Recovery Links

Drug-drivers to face jail time under new law | Society | The Guardian.

About time too, interesting to see how they distinguish between the effects of different drugs and degrees of intoxication.

Interesting Alternative Treatment for addiction, more damming though is the comment on the Failings of Western Medicine in developing treatments for Addiction.

The reliance on Profit making Pharmaceutical companies for new treatments leaves many areas of research massively underfunded.

A pill won’t cure the mental and spiritual aspects of addiction but there must be better ways to help with the short term physical withdrawals in the 21st Century.

The problem with addiction research

• Measuring success scientifically with addiction is problematic – addicts can be clean for months or even years before relapsing
• Most existing addiction treatments were created as a by-product of other research. Methadone was initially developed as a pain killer for German soldiers during WWII
• In the last 20 years, only one new drug has been developed for opiate addiction
• Buprenorphine, sold as Suboxone, is a substitute drug much like methadone but it can be subscribed by a doctor and taken at home rather than in a clinic
• “The treatment of addiction is woefully poor in the western world,” says Ben Sessa. “After about 150 years of study into alcohol addiction, abstinence rates after a year are no better than about 25%.”
• For opiates, abstinence rates after a year are about 10%

via BBC News – Can a hallucinogen from Africa cure addiction?.