduce harm by (CATCH). This study is said to investigate possibilities and problems associated with pharmacological treatments. ‘The methods and designs used in this study by (CATCH) consist of three separate randomized controlled, open label, parallel group feasibility trials,  conducted at three separate addiction treatment institutes in the Netherlands. Patients are either new referral are already in treatment. With a total of 216 eligible outpatients are randomized using pre-randomization double-consent design and received either 12 weeks treatment with oral topiramate (n=36; Brijder Addiction Treatment, The Hague), oral modafinil (n=36; Arkin, Amsterdam), or oral dexamphetamine sustained release (n=36; Bouman GGZ, Rotterdam) as an add on to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), or receive a 12 week CBT only (controls n= 3 x 36).† With this design I am sure that they will come out with a pretty good analysis of if cocaine harms or improve those that are in treatment for this addiction. In this review it let us know up front that they are not going to be able to cover the whole clinical addiction arena or the parts dedicated to treatments. Although within this study there was a conflict of interest within the testing methods used inside this review. Personally when you are conducting a study on something with a broader view you will tend to have a conflict of interest with in your results. There are so many methods out there that you can use to conduct a study just depends on what you are trying to research. This is a different study and it aims to describe the derivation of recent status scores for the ASI. â€Å"The design was 118 ASI -6 recent status items were subjected to nonparametric item response theory (NIRT) analysis followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Generalizability and concurrent validity of the derived scores were determined.† The sample size was 607 recent admissions to a variety of substance abuse treatment programs. I think that this study will a have great validity due to the fact that they used a variety of substance to test for this study. This is an interesting study which really caught my attention and this study aimed to explore the existential aspects of living with addiction. The design that was used in this study was called a Hermeneutic which I have never heard of this type of design apparently this was the right design th at was chosen to do this study although I am not familiar with it. When it came down to the methods used it was based on interviews within the first study with rich, personal experienced addicts. After the results it show that people living with addiction struggles with as long as it is existing within them. This study is talking about giving addicts their choice of drug for a variety of reasons. Can’t say that I would want to give an addict the drug of their  choice because I would want to try and help them overcome their addiction and not contribute to it. In this study it mentioned that offering drugs to the addict and by them determining if they can say â€Å"yes or no† to the drug does not help them make progress they need something to undermine them in order to get the results they need. I think that all the studies and reviews mentioned in my paper are really good ones they all have the intention to try and come to a solution to helping those that are addicted to drugs. Drug addiction like I mentioned earlier in my paper is a serious disease and it comes in many forms. I feel like this class has helped us learn that there are many methods and designs out there for us to be able to conduct a study or research and get the validity that we need to complete our study. References Cacciola, J.S., Alterman, A.I., Habing, B., McLellan, A.T. (2011). Recent status scores for version 6 of the addition severity index (ASI-6). Addiction, 106 (9), 1588-1602. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Naqvi, N. H., Bechara, A. (2010). The insula and drug addiction: An interoceptive view of pleasure, urges, and decision-making. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5-6), 435-50. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Nuijten, M., Blanken, P., Van Den Brink, W., Hendriks, V. Concaine addiction treatments to improve control and reduce harm (CATCH): New Pharmacological Treatment Options for Crack-Cocaine Dependence in the Netherlands. BMC Psychiatry 11.1 (2011): 135. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Nutt, D., Lingford-Hughes, A. (2008). Addiction : The clinical interface. British Journal of Pharmacology, 154 (2), 397-405. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Oviedo-Joekes, E., Nosyk, B., Marsh, D.C., Guh, D., Brissette, S., Gurtry, C.,†¦Schechter, M.T. (2009). Scientific and political challenges in North America’s first randomized controlled trial of heroin-assisted treatment for severe heroin addiction: Rationale and design of the NAOMI study. Clinical Trials, 6 (3), 261-71. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Walker, T. (2008). Giving addicts their drug choice: The problem of consent. Bioethics, 22 (6), 314—20. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Wiklund, L. Journal of clinical nursing 17. 18 (Sep. 2008): 2426-2434. Existential aspects of living with addiction – Part I: Meeting challenges. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com Drug abuse, NIDA launces first scale national study to treat addiction to prescription pain medications. (2007). Mental Health Weekly Digest, 23-23. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com