This study documents the costs of heroin addiction in the United States, both to the addict and society at large. Using a cost-of-illness approach, costs were estimated in four broad areas: medical care, lost productivity, crime, and social welfare. We estimate that the cost of heroin addiction in the United States was US$21.9 billion in 1996. Of these costs, productivity losses accounted for a...

Drug-addiction may trigger early onset of age-related disease, due to drug-induced multi-system toxicity and perilous lifestyle, which remains mostly undetected and untreated. We present the literature on pathophysiological processes that may hasten aging and its relevance to addiction, including: oxidative stress and cellular aging, inflammation in periphery and brain, decline in brain volume ...

By looking at drug addiction from an evolutionary perspective, we may understand its underlying significance and evaluate its three-fold nature: biology, psychology, and social influences. In this investigation it is important to delve into the co-evolution of mammalian brains and ancient psychotropic plants. Gaining an understanding of the implications of ancient psychotropic substance use in ...

Current Opinion in Gastroenterology 2010, 26:165–169 Purpose of review Food addiction has been implicated as a putative causal factor in chronic overeating, binge eating, and obesity. The concept of food addiction has been controversial historically due to definitional and conceptual difficulties and to a lack of rigorous scientific data. Recent findings Support for the food addiction hypothesi...

Uncontrolled eating behavior in obese subjects is very similar to behavior in food addiction, suggesting a relationship. This study was designed to evaluate the relationship between childhood obesity and food addiction and to determine the frequency of food addiction among obese children and adolescents. The study included 100 overweight and obese children. Food addiction was evaluated by the Y...

Public health authorities have described, with growing alarm, an unprecedented increase in morbidity and mortality associated with use of opioid pain relievers (OPRs). Efforts to address the opioid crisis have focused mainly on reducing nonmedical OPR use. Too often overlooked, however, is the need for preventing and treating opioid addiction, which occurs in both medical and nonmedical OPR use...

Background: In recent decades, drug abuse has been one of the most important problems of human societies and has been imposing enormous charges to them. Exposing addicts to infectious diseases, social and economic harmful impacts, expensive and reversibility of treatment methods have caused that drug abuse prevention programs be more inexpensive and more effective than treatment. One of the mos...

Internet addiction, while not yet officially codified within a psychopathological framework, is growing both in prevalence and within the public consciousness as a potentially problematic condition with many parallels to existing recognized disorders. The rapid and unfettered increase in the number of people accessing a relatively unrestricted internet substantially increases the possibility th...