BACKGROUND Moral philosophers have debated the extent to which persons are individually responsible for the onset of and recovery from addiction. Empirical investigators have begun to explore counselors' attitudes on these questions. Meanwhile, a separate literature has investigated counselors' negative attitudes towards naltrexone, an important element of medication-assisted treatment for alco...

AIMS The clinical practice and science of addiction are increasingly active fields, which are attracting professionals from diverse disciplines such as psychology and neurobiology. Our scientific knowledge of the pathophysiology of addiction is rapidly growing, along with the variety of effective treatments available to clinicians. Yet, we believe that the medical specialties of addiction medic...

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AIMS Methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) is widely available in China; but, high rates of illicit opiate use and dropout are problematic. The aim of this study was to test whether cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in conjunction with MMT can improve treatment retention and reduce opiate use. METHOD A total of 240 opiate-dependent patients in community-based MMT clinics were randomly assign...

Background Sex addiction is a disorder that can have serious adverse functional consequences. Treatment effectiveness research for sex addiction is currently underdeveloped, and interventions are generally based on the guidelines for treating other behavioral (as well as chemical) addictions. Consequently, there is a need to clinically evaluate tailored treatments that target the specific sympt...

The infrastructure to treat addictive illness, when compared with treatment for other traditional medical illnesses, is lacking in the United States. This situation is tolerated by a public that views addiction more as a social problem than an actual disease, despite scientific evidence supporting a disease concept of addiction based on neuronal mechanisms, heritability, treatment responses and...

substance use disorder is conceptualized as a chronic relapsing condition where relapse is usually defined as the return to problematic substance use following treatment. an issue of great importance is the identification of the predictors of relapse and the development of treatments that may help prevent relapse. one of the strongest predictors of relapse is craving. the purpose of the present...

Abstinence is the deprivation of previously abused substances that lead to addiction. The long-term and excessive use of a drug causes different biochemical and neurophysiological changes. After addiction is established, deprivation causes withdrawal, whose symptoms, duration and degree vary among substances. Common symptoms include anxiety, depression, tremors, impaired thinking, and changes i...