BACKGROUND The question of whether crack cocaine use is associated with increased violence compared to powdered cocaine use has not been adequately explored in large nationally representative general population samples. METHODS This study used data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) to 1) determine the comparative prevalences of violent behaviors...

BACKGROUND Methadone is the therapeutic agent of choice for the treatment of opiate addiction in pregnancy. The co-consumption (heroin, cocaine) which may influence the effects of methadone is frequent. Therefore, the impact of cocaine and heroin on the placental transfer of methadone and the placental tissue was investigated under in vitro conditions. METHODS Placentae (n = 24) were ex-vivo ...

Drug abuse is a serious public health problem. Moreover, co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders are common among drug users. This paper examines psychiatric disorders of young cocaine and heroin users using the World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WMH-CIDI). A cohort of 1266 young (18-30 years) current regular cocaine (705) and heroin (561) users w...

The present study examined the extent to which anxiety sensitivity (AS) at treatment entry was related to prospective treatment dropout among 182 crack/cocaine and/or heroin-dependent patients in a substance use residential treatment facility in Northeast Washington, DC. Results indicated that AS incrementally and prospectively predicted treatment dropout after controlling for the variance acco...

This manuscript provides an overview of the current scientific literature on the impact of maternal drug use, specifically opioids and cocaine, during pregnancy on the acute and long-term outcomes of infants and toddlers from birth through age 3 years. Emphasis with regard to opioids is placed on heroin and opioid substitutes used to treat opioid addiction, including methadone, which has long b...

Cocaine and heroin often are abused by self-administering the drugs in combination as a "speedball". We evaluated the extent to which intrinsic efficacy at the mu-opioid receptor influences combined cocaine-opioid self-administration and used the behavioral economic model termed "labor supply" to quantitatively evaluate the reinforcing effects of cocaine-opioid combinations. Rhesus monkeys (n =...

The relation between illicit drug dependence and the likelihood of drug overdose is unclear. We recruited 1,066 habitual drug users for this analysis through street-based outreach in New York City. In this sample, 99.3% of respondents used heroin in the past year and 87.1% of respondents used cocaine; 819 (77.5%) heroin users and 735 (79.2%) cocaine users were severely dependent on either drug ...

BACKGROUND Health information systems that monitor drug use do not perform in-depth analyses of sociodemographic characteristics and patterns of use, or of the factors that influence health problems. We describe the recruitment methodology and characteristics of a cohort of young cocaine users. METHODS A prospective cohort of 720 cocaine users who were not regular heroin users, recruited in t...

gabapentin seems to be a safe and well tolerated medication for treating heroine dependence. this study examined the efficacy of gabapentin for relieving withdrawal-related pain due to heroin use.sixty men were recruited from an inpatient psychiatric ward of fatemieh hospital in semnan and randomized to receive either placebo (n = 30) or gabapentin (1800 mg/day) (n = 30) for 7 days. subjective ...