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With the use of crack on the rise in American cities, there is more need than ever to understand the biological, environmental, and social factors behind cocaine addiction, as well as the pharmacological properties of cocaine that make it such an addictive drug. The Neurobiology of Cocaine Addiction helps clinicians and researchers analyze research findings and their relevance to the clinical treatment of cocaine dependency. To do this, it looks at the whole spectrum of cocaine use, from trends in cocaine-involved deaths, hospital emergencies, arrests, and treatment admissions to the specific impact the drug has on brain function. The book reports on important findings from positron emission tomography (PET) and a “binge” pattern cocaine administration mode. This will enable you to improve your understanding of how cocaine alters the pleasure/reward system of the brain and creates new instinctual needs that displace the inherent instinctual needs of hunger and sex.By reading The Neurobiology of Cocaine Addiction, you will sharpen your knowledge of the basic actions of cocaine, the factors related to daily cocaine use, the neurobiological basis of addictive diseases, and drug-induced alterations in normal physiology. You will also learn about: the coexistence of cocaine and heroin addiction cocaine's disruption of the endogenous opioid system QEEG and how it can play a potentially useful role in drug development and planning hypotheses of sensitization in the pathophysiology of cocaine dependence factors that predict daily cocaine use among patients in a methadone maintenance program abnormalities in brain function that persist for up to six months after last cocaine use patterns of cocaine use the importance of prospective data analysis and the limitations of a self-selective study groupClinicians, researchers, psychiatrists, and other professionals in chemical dependency and narcotics rehabilitation will turn the last page of The Neurobiology of Cocaine Addiction with a better understanding of cocaine's addictive qualities and the characteristics of the individuals who become addicted to it. You will see what headway has been made in research at some of the nation's top laboratories, but you will also see what remains to be done. Hopefully, you will find where you can make a contribution either at the practical level, the research level, or both.

Cocaine abuse remains a major public health problem and contributes to many of our most disturbing social problems, including the spread of infectious disease, crime, violence, and neonatal drug exposure. Cocaine abuse results from a complex interplay of behavioral, pharmacological, and neurobiological determinants. While a complete understanding of cocaine abuse is currently beyond us, significant progress has been made in preclinical research on fundamental determinants of this disorder. These advances are critically reviewed in the first section of this volume. Important advances also have been made in characterizing the clinical pharmacology of cocaine, and those advances have been extended to understanding individual vulnerability to cocaine abuse, development of effective treatments, and discussions of policy. Those advances are critically reviewed in the third section of this volume. Contributors to the book were selected because of their status as internationally recognized leaders in their respective areas of scientific expertise. Moreover, each is a proponent of the importance of a rigorous, interdisciplinary scientific approach to effectively addressing the problem of cocaine abuse. As such, this volume offers a coherent, empirically-based conceptual framework for addressing cocaine abuse that has continuity from the basic research laboratory through the clinical and policy arenas. Each of the specific chapters is sufficiently detailed, in-depth and current to be valuable to informed readers with specific interests while also offering a comprehensive overview for those who might be less informed or have broader interests in cocaine abuse. This blend of critical review within each chapter with an explicitly conceptual continuity that spans all of the chapters makes this volume a unique contribution to cocaine abuse in particular and substance abuse in general. - Discusses cocaine abuse within the context of current principles of psychology, pharmacology, neuroscience, genetics and epidemiology - Chapters are all authored by scientific experts - First of its kind book on cocaine abuse to recognize behavioral/environmental determinants - Coverage is comprehensive - Informative for experts and generalists alike