It may not be just a little harmless Web surfing. A new study finds that obsessive Internet use can cause changes to the brain that mimic cocaine use.

When we hear the word “addiction,” we usually think of drugs. But the term can just as easily apply to a non-chemical compulsion. Called “process addictions” because they involve repeating a process (like gambling, shopping or having sex) instead of ingesting a substance, this branch of addictions is less understood. Many are even skeptical that these behaviors can be classified as addictions, but new studies are showing that even video gaming or the Internet can produce addictive behaviors. One recent study even found that Internet addiction affects the brain in a way that is similar to cocaine.

The study, conducted by Hao Lei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, scanned the brains of young Internet addicts, discovering that their addiction actually changes the way their brains function, according to a BBC report. The results are helping to expand our understanding of process addictions and how they work. The study’s findings suggest that the brains of the addicted person appeared to show the same changes to the brain’s “white matter” — the connecting web of the brain — as those found in individuals addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis.

This doesn’t mean you need to consider swearing off your computer, though. While many of us joke about being addicted to our tech devices, the truth is just 5 to 10 percent of users are thought to be addicted.

“Modern life requires us to link up over the ‘Net in regard to jobs, professional and social connections — but not in an obsessive way,” says Henrietta Bowden Jones, consultant psychiatrist at Imperial College, London, an expert on Internet addiction.
The exception seems to be gamers. That co-worker who shows up at the office bleary-eyed because he spent a dozen hours playing his favorite video game last night—and it’s a regular occurrence that he cannot stop even if he tries—that’s the sign of a growing problem.

Addiction Rehab at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with substance abuse and a process addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about co-occurring disorders treatment, financing or insurance.

A tragic tale reminds us that drug runners come in all shapes and sizes, and the war to keep these substances from the addicted is far from won.

Parents can be a pain when it comes to lecturing about drugs, drinking or hanging out with the proverbial “wrong crowd.” But in the end, mom really does usually know best. In this case, not following that maternal advice may have led to a Colombian beauty queen’s downfall — and a prison sentence for drug trafficking.

It was a meteoric rise for Angie Sanclemente Valencia. From her humble beginnings in Barranquilla, Colombia, she became a beauty queen at 21, crowned Colombia’s “Queen of Coffee,” CNN reports. That title led to international modeling work and other opportunities.

Unfortunately, Sanclemente was dethroned when it was discovered she had been married. Reports tied her in matrimony to a Mexican drug trafficker, but she’s always denied that. In an interview shortly after the claims cost her the crown, Sanclemente lamented the consequences of not listening to the woman who raised her as single mother. “I’m very capricious and a lot of [bad] things have happened to me for not listening to my mother.”

If only she could have seen into the future, she might have made different choices. In May 2010, Sanclemente was arrested after five months on the run in Argentina and charged with drug trafficking. Interpol had issued an arrest warrant against her in December 2009 after she was connected to a 21-year-old woman who was arrested just before she was to board a flight to Cancun, Mexico, from Buenos Aires carrying a whopping 120 pounds of cocaine. The fallen beauty was on the run for five months, hiding in Argentina.

Sanclemente has continued to insist she is innocent and has maintained contact with CNN. Despite her protests, her 2010 arrest made headlines around the world, with the press rechristening the pageant winner “The Queen of Cocaine.” Four men and two other women were also arrested in connection with the case, including Sanclemente’s Argentinian boyfriend and his uncle.

Now 32 and sentenced to six years and eight months behind bars, Sanclemente is looking back with regret. She says moving to Argentina from Mexico was a big mistake. “I regret having taken the flight to Argentina, to be honest with you,” she told CNN.

It’s a stark reminder to those of us in the US that drug traffickers come in all shapes and sizes and the battle to keep dangerous substances out of the hands of individuals too addicted to stop taking them is far from over.

Drug Addiction Help at The Canyon

If you or someone you love needs help with drug addiction, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about drug treatment, financing or insurance.

A mom is arrested after feeding her preschooler beer and her infant daughter tests positive for beer and cocaine.

Parents are supposed to warn their kids about the dangers of drinking and drugs, not provide them! Unfortunately, a Connecticut mom didn’t get that memo, because she recently pleaded guilty to charges she forced her four-year-old son to drink beer and gave her 10-month-old daughter beer and cocaine.

The mother, Juliette Dunn, 29, pleaded guilty to the risk of injury to a child, acknowledging that she doesn’t agree to the facts but agrees the state has enough evidence to win a conviction, according to The Connecticut Post. A companion of Dunn’s pleaded guilty to the same charges.

The crime was discovered when police officers were waved down by a neighbor who complained that a woman was feeding children beer at a playground. Authorities took the children to the hospital where the son tested positive for alcohol and the daughter for alcohol and cocaine, local station WVIT reported.

According to the warrant, Dunn admitted to giving her son a bottle of beer every day, and when questioned by a social worker, the preschooler was able to list off brands he liked and ones he didn’t.

The children were turned over to the Department of Children and Families and their mother could face up to two years in prison when she is sentenced in December. It isn’t clear what the mother’s reasoning was or if she struggled with an alcohol addiction or a cocaine addiction.

Addiction Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of alcohol rehab or treatment for other substance abuse issues, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Drug addiction can continue in jail for those who know how to feed their habit while incarcerated.

As we read continuous stories of troubled celebrity offspring, it can be tempting to write off these troubled individuals as beyond help. Redmond O’Neal’s troubles seem endless and now the son of Michael Douglas, Cameron Douglas, faces new drug charges – even though he’s already behind bars.

The younger Douglas is serving a five year federal prison sentence for drug dealing and has now pleaded guilty to possessing drugs in his jail cell. These latest charges could mean a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, plus a $250,000 fine.

The 32-year-old is charged with possessing items that tested positive for cocaine and heroin, which were found in his cell by an investigator. Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Anderson told the court one of the substances tested positive for methadone, which he described as “something that people take when they’re coming off a heroin addiction in order to facilitate the withdrawal,” according to a court transcript.

According to the charges, Douglas obtained the narcotics at not one but two different facilities — the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan and a minimum-security jail in Lewisburg, Penn.

While in court to face these most recent charges, Douglas admitted struggling with addictions to heroin, cocaine and alcohol, telling the judge “God knows I am sorry.” He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 21.

In response to this most recent arrest, Michael Douglas issued a statement that said, “Cameron accepts full responsibility for his conduct, which involved a small user-quantity of drugs. While he has made much progress, he is still not cured. Most people and their families are able to address this illness privately and outside of the spotlight. Unfortunately this has not been possible here, for reasons completely outside of his control. He thanks those that have rooted for his recovery and looks forward to the day when he will not disappoint.”

While it may be tempting to write off those who have received treatment, wakeup calls and even jail time and still continue to use, it just shows how insidious the disease of addiction really is. For many, negative consequences or positive reinforcement aren’t enough to beat it. Others undergo several rounds of treatment before arriving successfully in recovery. There’s no quick formula for success when it comes to overcoming drug addiction. For most, it’s a long road filled with stumbles and obstacles. All those of us on the outside can do is continue to educate ourselves and provide support while leaving treatment to the pros.

Drug Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of help with drug addiction or treatment for other substance abuse issues, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

New findings show that the brain can be trained to value delayed gratification, helpful in treating those who seek instant stimulation from addictive substances.

Most of us have a reasonable ability to look into the future and see rewards and punishments that our behavior may bring. This prevents some from experimenting with drugs, drinking and driving, or even having that extra helping of dessert.

In adults addicted to stimulants, a phenomena known as “delay discounting” greatly decreases their ability to see those future consequences. But now a new study shows that neurocognitive training that targets working memory can significantly reduce “delay discounting” in adults addicted to stimulants like cocaine.

In a randomized trial, participants who received the training through use of memory exercises decreased their rates of future reward discounting by an average of 50 percent, while the rates were not significantly changed for those who received control training.

“This is the first study to demonstrate that memory training decreases delay discounting. The ability of the people in our experimental group to value the future improved,” said lead study author Warren K. Bickel, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Substance Abuse at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute in Roanoke.

This is extremely exciting because it suggests that some of the neurocognitive deficits related to addiction maybe reversible. Researchers have found that addicts’ minds are “filled with the imagination of the pleasure to follow” and not of the possibility of legal or medical damages when they choose whether or not to take a drug. This study provides evidence that this myopic view of immediate pleasure and delayed punishments is not a fixed feature of addictions.

While much more research will need to be conducted, this could lead to cognitive training becoming an important tool in ending the hijacking of imagination by drugs of abuse.

“We know that virtually every form of addiction demonstrates an inability to value the future, which affects numerous behaviors and can also predict how well people do in treatment,” said Dr. Bickel.

Cocaine Rehab

If you or someone you love is in need of cocaine rehab or other addiction treatment, call The Canyon at our toll-free number. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.

Harm reduction is a pretty broad term, referring to any changes that an addict or alcoholic makes to make themselves safer during active addiction and live another day to potentially move one tiny step closer to a life that doesn’t include addiction. Here are a few examples:

• Choosing a designated driver while drinking
• Using clean needles
• Marking your own drug paraphernalia to avoid inadvertently sharing with someone who has a contagious disease like Hepatitis C or HIV
• Learning how to handle an overdose
• Getting tested for contagious diseases or getting treatment for infections to avoid passing them along
• Learning about the dangers of certain practices and what the safer methods of ingestion are

Needle Exchanges Proven Effective in Harm Reduction: What About Crack Pipes?

Needle exchanges have been extremely effective in many major cities in cutting down on the transmission of Hepatitis C and HIV. Active addicts bring in their “dirties” or used needles and get an equal number of clean needles to take with them. There are no questions asked and no one questions how they will use the needles or where they get the drugs they use in those needles, and needle exchange sites often offer resources to counseling, testing, and other drug addiction treatment help options if there is interest.

As a result, the overburdened health care system in these cities has seen a lessening of new diagnoses of deadly illnesses which in turn lowers their costs – something government officials always like to see. Plus, making it legal to carry needles means less of a burden on the court system who no longer has to process related cases.

Vancouver wants to take the theory behind the needle exchange sites and apply it to a different method of drug ingestion: crack pipes. A new pilot program has been developed with the hope that free crack pipes will help to cut down on disease transmission even more and help alleviate some of the problems that their healthcare system is seeing as a result.

What Do You Think?

Are free crack pipes a good way to help fight the transmission of HIV and help patients get involved in the healthcare system in a positive way so that they can learn how to avoid picking up illnesses during active addiction? For that matter, do you agree with needle exchange sites and their benefit of helping heroin addicts move ever closer to the treatment they need to fight heroin addiction – and win? If so, how can we improve available programs? If not, what’s a better way to fight drug addiction on the street level?

Cocaine addiction reached the height of popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. As new drugs came onto the scene – especially cheaper stimulant drugs like crystal meth –  its popularity dropped off and many stopped viewing the drug as much of a threat. As a result, educational focus on the dangers of cocaine addiction fell off in schools and the numbers of those living with an active cocaine addiction has slowly started to creep up in some areas of the country.

So how do we handle the threat of cocaine addiction? Do we increase education and prevention efforts in the schools? Do we up legal enforcement of the ban on cocaine trafficking? Do we increase availability of cocaine rehab programs for those who need it? What’s the best way to handle a problem that is stealthily growing every day?

Increasing Cocaine Addiction Prevention and Education

Most adults seeking treatment for drug and alcohol addiction report that they first began abusing drugs and alcohol during their teen years. Because prescription drug addiction, marijuana addiction, and alcohol abuse are the top three drugs of choice for teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18, most drug prevention and education is focused on the effects and dangers of these drugs specifically. Perhaps a little bit more attention paid to the effects of cocaine on its users as well as the families that are destroyed and the lives lost during its processing and distribution path may well help to open up the eyes of young users to the risks they are taking when they “experiment.”

Increasing Cocaine Drug Trafficking Laws and Enforcement

There’s been no change to the status of cocaine as an illegal substance despite the decrease in popularity. The US Coast Guard regularly stops boats carrying shipments of hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine and confiscating the substance before it can hit the streets. When police find cocaine in large amounts or small among a person’s possessions, charges are pressed. It certainly isn’t taken lightly to even be under the influence of the substance and law enforcement officials are already doing what they can to curb the sales and distribution of the drug.

Increasing Access to Cocaine Rehab

One of the best ways to fight cocaine addiction is to make sure that all who are struggling with dependence have access to the medical and psychological care that they need to effectively heal. Cocaine detox and addiction treatment programs like the ones provided at The Canyon are a great way to begin a new life in recovery. Contact us today to learn more.