[Drug use and treatment misuse: Key points on polydrug use].

Problematic use of psychoactive drugs, be it legal, on prescription, or not, remains a broad phenomenon when taken as a whole, with an increasingly large spectrum of used products. The polysubstance drug use is an expanding new trend. Although its epidemiological analysis is complex, needing further research, certain patterns of drug combinations can be found, allowing to identify clusters of users associated to more specific medical and social risks.

Anxiety disorders are associated with early onset of heroin use and rapid transition to dependence in methadone maintained patients.

Early onset of heroin use is a severity marker of heroin use disorder. We studied the interaction between early onset and rapid transition to heroin dependence recorded with retrospective interviews in 213 patients with severe heroin dependence and history of methadone maintenance treatment. General linear models were used to identify independent factors associated with early onset, factors associated with rapid transition to dependence, and a multivariate model was used to study the interaction of those two dimensions.

[Smoking cessation support among persons in situation of precariousness].

Introduction: Underprivileged people smoke more frequently, present with a more severe smoking profile and stop less often than wealthier smokers. They can have difficulties to afford smoking cessation treatments as the French medical insurance coverage system requires smokers to pay it in advance with a later reimbursement. The objective of this study was to compare the characteristics, treatment plans and cessation rates of smokers from disadvantaged population in comparison with smokers in wealthier condition.

[The baclofene saga and the paradigm shift in alcohol addiction treatment].

Baclofen represented the hope of an effective treatment of addiction to alcohol, in a context where the therapeutic featuring agreement obtained modest results. The rise of baclofen has bypassed the usual academic procedures. There is a scientific rational prescription of baclofen.

[Environment and addictive behaviors].

Consumer society creates the emergence of addictive behaviors and environments of the subject "shape" the use of psychoactive substances. The family approach is to search out a guilt of members to understand family dynamics and enable young people to emancipate themselves from the family model. The social environment contributes to the marginalization of drug users "pathologizing" his conduct.

[Opiates, harm reduction and polysubstance abuse].

Opioid dependence is a chronic metabolic brain disease and several individual, sociological and biological factors are implicated in its development. Program (needle exchange, low threshold access to treatment) prevent harms associated with opioid use (HIV, overdose…). Effective treatment involves a set of pharmacological and psychosocial interventions.

[Addictions and medicine].

The qualifiers of alcoholic, drug addict have been abandoned because marked by the image of a person who uses toxic and violates the social prohibition to gradually give way to the representation of a sick person in a state of psychological distress, medical and social. Control systems of drug regulation should consider the damage to the individual, their potential to induce drug dependence and the effects on the family environment or society. Some emerging substances are excluded, others are demonized, thus limiting the scope of prevention messages.

[Cannabis cessation interventions offered to young French users: predictors of follow-up].

Introduction: Cannabis use is very problematic among young French people, because of the young age of first consumption and its health consequences. Indeed, the average age of cannabis experimentation is about 15 in France and 49.5% of 17 year-olds report having used cannabis in their lives.

[Alcohol, an addiction like any other].

The current treatment available to people in difficulty with regard to their consumption of alcohol is not merely limited to forced abstinence. It benefits from the advances made in addictology and research into treatment based on the concept of controlled consumption. In the framework of a therapeutic alliance, multidisciplinary teams offer medication-based treatments and individualised and diversified psycho-social treatment.

Is smoking linked to positive symptoms in acutely ill psychiatric patients?

Background: The self-medication hypothesis is commonly put forward to explain the high prevalence of smoking in psychiatric patients. However, studies supporting the self-medication hypothesis have most often been carried out on chronic patients stabilized by antipsychotics.

Aim: Given that antipsychotics tend to erase psychiatric symptoms, the present study was undertaken on acutely ill patients usually receiving no medications, or on whom medications are ineffective.

Comparison of self-reports and biological measures for alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs consumption in psychiatric inpatients.

Background: Asking psychiatric in-patients about their drug consumption is unlikely to yield reliable results, particularly where alcohol and illicit drug use is involved. The main aim of this study was to compare spontaneous self-reports of drug use in hospitalized psychiatric patients to biological measures of same. A secondary aim was to determine which personal factors were associated with the use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs as indicated by these biological measures.

Substitution with buprenorphine in methadone- and morphine sulfate-dependent patients. Preliminary results.

In France, during the 1990s, there have been some rapid developments in the treatment of opioid addiction with the introduction of legal substitution agents. Originally, some patients were treated with morphine sulfate, but this was superseded by high dose buprenorphine (Subutex(R)) and methadone. This resulted in those patients originally treated with morphine being transferred to either of these two licensed products.