Do doctors suffer from "opiophobia?" The opium family of painkillers has always been a bane and a boon to the human race, as evidenced by nurses injecting morphine into agonizingly wounded soldiers, and street junkies selling the clothes off their back for another fix.However, as I wrote in an earlier post, "The Morphine Scandal," the ironies fly thick and fast: In many cases, pain relief is the on...

Or a reflection of the new world order? [Editors Note: Addiction Inbox has not covered the so-called behavioral or non-traditional addictions--Internet addiction, video game addiction, compulsive shopping and compulsive gambling--because I am not yet convinced that such behaviors show the same chemical and often inheritable propensities associated with alcoholism and other drug addictions. Nonethel...

The Overselling of Drug Rehab.Professor David Clark, who runs the Wired In recovery website in the U.K., recently posted several passages from William L. White's "Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America."According to Professor Clark, "In highlighting [these quotes] on my Blog, I am not questioning the value of treatment. However, I am providing a word of cauti...

It helps you quit. Can it keep you from starting? We've all heard the claim: Physical exercise helps addicts who are working their way through withdrawal and recovery. It is one of the most common prescriptions given out by doctors and health professionals, whether you are a recovering alcoholic or a chronic binge eater.And it makes sense. Exercise has verifiable impacts on not just endorphin level...

The geography of drug use.To paraphrase an old tune by Gerry Rafferty, we got meth to the left of us, cocaine to the right, and here we are, stuck in the middle with pot.The National Drug Threat Survey of 2007, a product of the National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) at the Department of Justice, illustrates the stark nature of regional variation when it comes to illegal drugs of choice in the Uni...