Addiction First

The key to dealing with drug addiction is the right information. If you've ever wondered how drug addiction impacts your life this site is for you.

Treatment Approaches for Drug Addiction

Drug addiction is a complex condition characterized by intense and, at times, uncontrollable drug craving, along with the desire to compulsively seek and use drugs that persists even in the face of devastating consequences. While the path to drug addiction begins with the voluntary act of taking drugs, over time, the ability of a person to choose not to do so becomes compromised and seeking and consuming the drug becomes compulsive. This behavior results largely from the effects of prolonged drug exposure on brain functioning. Addiction is a brain disease that affects multiple brain circuits, including those involved in reward and motivation, learning and memory and inhibitory control over behavior.

Because drug abuse and addiction have so many dimensions and disrupt so many aspects of the life of an individual, treatment is not simple. Effective treatment programs typically incorporate many components, each directed to a particular aspect of the illness and its consequences. Addiction treatment must help the individual stop using drugs, maintain a lifestyle free of drugs and achieve productive functioning in the family, at work and in society. Because addiction is typically a chronic disease, people cannot simply stop using drugs for a few days and halt addition. Most patients require long-term or repeated episodes of care to achieve the ultimate goal of sustained abstinence and recovery of quality of life.

12-step Facilitation Therapy

Twelve-step facilitation therapy is an active engagement strategy designed to increase the likelihood of a substance abuser choosing to become actively involved in 12-step self help groups and promote abstinence. One aspect of facilitation therapy is acceptance: realizing that drug addiction is a chronic illness over which one has no control; that life is unmanageable because of drugs, that willpower alone is insufficient to overcome the problem and that abstinence is the only alternative. Another aspect of facilitation therapy is surrender, which involves giving oneself over to a higher power, accepting the fellowship and support structure of other recovering addicted individuals and following the recovery activities laid out by the 12-step program. The final ingredient in a facilitation therapy is active involvement in 12-step meetings and related activities. While studies support the efficacy of 12-step programs in treating alcohol dependence, the research pertaining to other drugs a person abuses is more preliminary but promising for helping drug abusers sustain recovery.

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Personalized Medicine

Personalized medicine is a medical model emphasizing the systematic use of information about an individual patient to select or optimize that patient's preventative and therapeutic care. Personalized medicine is the products and services that leverage the science of genomics and proteomics and capitalize on the trends toward wellness and consumerism to enable tailored approaches to prevention and care.

Over the past century, medical care has centered on standards of care based on epidemiological studies of large cohorts. Personalized medicine seeks to provide an objective basis for consideration of such individual differences. Traditionally, personalized medicine has been limited to the consideration of a patient's family history, social circumstances, environment, and behaviors in tailoring individual care.

Personalized medicine uses new methods of molecular analysis to manage a patient’s disease or predisposition toward a disease. It aims to achieve optimal medical outcomes by helping physicians and patients choose the disease management approaches likely to work best in the context of a patient’s genetic and environmental profile. Such approaches may include genetic screening programs that more precisely diagnose diseases and their sub-types, or help physicians select the type and dose of medication best suited to a certain group of patients.