Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Flow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and it's summer vacation people
Speaker 1: who are on break. We thought it's a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to replay a couple of our favorite episodes on the
Speaker 1: very serious topic of addiction. Um. The last episode was
Speaker 1: a repeat of the Science of Addiction, and today we're
Speaker 1: going to repeat the Future of Addiction, where we look
Speaker 1: to the future to see in different ways to to
Speaker 1: deal with this crushing problem. Uh So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: let's dive into the top. This episode is, uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna look at the future of addiction. Uh. And we're
Speaker 1: not talking about just what kind of crazy drugs would
Speaker 1: have in the future. Now, we're talking about how can
Speaker 1: we treat addiction in the future. What are some of
Speaker 1: the cutting edge and emerging techniques and technolog only do
Speaker 1: is that will be at our disposal to deal with
Speaker 1: the disease of addiction. Yeah, and before we look at
Speaker 1: the future stuff, let's just kind of look at what's
Speaker 1: going on in the present. The number one driver of
Speaker 1: aids in the world is used heroin needles, particularly in
Speaker 1: countries where there's no needle exchange programs. So what if
Speaker 1: you could get rid of the root problem, you could
Speaker 1: eradicate heroin addiction, or for that matter, really any addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're not just talking instantly. Minds tend to turn
Speaker 1: to Africa, and certainly that's one of the areas concerned here,
Speaker 1: but other you know, countries that don't have needle exchange
Speaker 1: programs include such large, uh populous nations as China and Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that people don't, you know, at least people
Speaker 1: outside of the United States don't realize what in the
Speaker 1: city is problem. This is half a trillion dollars or
Speaker 1: spent worldwide to treat addiction. So here's just one little
Speaker 1: prism of the addiction problem in the US. And estimated
Speaker 1: one point four million Americans are addicted to pain, which
Speaker 1: was the reason for more than four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two thousand emergency department visits in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke
Speaker 1: among people younger than age thirty five. So the problem here,
Speaker 1: of course is that we have access and if you
Speaker 1: look at you know, sort of where drugs are in
Speaker 1: the time continuum of history here, Um, we have more
Speaker 1: access to drugs than ever before, and more types of drugs,
Speaker 1: and what emerges here are some highly, highly addictive substances.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about meth, which creates one of the biggest
Speaker 1: boosts of dopamine in the brain, and prolonged use of
Speaker 1: this can lead to psychotic like symptoms, talking about strong hallucinations,
Speaker 1: really violent behavior, and studies of the brain patterns of
Speaker 1: some long term matthews have shown that up to fift
Speaker 1: of their dopamine producing cells have been damaged. So if
Speaker 1: you listened um to the other episode on this, then
Speaker 1: you kind of know already that, Um, this is a
Speaker 1: situation where the person is just getting deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into the hull because it's not about free will anymore,
Speaker 1: because the parts of your brand, the executive function, have
Speaker 1: been so eroded by drugs that even if you wanted
Speaker 1: to stop, you might not be able to. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and that's certainly the the anti drug messaging that
Speaker 1: I think needs to be focused on more often with
Speaker 1: meth amphetamy. Because I was reading and according to neuro
Speaker 1: psychopharmacologist Carl Hart, there's actually no empirical evidence to support
Speaker 1: the claim that meth amphetamy causes one to become physically unattractive,
Speaker 1: which hopefully they've they're calming down on that, but for
Speaker 1: the longest, like like meth mouth, you know, and the
Speaker 1: transformation of the meth addict into some sort of subhuman
Speaker 1: hyena person has been kind of the focus. When certainly
Speaker 1: that's flashy that works on a billboard a little easier,
Speaker 1: but the reality of what's actually changing with the brain
Speaker 1: that is far scarier than some sort of decal on
Speaker 1: hide ship. I agree. I have seen the ads before
Speaker 1: where there's like this beautiful woman and then she takes
Speaker 1: out her false teeth and she takes off her makeup,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you see her meth attic
Speaker 1: riddled face, and they are appealing to vanity. But vanity
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. When addiction is highly routinized in your brain, um,
Speaker 1: nobody cares anymore what they look like. So if you
Speaker 1: were to instead crack open the brain and show people
Speaker 1: this is how your brain is actually like completely mutating here,
Speaker 1: that might be a far more compelling story to people.
Speaker 1: The next one is another biggie, and that is of
Speaker 1: course heroin derived from opium, and of course this one
Speaker 1: has been wreaking havoc for for years and years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty of first time users will become addicted. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, two point four percent of the American
Speaker 1: population said they had tried heroin at least once. The
Speaker 1: source of that is Department of Health. And withdrawal symptoms
Speaker 1: are really acute. They arrive just a few hours after
Speaker 1: a dose swears off, and because of this, users have
Speaker 1: a really high chance for relapse. Because we talked about
Speaker 1: this in the last episode. UM, at some point the
Speaker 1: addiction becomes less about chasing the high and more about
Speaker 1: chasing some sort of equilibrium and feeling normal again, which
Speaker 1: can only happen if you get more of the substance
Speaker 1: in your body. All right, And the next big one
Speaker 1: to hit might come as surprise because it's not crack cocaine.
Speaker 1: It is nicotine. Nicotine is a very addictive substance. But
Speaker 1: we often overlook this why. Um, I think it's because
Speaker 1: it's legalized, right something like of people who ever try
Speaker 1: cigarettes will become nicotine addicts. At some point, you can
Speaker 1: buy it legally at the store, at the gas station
Speaker 1: used to. You can get out of a machine. Um,
Speaker 1: someone's liable too, and it's given its legality and an
Speaker 1: overall still social acceptance, um, people are liable to give
Speaker 1: it to you without it being that big of a
Speaker 1: deal as well. So and it still looks cool on TV, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not as big of a risk. And this
Speaker 1: is something that David Lyndon, professor of neuroscience at Johns
Speaker 1: Hopkins University, pointed out. He said, you know, hey, if
Speaker 1: you have a bag of heroin, you're not going to
Speaker 1: do a whole bag of heroin. You know you're gonna overdose.
Speaker 1: But if you have a pack of cigarettes and you
Speaker 1: have ten or twenty of those cigarettes throughout the day,
Speaker 1: you get that little ding of dopamine each time. And
Speaker 1: he kind of yeah, he kind of like likened it
Speaker 1: to pav Offs dog, right, so he said that we're
Speaker 1: really good at training or inner dog and sort of
Speaker 1: being like, oh, I need a little pick up right now,
Speaker 1: and you get that little dopamine um pleasure feeling from it.
Speaker 1: But you're not going to necessarily, um render yourself unconscious
Speaker 1: or unable to work or any of those things. But
Speaker 1: still it is an addiction, and it is an addictive behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you hear about people being one or two back a
Speaker 1: day smoker, whereas in the panel they pointed out that
Speaker 1: that even a heavy heroine user is probably not going
Speaker 1: to use more than through times a day. And so
Speaker 1: to go back to what one of the topics were
Speaker 1: discussed in the previous episode, chunking that idea that the
Speaker 1: brain is forming habits give X, then Y and Z
Speaker 1: and uh and then per forming a shortcut kind of
Speaker 1: a hot key for the brain for behavior encoding the
Speaker 1: memory of usage. Uh, you're going to have, what you know,
Speaker 1: twenty times uh or more per day that you're enforcing
Speaker 1: that shortcut as opposed to a maximum three times per
Speaker 1: day with the hairin user. Yeah. And Charles do Hick,
Speaker 1: the author of UM, the Habit Loop, I think I
Speaker 1: totally slaughtered that. But um, he's talked about this and
Speaker 1: written about this at length, and he says his claim
Speaker 1: is that percent of our decisions every day that's just habit.
Speaker 1: We think we're making these decisions, but really we're just
Speaker 1: responding to environmental cues in these well worn neural pathways
Speaker 1: in our brains. Yeah, because, if we've discussed before, habits
Speaker 1: take up energy, if they take a cognitive power, and
Speaker 1: we don't have a limitless amount of that. So we
Speaker 1: handed over to to routine, we end it over to
Speaker 1: habit so that we'll have some juice to handle the
Speaker 1: actual decisions that are coming at and of course that
Speaker 1: the problem with this is that again, your brain, your
Speaker 1: brain secretary, isn't making any sort of like, hey, this
Speaker 1: could be a terrible thing. Don't do this. Um and
Speaker 1: your prefrontal cortex, your executive functions in your brain are
Speaker 1: already sort of um lessened by the addictive behavior. All right,
Speaker 1: The next thing we have here is prescription medication, one
Speaker 1: of the rapidly growing substances of abuse in the US.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen eighty and abuse of prescription drugs increased four
Speaker 1: and it has about the same amount of usage in
Speaker 1: America as cocaine. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Speaker 1: drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, and among people twenty five to
Speaker 1: sixty four years old, drug overdose caused more death than
Speaker 1: motor vehicle traffic crashes. So the National Institute on Drug
Speaker 1: Abuse goes on to say, by the way, and two
Speaker 1: doesn't intend seventy eight percent of the drug overdose depths
Speaker 1: in the US were unintentional seventy eight percent. And I
Speaker 1: think that this is painting a story here about how
Speaker 1: prescription drugs, uh have become so accessible in people are
Speaker 1: mixing them with other drugs or mixing them with alcohol
Speaker 1: to their detriment. Yeah, I mean, it's it's important to
Speaker 1: to to to to to point out, yeah, that prescription
Speaker 1: drugs just because it's prescribed, does not mean it is
Speaker 1: necessarily a safe substance of Any of these are very
Speaker 1: dangerous socis. I mean, any of these are amphetamines. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they're not that different from the illegal variant. And
Speaker 1: certainly methamphetamine itself is memory serves as scheduled to narcotic anyway,
Speaker 1: which means that it consuvably has a medical purpose. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense to like, which which car is
Speaker 1: going to be faster, the one made in a garage
Speaker 1: or the one made at at a at a factory. Right,
Speaker 1: And what do we have with with drugs? Your street
Speaker 1: drug is often made in a garage, whereas your your
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical product, he's made by a billion upon billion dollar industry.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of like a supercharged vehicle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, I'm sure that people are aware that there
Speaker 1: are ways that people get their hands on drugs that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have. They were legal drugs prescribed and I
Speaker 1: won't go into that. I will say that if you
Speaker 1: are interested in learning more abound fist prescription drugs, check
Speaker 1: out the documentary American Addict that goes into detail. It's
Speaker 1: pretty depressing, um, but it's also very eye opening about
Speaker 1: this topic. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we get back. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: treatments of addiction. Alright, we're back, So we've we've we
Speaker 1: discussed addiction here. Let's talk about the ways that we
Speaker 1: treat addiction. We have several different approaches that are currently
Speaker 1: in play, and we're looking at some some new methods
Speaker 1: of tackling in the future. Yeah, and before we go
Speaker 1: into that, we should say, hey, by the way, rate
Speaker 1: of relapse is really high for addicts. I think this
Speaker 1: is something most people know. According to the National Institute
Speaker 1: on Drug Abuse, relapse rates for drug addicted patients about
Speaker 1: forty It's similar to relapse and those suffering from diabetes, hypertension,
Speaker 1: and asthma, and drug addictions should be treated like any
Speaker 1: other chronic illness with relapse serving as a trigger for
Speaker 1: renewed intervention. So keep this in mind. Um, and we
Speaker 1: talked about this, this idea of memory encoding behavior and
Speaker 1: there are being triggers for that. So imagine that you
Speaker 1: have just completed a program, say from heroin abuse, and
Speaker 1: you get out and UM, I think I called them before,
Speaker 1: these neural ghosts, these neural pathways in your brain, the
Speaker 1: sort of cellular scarring that's still there. It's very easy
Speaker 1: to tap into that and have that behavior express itself again.
Speaker 1: A great example of this is Philip Seymour Hoffman, which
Speaker 1: is brought up at the World Science Festival for the
Speaker 1: panel of the Craving Brain. They said, look at this guy.
Speaker 1: He was something like ten years sober from heroin addiction,
Speaker 1: went to a rap party one night, had a beer,
Speaker 1: and then something like I don't know, was it weeks
Speaker 1: or months later, had died from heroin overdose. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just started him down the path, opened up those pathways
Speaker 1: again in the brain, those those pathways of habit and
Speaker 1: behavior in addiction, and uh, and then then that's where
Speaker 1: he ended up. Yeah, So you know, you're not treating
Speaker 1: something that's easily dealt with. Here, right, Just I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea of a cat's cradle, right,
Speaker 1: you know where you take the shoe lace tied together
Speaker 1: and you you string it between your fingers, and it's
Speaker 1: all the different fingers holding the string out to form
Speaker 1: this pattern. And you can't you know, put a point
Speaker 1: at one particular finger and say that is the cause
Speaker 1: of the pattern, that is the cause of the the
Speaker 1: overall design here. And just as there's no over that
Speaker 1: one finger you can pin the whole design on, there's
Speaker 1: no one finger you can remove. There's no one treatment
Speaker 1: plan that's going to to be a magic bullet against
Speaker 1: the problem of addiction. Yeah, because in one sense, um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter anymore if you have genetic dispositions
Speaker 1: to addiction, if you're in the middle of an addiction,
Speaker 1: because at that point you've got habit taken over, you've
Speaker 1: got the transfer station, there are significant changes to your brain,
Speaker 1: and now you've got you know, memory all wrapped up
Speaker 1: in it. So um. So, yeah, it is a bit
Speaker 1: of a cat's cradle. But the treatments can't really treat
Speaker 1: a cat's cradle. You can pretty much go after individual fingers. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no unified treatments. So the most widespread medication right
Speaker 1: now is in a antidepressants, because this would address the
Speaker 1: feelings of despair or you know, any sort of pre
Speaker 1: existing condition like depression that may have led to the
Speaker 1: addiction in the first place. So the album with that though,
Speaker 1: is that you would have to really pair that with
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy because it's not just enough to say, here's
Speaker 1: a depressant and we have another a number of other
Speaker 1: medications that sort of target individual parts of the chemical
Speaker 1: cocktail involved in addiction. UM. We have, for instance, one
Speaker 1: of the most famous being a methodone which suppresses withdrawal
Speaker 1: symptoms and relieves craving. With the people are recovering from
Speaker 1: from heroin, uh, you know, morphine addiction. UM. You have
Speaker 1: other substance such as now trek zone, which works by
Speaker 1: blocking the effects of heroin and other opiates at the
Speaker 1: receptor sites. UM. You have of course, so when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with nicotine nicotine, you have nicotine replacement therapy where
Speaker 1: essentially you're still getting the nicotine, just not through the cigarette,
Speaker 1: and that's used to help with the with the with
Speaker 1: with the with cravings and whatnot. With alcohol, you have
Speaker 1: now trek zone, which blocks opiate receptors that are involved
Speaker 1: in the reroarting effects of drinking and in the craving
Speaker 1: of alcohol. UM. So you see all these types of
Speaker 1: medication there Again, they're going after sort of a particular
Speaker 1: point in the chain and chain of effect and uh
Speaker 1: and that. But they can't they can't deal with environment.
Speaker 1: They can only deal with with one point in in
Speaker 1: the the chemical reaction, be it in how the brain
Speaker 1: is receiving or how the brain is dealing with withdrawal
Speaker 1: from the substance. And of course that has to have
Speaker 1: to have a behavioral counterpoint counterpoint part in order to succeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in the case of methodone, that itself is highly addictive,
Speaker 1: and it's going to argue that you're just delaying the
Speaker 1: process of rehabilitation. Really, you're just moving the goalpost out.
Speaker 1: So what do we have on the horizon in the future,
Speaker 1: And you've got some really interesting things going on. UM
Speaker 1: one is called optogenetics, and are excuse me optogenics And
Speaker 1: this is basically kind of like UM a light sensitive
Speaker 1: molecule that's beamed into the brain so far of rats,
Speaker 1: So rats that are learning certain habits, the researchers can
Speaker 1: use this optogenetics treatment to basically turn on or off
Speaker 1: neurons in the rats brains and block the behavior and
Speaker 1: block the the ability of that rat to sort of
Speaker 1: remember like, hey, I want to go and do this. Um.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about this is that the rats change
Speaker 1: their behavior in response to different rewards even when the
Speaker 1: light wasn't present. So after they got the initial zap
Speaker 1: with the light, they still didn't return to the bad
Speaker 1: behavior even when a significant amount of time had passed.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is happening in rats right now, not
Speaker 1: in humans. Um. But it plays into this other idea,
Speaker 1: which is electromagnetic magnetic stimulation. Yeah, this is the form
Speaker 1: that this would likely take in the treatment of of
Speaker 1: of human addicts, and certainly this is where the research
Speaker 1: is headed. Um And and in this we would use
Speaker 1: electromagnetic stimulation outside of the scalp I hope no surgery required, uh,
Speaker 1: using transcranial magnetic stimulation on these particular parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: Again to almost not to simplify it and say, it's
Speaker 1: just like turning the switch on and off in terms
Speaker 1: of addiction, but but but turning off that that that
Speaker 1: that craving, right, Yeah, and increasing the neural activity in
Speaker 1: the parts of the brain that deal with executive functions
Speaker 1: like willpower. Right, So that's what we've talked about that
Speaker 1: that's such a big part of this. So then you
Speaker 1: have you know, willpower being ramped up and you have
Speaker 1: the addiction behavior being ramped down. What you still have
Speaker 1: to deal with is memory in those triggers. And David Lyndon,
Speaker 1: the neuroscientists and author of the Compass of Pleasure, says
Speaker 1: addiction is a form of learning. When we, for example,
Speaker 1: puff on a cigarette or inject heroin in our arm,
Speaker 1: we are developing associations between the act of puffing or
Speaker 1: the act of injecting all the other sensory information that's
Speaker 1: around the sites and the smells, the people were with,
Speaker 1: the music, we're hearing, the room. We're in a situation
Speaker 1: that surrounds us and the pleasure that is produced as
Speaker 1: the result of puffing on that cigarette or injecting that heroin. Well,
Speaker 1: I hate to invoke the title of the movie anymore
Speaker 1: since it's invoked again in every every news article on
Speaker 1: science that deals with erasing the memory. But you kind
Speaker 1: of have to go eternal sunshine of the follower's mind
Speaker 1: on that particular drug memory, because, as we discussed in
Speaker 1: previous episode, the drug memory is has has is really
Speaker 1: firmly encoded. It's not just the memory of taking the drug.
Speaker 1: Is the memory of the environment, the situation of the drug,
Speaker 1: All these things tied up into it. So, yeah, what
Speaker 1: if you could go after that memory, if you could
Speaker 1: blast that memory sort of photon torpedo it, then you
Speaker 1: could conceivably have a leg up on beating the addiction,
Speaker 1: or you could you could just like hose it down
Speaker 1: with a chemical, which is essentially what researchers at the
Speaker 1: Script's Research Institute have done. This is from a Fall
Speaker 1: two thousand and thirteen study published online in Biological Yeah Tree.
Speaker 1: For six days, they had rats alternate between one of
Speaker 1: two rooms, and on the odd days they were put
Speaker 1: in a chamber let's call it Chamber A and given meth.
Speaker 1: On even days they were put in Chamber B and
Speaker 1: given a sailine place debo. So a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: half of these rodents were given a choice between those
Speaker 1: two rooms, and the room associated with that meth, of course,
Speaker 1: was preferred by those rats who were injected with meth.
Speaker 1: But the other half of the rodents were then injected
Speaker 1: with something called La trunculin a or lat A, and
Speaker 1: this is a chemical that interferes with actin and that's
Speaker 1: a protein known to be involved in memory formation. So
Speaker 1: when they were injected with lack day excuse me, latte,
Speaker 1: the animals showed no preference between rooms even up to
Speaker 1: a day later. Again, this is all highly experimental, but
Speaker 1: it's it's giving us an idea that there are certain
Speaker 1: interventions that can happen to address all the different facets
Speaker 1: of addiction. And the researchers do point out that you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about about this particular method being
Speaker 1: used to just erase memories willy nilly. They say that
Speaker 1: you actually couldn't take their discovery and erase your run
Speaker 1: of the mill memory inside of the brain. Uh. They said,
Speaker 1: you can only use this to get rid of these
Speaker 1: strong drug associated memories. And of course there's gonna be
Speaker 1: many more studies and they will have to be human
Speaker 1: trials in order for this too for the FDA to
Speaker 1: approve of it um. But that gets us into this
Speaker 1: other territory in which the f d A has approved
Speaker 1: one type of vaccine but not another. And when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about our vaccines developed by Kim d Janda, he
Speaker 1: was on that World Science Festival panel of the Craving
Speaker 1: Brain to block the effects of heroin and users, but
Speaker 1: also block the effects of nicotine and users. So guess
Speaker 1: which one is being funded? Oh well, obviously they're going
Speaker 1: to fund the nicotine one because that's your that's your
Speaker 1: kind of your your white collar drug. Everyone is dealing
Speaker 1: with nicotine. But heroin, Oh, that's that's a dirty that's
Speaker 1: a dirty drug. That's that that's the at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the circus tent, right, that's the that's down there
Speaker 1: with the safety name. Yeah, even though an estimated twelve
Speaker 1: million to fourteen million people used heroin as of two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, accorded to according to the United Nations
Speaker 1: Office on Drugs and Crime, and Americans uh something like
Speaker 1: two in two thousand and eleven. So obviously it's a
Speaker 1: pervasive problem when we spend a lot of money on
Speaker 1: that um. But the vaccine itself stimulates the immune system
Speaker 1: to recognize the substance and has to be given over
Speaker 1: a period of weeks, which eventually renders the person immune
Speaker 1: to the drug. Because how do our immune systems try work. Right,
Speaker 1: Our immune systems evolved to deal with foreign outside invaders,
Speaker 1: so our immune system doesn't doesn't look at incoming cocaine
Speaker 1: or heroin or nicotine or alcohol and say say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's bad, let's go after that. They say, sorry, that's
Speaker 1: not on our list of of suspects. We're not gonna go.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna go to right, you know. So the
Speaker 1: idea who are this vaccine is? It is it puts
Speaker 1: those offenders on the on the suspect list for our
Speaker 1: immune system and keeps them from crossing a very important border,
Speaker 1: at least in the case of the heroine. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: blood brain barrier, because that's key here. That will actually
Speaker 1: block any psychoactive effects. So in other words, you're not
Speaker 1: going to get high. Yeah. And what they found in
Speaker 1: the rats, or what Genda said he found is that
Speaker 1: they would give the rats like uh doses overdose quantity, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the rats would survive when they were vaccinated. So
Speaker 1: of course it's not something you would want to try
Speaker 1: and human trials, but um, but it does lead us
Speaker 1: to this idea that once you take the psychoactive part out,
Speaker 1: the actual um blood brain barrier part, where it doesn't
Speaker 1: get into your brain and then affect the rest of
Speaker 1: the system. Is that you could render this this drug toothless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's important to know that this is not
Speaker 1: like like a lot of other vaccines. It's not a
Speaker 1: situation where you'd say, all right, give everybody in the
Speaker 1: population the heroin vaccine and then heroin doesn't work on
Speaker 1: any body. This would be more of a tool to
Speaker 1: prevent a relapse. Really. Yeah, But again, the problem here
Speaker 1: is the stigma, because of course the nicotine one has
Speaker 1: human trials. It's brought to market. Just look at those
Speaker 1: polite people and the TV commercials dealing with their nicotine problems, right,
Speaker 1: and certainly many of our listeners are dealing with the
Speaker 1: nicotin problems. I don't want to cheapen it or anything,
Speaker 1: but it's it's far more socially acceptable. I think of
Speaker 1: your TV version of the guy who's smoking too much,
Speaker 1: and it's just a random guy. It might even be
Speaker 1: Goofy from the Disney cartoons. I finally remember him trying
Speaker 1: to quit smoking on the cartoon. I never saw a
Speaker 1: Disney cartoon in which Goofy had to deal with a
Speaker 1: heroin problem, even though that fits the time period right
Speaker 1: the forties, you know perfect. I mean you could see
Speaker 1: Mickey tying his arm off. I mean, we're making light
Speaker 1: of this, but really, I mean this is this is
Speaker 1: something that I think is very disheartening, especially for chimd Janda,
Speaker 1: who came up with a vaccine in the first place,
Speaker 1: for heroin to stop this spread of AIDS, because of
Speaker 1: course the vector here as uh use needles. So I
Speaker 1: think it's got to be uh, really just disheartening for
Speaker 1: him to hear from um big pharma there's no market
Speaker 1: for this. There's no market for a heroin vaccine, are
Speaker 1: you kidding? Yeah, it's because again, when you look at
Speaker 1: the huge public health benefit to something like this, it's
Speaker 1: just it's an insane Yeah. And another thing that they
Speaker 1: said on the panel is that this just has to
Speaker 1: become more of the national discussion, and that, uh that
Speaker 1: doctors need to have medical training on how to talk
Speaker 1: to their patients about addiction, because they say right now
Speaker 1: that they're not trained in that, and that the big
Speaker 1: joke among doctors is that if a patient comes to
Speaker 1: you and says, I drink four drinks a night, you
Speaker 1: should probably double whatever it is that they say um
Speaker 1: and you and not even really address the problem or
Speaker 1: the situation a digny deeper. Yeah, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: any time you're you're you're dealing with the doctor. It's
Speaker 1: like it's not maybe it's not firmly established in the
Speaker 1: public mindset that this is a safe tone and that
Speaker 1: you can actually talk about what you're putting into your
Speaker 1: body legally or illegally because it is bottom line essential
Speaker 1: to your health. But you know, I think that if
Speaker 1: the I think that if the medical field approached it
Speaker 1: in a different way, and like, for instance, I went
Speaker 1: to um my doctor and she said, hey, Julia, friend,
Speaker 1: these tests on you. It looks like you've got some
Speaker 1: genetic predispositions for addiction. I wanted to, you know, just
Speaker 1: give you a heads up or are you in any
Speaker 1: sort of stress loops in your life that you need
Speaker 1: help with or that you're aware of. Then it I know,
Speaker 1: it takes up more time with your doctor, but again,
Speaker 1: it's opening up the line of communication and it's taking
Speaker 1: out the stigma because you're talking about it. And if
Speaker 1: this is something that is so pervasive in society. By
Speaker 1: the way, something like eight percent of all pharmacutical suiticals
Speaker 1: are consumed by the US by people in the United States.
Speaker 1: Those are a lot of drugs, legal drugs, but still
Speaker 1: drugs that are being distributed and um and consumed by people.
Speaker 1: So this obviously is is not just a kind of
Speaker 1: aside problem that some people have. You know, I want
Speaker 1: to point out another possible application for the vaccine that
Speaker 1: was brought up the heroin vaccine, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about rodents that were given this vaccine,
Speaker 1: how they could take essentially almost like a lethal overdose
Speaker 1: amount of the drug and and still be fine. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a possibility that the vaccine could be used to
Speaker 1: treat people who are who have overdose symptoms. So healthcare
Speaker 1: professionals pick someone up or arrive at a scene someone's
Speaker 1: clearly overdosing on on heroin, they can apply the vaccine
Speaker 1: as a curative measure. Yeah, so emergency medicine could really
Speaker 1: benefit from this. But again, I just keep pointing to
Speaker 1: this idea that if you start to talk about it,
Speaker 1: if you start to remove the stigma, then you can
Speaker 1: really get to the behavior part of it, and to
Speaker 1: the root causes of it, the depression, anxiety, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that's going on in a person's life and treat
Speaker 1: them mental health part of this equation which is so important.
Speaker 1: And it's a shame that the whole topic becomes so
Speaker 1: political as well, because like even a story like we
Speaker 1: mentioned Philips he more Hoffman earlier, I looked him up
Speaker 1: again and was looking at some of the various articles
Speaker 1: about him, and you still see this sort of the
Speaker 1: gut reaction from from some commentators where some people, you know,
Speaker 1: we're saying, oh, well, this is you know, horrible. This
Speaker 1: is a very talented man who struggled with it with
Speaker 1: his dean. I don't even want to say his demons,
Speaker 1: because that personifies it as something supernatural and not something
Speaker 1: that's based in in in physical illness. Um. But people
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, this is terrible. We had to deal
Speaker 1: with this disease and it eventually caught up with him.
Speaker 1: And then there's still people who are going to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he was just essentially saying oh well he was just weak,
Speaker 1: Oh he was just this is you know, moral failure
Speaker 1: of his character. He was just another you know, Hollywood
Speaker 1: phony or whatnot. You like, you still see that kind
Speaker 1: of attitude, uh, you know, all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember reading an op ed piece, and I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it was Slate or Salon, but there was
Speaker 1: this forty five year old dad with a family who
Speaker 1: wrote about, Hey, look, this is a reminder of the
Speaker 1: slippery slope when it comes to what you know, he
Speaker 1: would say, brain disease is when it comes to addiction,
Speaker 1: because I was someone who was on the edge and
Speaker 1: a very lucky to have not died with my addictions.
Speaker 1: And I'm forty five years old, and I realized that
Speaker 1: there are many triggers that could cause us, just as
Speaker 1: it did with Hoffman. So there you have it, a
Speaker 1: little little luxie into the future. Uh, ways that we
Speaker 1: can deal with addiction, the way the way that we
Speaker 1: might deal with addiction. But again, there there has to
Speaker 1: be enough of investment in the public mindset um to
Speaker 1: really see this. Uh, this heroin vaccine reached the point
Speaker 1: where actually affecting world health. All right, So there you
Speaker 1: have it. Hey, if you want to explore more topics,
Speaker 1: so just this one and be sure to check out
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