SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A new therapeutic may help reverse chemical imbalances made to the brain by habitual drug use and could one day help recovering drug addicts avoid future drug use.
Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston developed and tested a treatment on rats and found it effective in reducing the animals' cravings. Their findings are in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.
When someone habitually misuses drugs, their brain chemistry is changed in ways that make it harder for them to quit taking drugs despite negative consequences. Once someone has developed this brain disorder, their mind pays sharper attention to cues that encourage drug use, making it harder for them to abstain.
Serotonin, a brain chemical that transmits information between neural regions, is a key player in these changes. There are currently no medications available to correct this chemical imbalance.
UTMB pharmacology and toxicology professors Jia Zhou, Kathryn Cunningham and their colleagues found that the serotonin 2C receptors in drug addicts do not work as well as they should. They designed, synthesized and pharmacologically evaluated a series of small molecule therapeutics designed to restore the weakened signaling.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday July 03 2018, @09:27PM (1 child)
This hypothesis has actually been tested, and apparently the drug you have in mind has zero increase in therapeutic power past dosages of about $75,000 a year in the US; in some cases, it even becomes *less* effective.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:28PM
Let me assure you that the misery increases per dependent. A dose of $75,000/year may work for a single adult with no dependents and only nominal debts, but with multiple adult and child dependents and prominent debt, it is only frustratingly close to enough. Though your point is valid. If a treatment is prescribed at a high enough dosage, the patient will suffer delusions and think that they can stop working. This results in many odd behaviors related to boredom which is attributed to increase drug dependency and abuse. That tends to cause misery as a side effect that the gold pill or cash generic cannot effectively treat. It's like any other drug. Too low of a dosage doesn't cause any effect and may actually cause drug resistance, and too large of a dose will harm the patient.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base