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DrugScreening.org


 
NIDA Releases Companion Guide to HBO's 'Addiction' Series
February 14, 2007

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News Summary

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has released a layman's guide to alcohol and other drug addiction to complement the new HBO documentary series "Addiction," which premieres in Washington, D.C., this week.

"Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction" is a 30-page booklet that provides an overview of the science supporting the concept of addiction as a brain disease. Information on prevention and treatment also is included.

"Thanks to science, our views and our responses to drug abuse have changed dramatically, but many people today still do not understand why people become addicted to drugs or how drugs change the brain to foster compulsive drug abuse," said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow. "This booklet aims to fill that knowledge gap by providing scientific information about the disease of drug addiction in language that is easily understandable to the public."
 
An online version of the booklet is posted at the NIDA website; PDF and print copies also are available.
 

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Posted by holly stafford on 03 Mar 08 07:32 PM EST
im an alcoholic and read all available leterature out there. its also informative for the non-addicted to read and be informed and able to understand that it is a desease and illness. thank you holly

Posted by Dean L. Lett on 31 Jan 09 11:11 PM EST
How can scientist distinguish the voluntary from the involuntary? I don't think we can always tell the difference between involuntary and deliberative acts. I think there are situations where we can clearly make the distinction, but there are also cases in which the reflexive/involuntary and deliberative merge, owing to the fact that the brain can instantly fill in reasons for doing things in ways that don't always reveal the reflexive/automatic reasons, that are the true controlling cause. When the person reflects back on it they will think they had a deliberate reason for doing a particular act, without being able to make the distinction that their pseudo-deliberation actually came after the automatic/reflexive had caused the action. Cases in science that support this are, for example, experiments on split-brain patients in 1978 by Gazzaniga and LeDoux.

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