Category: Addiction

Inequality and Drug Use

By Mary Kate McNamara, Emily Schirack, Dana Sherry & Amy Vereecke

Close your eyes. Imagine a crack addict. What do you picture? A wealthy man in an Armani suit and tie? Or a poor man clothed in baggy jeans; violent, dark and dangerous? Is she seated behind a mahogany desk on the 22nd floor of an office building in Manhattan or is she standing on a graffiti-covered street corner in East Harlem?

We know that a person’s drug of choice is influenced by his or her social status, from the high-powered lawyer with a penchant for powder cocaine to the pill-popping rock star to the alcoholic factory worker to the unemployed crack head. Here we will show something more important about a person’s relationship with drugs: an individual’s decision to use drugs is embedded in an unequal social structure, a social structure that produces unequal outcomes for drug users contingent on their social status.

By being poor, under-educated and of a low-status ethnic group, a person is at a greater risk for not only social marginalization, but becoming a victim of addiction (Baer, Singer & Susser 2003: 131). As David Courtwright argues in Forces of Habit, social inequality is promoted by the elite to maintain control over a minority group of laborers. By suppressing the lower classes in a cycle of substance abuse and addiction, the wealthy are able to increase their own power and profits. At the expense of people they deem inferior—simply because these people lack the material means to rise from their position—the elite sustain their authority. “Next to profits and taxes, the utility of drugs in acquiring, pacifying and fleecing workers proved to be their greatest advantage to the elites…” (Courtwright 2001:135)

In analyzing society’s abuse of drugs, Courtwright comments that “a pattern of drug use can become so entrenched in a culture that it is impossible to permanently suppress and delegitimate it” (Courtwright 2001: 199). This entrenchment is facilitated by a cycle of poverty, inequality and addiction.

Continue reading “Inequality and Drug Use”

The Genetic and Environmental Bases of Addiction

As Presented By: Reid, Takashi, Sheeva and Michael

A man with deep set eyes and a tired, drawn face wanders aisle to aisle, seemingly lost amongst the labyrinth of supermarket shelves. His bloodshot eyes, bent forward posture and slight stature are indicative of years of hard living. His pain is readily apparent as he nervously shifts his weight from one foot, to the other and then back again. He rolls up his sleeve to scratch an unseen itch, briefly revealing a patchwork of new and old needle marks along the veins of his forearms; intermeshed with a few cigarette burns and dry, yellowing skin. How did he get this way you might ask? What is it about this particular man that caused him to become an addict?

The Genetic Element

Today many people would say “his genes” predisposed him to become an addict. Addiction has historically been known as a disease that runs in families, and in the past 30 or 40 years, this long-standing belief has been verified using systematic scientific investigation. The bulk of the research suggests that drug dependence functions much like other diseases, with certain people having a genetic makeup that increases their risk.

This was the case for Caroline Knapp, an alcoholic who skillfully describes her battle and eventual victory over addiction in her book Drinking: A Love Story. Knapp struggles with her genetic predisposition saying, “It’s encoded in my DNA, embedded in my history, the product of some wild familial aberration.” This conclusion is not limited to Knapp. One study found that children of alcoholics were four times more likely to become alcoholics themselves.

Modern scientific inquiries tell us that the inheritance of these addictive tendencies cannot be attributed to a single gene, as is the case for some diseases. Its transmittance is much more complicated.

For instance, genes involved in the metabolism of alcohol can be implicated in increased risk of addiction. For instance a major study found that young men who required more alcohol to experience an effect had higher rates of alcohol problems later in life. However, other genes, including those known to affect behavior and mood, are thought to be connected with addiction as well (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Addiction). Currently, scientists point to differences in clusters of genes on chromosomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 15, and 16 as important in chemical dependence (Goldman Review).

Continue reading “The Genetic and Environmental Bases of Addiction”

The Problem of Post-Conventional Outlaws



By Peter Ninneman, Andy Scott, Amanda Clark, and Paul Roman

What do Ken Kesey, an icon in the 1960s American acid scene, and Richard Nixon, who declared the first War on Drugs, have in common? These two cultural figures show us that the real problem with government attempts to control drugs is our culture’s problem with self-control. Our culture appears to increasingly value making up one’s own mind, making punitive measures more and more ineffective.

Temptation and the Need for Legislation

In his article “Dependence and Society”, Robin Room suggests the subjective experience of loss of self control is a cultural phenomenon. In traditional Navajo populations, for instance, drinking problems are seen at face value. There is no conception of lost self control; the explanation lies in simply drinking too much. In other words, “habitual drunkenness does not become alcoholism without a specific pattern of general cultural beliefs and norms.”

Room goes on to argue that 19th century middle-class Americans were having trouble controlling their own desires in the face of increasing temptations. For example, because of economic factors at the time, America became flooded with coffee that was sold at cheaper and cheaper prices. Living in a free society that valued individualism also meant that responsibility had to be put on people to take care of themselves at an individual level.

Continue reading “The Problem of Post-Conventional Outlaws”

Stress and Addiction: The Vicious Cycle

By Jessica Peyton, Jen Hames, Rebecca Llontop, and Mike Many

Meeting deadlines. A family crisis. Juggling social obligations. We all have responsibilities that demand effort. Given all this, who isn’t stressed?

While most people are aware that stress can be a factor in how much and how often you choose to drink, the term “stress related drinking” remains ambiguous. Here we use it to discuss the consumption of alcohol or drugs in response to environmental stressors. For example, a college student is overwhelmed with needing to finish two papers by the end of the week, upcoming exams, and a fight she had with her roommate. Then her mother calls to let her know that her grandfather is sick. This student, extra anxious come Friday, might agree to go out with her friends to forget about her problems for a while. Once out, the alcohol flows – a temporary release from what feels like continual stress.

But what happens when someone habitually uses alcohol or drugs as a means of coping with stressful situations? Studies show that the substance abuse itself becomes a stressor, triggering a cycle of use that can ultimately result in the development of an addiction. As Enoch Gordis, M.S. states in his commentary Drinking and Stress, “Why people should engage in an activity that produces effects similar to those that they are trying to relieve is a paradox we do not yet understand.”

Today, new research offers some insights regarding the cyclical nature of stress and addiction. Returning to the example of a college student, stress related drinking is primarily social in origin. According to Wesley H. Perkins (1999) students are constantly bombarded by academic, social, and family stressors. Particularly at the nation’s top institutions, the student body is characterized by perfectionist personalities, people who are acutely aware of the expectations for them to be straight-A scholars, winning athletes, and socially popular. Substance use, particularly alcohol, is one potent option to relieve anxieties and forget disappointments. Moreover, you are also being social by getting out and commiserating with people experiencing the same stressors.

Continue reading “Stress and Addiction: The Vicious Cycle”

Antidepressants suppress identity?

Another interesting one from The New York Times, Who Are We? Coming of Age on Antidepressants, by Dr. Richard A. Friedman; I found this one really well done, asking more questions than it answers, but thought-provoking.

The introduction to the article lays out the central existential question posed by long-term treatment with anti-depressants, especially for patients who started on their regimens when very young:

“I’ve grown up on medication,” my patient Julie told me recently. “I don’t have a sense of who I really am without it.”
At 31, she had been on one antidepressant or another nearly continuously since she was 14. There was little question that she had very serious depression and had survived several suicide attempts. In fact, she credited the medication with saving her life.
But now she was raising an equally fundamental question: how the drugs might have affected her psychological development and core identity.

As Friedman points out, the medical testing for these pharmaceuticals doesn’t include long-term research anywhere close to the lengths of time that people are actually spending on the drugs: the longest maintenance study — done on Effexor — lasted two years.

But the more subtle issues that Friedman raises, as far as I’m concerned, are the questions of identity that are clouded by long-term anti-depressant use. He discusses one woman who was concerned about her ‘low sex drive’ and pressure from her boyfriend to have sex after eight years on libido-reducing Zoloft: ‘She had understandably mistaken the side effect of the drug for her “normal” sexual desire and was shocked when I explained it: “And I thought it was just me!”’ I can’t tell from the way Friedman writes this how he feels about the idea that an individual has a ‘normal’ sex drive, something that might exist ‘prior to’ or ‘independent of’ any outside influences, whether that influence be an anti-depressant or a particular life event or the effects of interpersonal dynamics with a partner.

The idea that the ‘anti-depressed’ state might become ‘normal,’ both in the medical sense that intervention seeks to create this state and in the sense that a patient spends so much time in the drug-influenced state that it becomes a kind of reference, suggests yet another way that cultural expectations might become biological ‘nature.’

Brain doping poll results in

According to Nature, 20% of scientists in an informal survey admitted to using ‘cognitive enhancing’ drugs: Poll results: look who’s doping. Ironically, the original survey was triggered by an April Fool’s prank played on the scientific community. My initial thought was, Do they count caffeine? Of course, they didn’t. If they did, numbers would obviously be different.

We asked specifically about three drugs: methylphenidate (Ritalin), a stimulant normally used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder but well-known on college campuses as a ‘study aid’; modafinil (Provigil), prescribed to treat sleep disorders but also used off-label to combat general fatigue or overcome jet lag; and beta blockers, drugs prescribed for cardiac arrhythmia that also have an anti-anxiety effect.

Check out the Nature site for a more complete discussion, but the conclusion is worth repeating:

The most popular of the drugs used by respondents to Nature’s poll seem to have fairly mild neuroenhancing effects, says Chatterjee, who calls the massive media interest in these drugs “neurogossip”. Nevertheless, the numbers suggest a significant amount of drug-taking among academics. As Eisen’s April Fool’s prank spread from blog to blog, it was hard to tell who was in on the joke and who was taking the announcement at face value. Although tricking people was a goal, Eisen had been aiming for something so ridiculous that most would chuckle. Instead, he worries that he might have hit a nerve: “I think it did make it less funny because it is actually too real.”

The initial discussion that led to the poll was referenced by Daniel a while back in a great piece, Brain Enhancement: Beyond Either/Or, that explored this topic in greater detail. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. Daniel talks about the ‘unintended consequences’ that almost always accompany drug use. I don’t have too much to add to that except that, with what we know about neuroplasticity, this should not surprise us at all. The brain and nervous system tend to adapt to any changes in the overall environment they inhabit: the tasks they do, the condition of the environment (which is both inside and outside of the body), any other chemicals introduced into the equation.
Continue reading “Brain doping poll results in”