Word: druggings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...most promising of several drugs to combat addiction that are being tested is buprenorphine, a pain reliever that in early trials has shown clear advantages over methadone as a treatment for heroin addiction. Under development by a team at Yale University, the drug, like methadone, induces a generalized feeling of contentment rather than heroin's precipitate rush and euphoria. It is at least as effective as methadone in easing physical withdrawal and reducing cravings, and it is significantly more potent in blocking heroin's high if the addict tries to shoot up again. Unlike methadone, buprenorphine is relatively nonaddictive...
...depression and craving that follows one cocaine binge and typically leads to another round. In preliminary trials on a group of ten Bahamian crack addicts seeking treatment, researchers from Yale found that even low doses kept users off cocaine for the two-month duration of the trial. Another drug, carbamazepine, long taken to prevent seizures, has proved to be moderately effective against cocaine craving. In tests this year, six of 13 people taking the drug stopped using cocaine and the remaining seven reduced their intake about two-thirds. Researchers got the idea for using this antiseizure drug after hearing reports...
...pleasure centers -- as methadone blocks the heroin high -- would literally take the joy out of life, says Yale's Kosten. "We'd turn out automatons." Addicts trying to quit cocaine go through a stage called anhedonia, a sort of spiritless limbo that typically drives the user to take the drug again. At best, researchers can hope for a patchwork of drugs to block discrete stages of cocaine withdrawal, such as craving and depression...
...from clear that the new drugs will succeed even in this limited way. None have been tested in a full-scale trial designed to mimic the conditions addicts encounter on the street. Buprenorphine, which is one of the furthest along in testing, is unlikely to receive approval before 1992. Scientists also readily concede that medical therapy fails to address the underlying psychological and social causes of drug abuse. Even if an addict is weaned from one drug, they say, he will very often take up another. A federal study released in August found that as many as 47% of patients...
Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, two separate teams of scientists found that treatment with the drug interferon halted destruction of liver cells in about half the patients with chronic hepatitis. A total of 207 people were studied by the two teams, one led by investigators at the University of Florida, the other at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases...