Pharmacopsychiatry
April 25, 2017
Norbert Scherbaum, Fabrizio Schifano, Udo Bonnet
46 citations
Over the last few years, hundreds of new psychoactive substances (NPS) have been identified in Europe. Apart from some herbal compounds, NPS mainly include synthetic cannabinoids and a range of new synthetic stimulants (e. g., cathinones). Synthetic NPS are often developed whilst modifying the basic chemical (e. g., phenethylamine or tryptamine) structure. Although the pharmacology and...
Eat, Sleep, Work
April 20, 2017
Craig Cameron Hicks
Background: Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol comorbidity is becoming a rising issue within the military veteran community highlighted by research indicating individuals diagnosed with PTSD are more likely to have a drinking problem [1]. The implementation of meditation as an alternative form of stress release was aimed at reducing PTSD symptomology and therefor reducing factors...
International Journal of Drug Policy
April 19, 2017
Piera Talin, Emilia Sanabria
101 citations
The ritual use of ayahuasca stands in strong contrast to hegemonic understandings of addiction, paving new ground between the overstated difference between community and pharmacological interventions. The article concludes that fluid, adaptable forms of caregiving play a key role in the success of addiction recovery and that feeling part of a community has an important therapeutic potential.
Journal of Food and Drug Analysis
April 18, 2017
Ling‐yi Feng, Altansuvd Battulga, Eunyoung Han et al.
86 citations
Plant-based drugs of abuse are as old as recorded human history. Although traditional addictive substances, such as opium, cannabis and coca, have been controlled by the United Nations anti-drug conventions, many, if not most, natural plants with addictive or abuse liability remain elusive. Therefore, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned the emerging threat from new...
Drug and Alcohol Review
April 10, 2017
Stephen Bright, M.l. Williams, David Caldicott
5 citations
As recently noted by Strauss, Bright and Williams 1, while much of the Western world has been experiencing a renaissance in research into ‘psychedelic science’ over the past decade 2, there has been no such research conducted in Australia. In Europe and the USA, studies have been conducted into lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) that have improved our understanding of brain function 3 and reduced...
Trials
April 4, 2017
Amy Mcandrew, Will Lawn, Tobias Stevens et al.
20 citations
BACKGROUND: Worldwide, alcohol abuse is a burgeoning problem. Abstinence is key to allow recovery of physical and mental health as well as quality of life, but treatment for alcohol dependence is associated with high relapse rates. Preliminary data have suggested that a combined repeated ketamine and psychological therapy programme may be effective in reducing relapse in severe alcohol use...
Neuropsychopharmacology
April 2017
Erin K Kirschmann, Michael W Pollock, Vidhya Nagarajan et al.
Use of marijuana (Cannabis sativa) often begins in adolescence, and heavy adolescent marijuana use is often associated with impaired cognitive function in adulthood. However, clinical reports of long-lasting cognitive deficits, particularly in subjects who discontinue use in adulthood, are mixed. Moreover, dissociating innate differences in cognitive function from cannabis-induced deficits is...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
April 1, 2017
Katie Walsh, Ravi Das, Sunjeev K. Kamboj
Healthy people with a family history of alcohol problems show a pattern of subjective responses to alcohol that resemble those of affected probands. Studies on ketamine suggest that up-regulation of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) underlies these effects, and point to a pharmacologically-responsive endophenotype reflecting enhanced risk for alcohol-use disorders. Subjective stimulant...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 1, 2017
Ben Sessa
Treating people with alcohol use disorder has been an important target area for psychedelic research – both in the first studies of the 1950s and during the Psychedelic Renaissance of the last 10 years. To date, most studies have looked at the classical psychedelic drugs as adjuncts to psychotherapy; with attention paid to the psychospiritual aspect of the experience as a central therapeutic...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 1, 2017
Eduardo Ekman Schenberg, Maria Angélica de Castro Comis, João Felipe Morel Alexandre et al.
29 citations
Substance use disorders are important contributors to the global burden of disease, but current treatments are not associated with high rates of recovery. The lack of approved and effective treatments is acutely problematic for psychostimulants like cocaine and crack cocaine. One promising alternative in the treatment of drug dependence in general and psychostimulants in particular is the use...
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
April 1, 2017
Rafael G. Dos Santos, José Carlos Bouso, Jaime E. C. Hallak
36 citations
Ibogaine is a naturally occurring hallucinogenic alkaloid with a therapeutic potential for reducing drug craving and withdrawal. To the best of our knowledge, no systematic review was previously performed assessing these effects. Thus, we conducted a systematic literature review of human studies assessing the antiaddictive effects of ibogaine. Papers published up to July 2, 2016 were included...
Cardiovascular toxicology
April 1, 2017
Lena Rubi, Daniel Eckert, Stefan Boehm et al.
18 citations
Ibogaine is a plant alkaloid used as anti-addiction drug in dozens of alternative medicine clinics worldwide. Recently, alarming reports of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias and cases of sudden death associated with the ingestion of ibogaine have accumulated. Using whole-cell patch clamp recordings, we assessed the effects of ibogaine and its main metabolite noribogaine on action potentials...
Dreaming
March 1, 2017
David Saunders, Helen Clegg, Chris A Roe et al.
11 citations
This article reports an investigation of two proposed theories, the predispositional and experiential, regarding the association of personality variables to lucid dreaming incidence during a 12-week lucid dreaming induction programme. The study found no differences between those who did and did not report lucid dreams during the programme on baseline measures of Field Independence, Locus of...
March 1, 2017
Youn-sil Kim, Suk-Sun Kim
Purpose: The purpose of this mixed method study was to examine effects of the self-transcendence enhancement program among patients with drug addiction, and to explore their experiences through the program. Methods: For the quantitative study, a non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design was used. The sample was 49 hospitalized patients with drug addiction. The self-transcendence...
International Journal for the Study of New Religions
February 20, 2017
Christopher Partridge
1 citation
While much has been written about the life, work and influence of Aleister Crowley, relatively little attention has been directed to his drug use. This is a little surprising because, not only did he become addicted to heroin, but he incorporated psychoactive substances in his occult work, discussed their psychological effects, commented on drug-related social issues, critiqued contemporary...
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
2017
Brett Froeliger, Amanda R. Mathew, Patrick A. McConnell et al.
88 citations
The primary goal of this pilot feasibility study was to examine the effects of Mindfulness‐Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE), a behavioral treatment grounded in dual‐process models derived from cognitive science, on frontostriatal reward processes among cigarette smokers. Healthy adult (N = 13; mean (SD) age 49 ± 12.2) smokers provided informed consent to participate in a 10‐week study...
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
2017
Aleksandra Zgierska, Joshua Shapiro, Cindy A. Burzinski et al.
Treatment fidelity is essential to methodological rigor of clinical trials evaluating behavioral interventions such as Mindfulness Meditation (MM). However, procedures for monitoring and maintenance of treatment fidelity are inconsistently applied, limiting the strength of such research. To describe the implementation and findings related to fidelity monitoring of the Mindfulness-Based Relapse...
Life Sciences
January 1, 2017
Udo Bonnet
Ketamine is approved to start and maintain anaesthesia or analgesia. Ketamine is also known to be neurotoxic and an old drug of abuse. Numerous studies have proven a rapid and strong antidepressant response (AR) following parenteral sub-anaesthetic ketamine doses when applied the first time to patients with treatment resistant unipolar or bipolar major depression. This rapid and robust AR is...
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2017
Susan Schenk, Dane Aronsen
As is the case with other drugs of abuse, a proportion of ecstasy users develop symptoms consistent with a substance use disorder (SUD). In this paper, we propose that the pharmacology of MDMA, the primary psychoactive component of ecstasy tablets, changes markedly with repeated exposure and that neuroadaptations in dopamine and serotonin brain systems underlie the shift from MDMA use to MDMA...
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2017
Shawn. M. Aarde, Michael A. Taffe
Animal models of drug self-administration are currently the gold standard for making predictions regarding the relative likelihood that a recreational drug substance will lead to continued use and addiction. Such models have been found to have high predictive accuracy and discriminative validity for a number of drug classes including ethanol, nicotine, opioids, and psychostimulants such as...