Silvia L. Cruz. Opioids. Pharmacology, Abuse, and Addiction. Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, 387p. ISBN 978-3-031-09935-9 ISBN 978-3-031-09936-6 (eBook) doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09936-6
The history of opioids closely intertwines with the history of humankind. Indeed, opioids can affect how we live and die due to their therapeutic properties, psychoactive effects, and addiction potential.
The writing of this book took approximately 1 year, during which 80,800 people died only in the United States due to overdoses caused by prescription and nonprescription opioids. At the same time, countless patients benefit from opioid medications for pain management or palliative care. How can these drugs cause such profound effects on persons and societies? How can we take advantage of the desirable opioid effects while minimizing addiction?
Addressing these questions requires a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the complex phenomenon of addiction and how opioids produce their actions. Such knowledge provides the foundations for implementing much-needed evidence-based interventions to reduce opioid-induced harm. As a neuroscientist who has studied the neurobiology of addiction for decades and a lecturer in a graduate school, I have experienced firsthand the difficulty of finding comprehensive, accessible, and updated information on the social and pharmacological aspects of drug use in a single book. The same is true for colleagues working on philosophy, sociology, or economics that want to get familiar with the pharmacology of opioids or the complex chemical names of new psychoactive drugs.
This book is divided into two parts. The first one addresses key social aspects related to opioid use and users. It analyzes the current challenges to providing adequate pain management while avoiding the diversion of opioids to the black market. It also reviews the current international regulations to control drug use, the need to adapt them to different regional realities, the impact of opioid use disorders (OUDs) in people’s lives, and the structural interventions effective for prevention, harm reduction, and treatment. The second part covers the physiological, cellular, and molecular actions of main opioids, the relationship between opioid use and alterations in the immune system, tolerance development, abstinence, addiction, and medication-assisted treatment for OUDs.
It was my privilege to work with an amazing group of professionals on addiction from different fields; my gratitude and recognition to them for their generous and high-quality work. I hope that the readers will enjoy the process of learning about opioids as much as we enjoyed putting this book together.
The writing of this book took approximately 1 year, during which 80,800 people died only in the United States due to overdoses caused by prescription and nonprescription opioids. At the same time, countless patients benefit from opioid medications for pain management or palliative care. How can these drugs cause such profound effects on persons and societies? How can we take advantage of the desirable opioid effects while minimizing addiction?
Addressing these questions requires a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the complex phenomenon of addiction and how opioids produce their actions. Such knowledge provides the foundations for implementing much-needed evidence-based interventions to reduce opioid-induced harm. As a neuroscientist who has studied the neurobiology of addiction for decades and a lecturer in a graduate school, I have experienced firsthand the difficulty of finding comprehensive, accessible, and updated information on the social and pharmacological aspects of drug use in a single book. The same is true for colleagues working on philosophy, sociology, or economics that want to get familiar with the pharmacology of opioids or the complex chemical names of new psychoactive drugs.
This book is divided into two parts. The first one addresses key social aspects related to opioid use and users. It analyzes the current challenges to providing adequate pain management while avoiding the diversion of opioids to the black market. It also reviews the current international regulations to control drug use, the need to adapt them to different regional realities, the impact of opioid use disorders (OUDs) in people’s lives, and the structural interventions effective for prevention, harm reduction, and treatment. The second part covers the physiological, cellular, and molecular actions of main opioids, the relationship between opioid use and alterations in the immune system, tolerance development, abstinence, addiction, and medication-assisted treatment for OUDs.
It was my privilege to work with an amazing group of professionals on addiction from different fields; my gratitude and recognition to them for their generous and high-quality work. I hope that the readers will enjoy the process of learning about opioids as much as we enjoyed putting this book together.
