Testing It Up

A group of researchers from California found acamprosate (marketed as Campral) and naltrexone (ReVia) as good first option for treating people with alcohol problems.

The two drugs are commonly used in treating alcoholism, are both non-addictive, and won’t make patients get sick when mixed with alcohol, says a Reuters report.

Natalya Maisel from the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in Menlo Park, California, and her colleagues reviewed 64 trials which involved about 11,000 participants who were asked to take one of the drugs or a placebo pill. They found acamprosate to be more effective at helping people who were not currently drinking stay sober, while naltrexone is useful in cutting back heavy drinking and helping recovering alcoholics avoid cravings.

The researchers said both drugs work better when the subjects had stay away from alcohol for at least a few days before starting the drug trials, or had been through a detox program.

Acamprosate is known to calm brain activity, thus help stabilize brain that could get disrupted when an alcoholic stops drinking. Naltrexone is an opioid receptor antagonist that works on the brain’s reward and reinforcement system.

The new findings make sense for Dr. Raymond Anton, head of the Center for Drug & Alcohol Programs at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who wasn’t involved in the study. He agrees that both drugs can be useful as “first step” in addressing problem drinking when paired with therapy, particularly for people who are reluctant in seeking treatment due to time and money constraints.

Women today face a myriad of issues — work, stress, domestic responsibilities, hormones, and diet — that can have a significant impact to their health. For some, alcohol  present yet another health challenge that when ignored could wreak havoc not only in their personal lives, but also in their social relationships.

In the United States, an estimated 5.3 million women drink in a way that threatens their health, safety, and general well-being, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

While moderate drinking, defined as no more than one drink a day for women and no more than two drinks a day for men, is fine, those who drink more than the recommended limits are at risk for motor vehicle crashes, other injuries, high blood pressure, stroke, violence, suicide, and certain types of cancer. That said, health officials have been urging people with alcohol problems to get into treatment to regain control of their lives.

But oftentimes, the realization of getting sober doesn’t come easy. Good thing there are women-focused recovery groups like Women for Sobriety, Inc. that is dedicated in helping women overcome alcoholism and other addictions.

In an exclusive interview with TestCountry, Nancy Cross, 2nd Vice President of Women for Sobriety Board of Directors, talks about how the organization started and gave details on a specially designed program for women with alcohol and/or other drugs problems. She also shares their stand on synthetic drugs and the efforts that are undertaking to address synthetic drug abuse.

To read the full text of the interview, please visit Women for Sobriety Inc. Exclusive Interview About Alcoholism & Other Addictions.

This may be one of the most difficult questions to answer – as the last one who will admit, or realize, that he or she has an alcohol problem is the one with the problem to begin with.

Many people associate alcoholism with the image of someone who will always have a glass of bourbon or scotch or gin in hand, drinking day in and day out; anyone less than that cannot be considered an alcoholic. Not exactly, according to a feature on WebMD.

It turns out that being an alcoholic is not only determined by how much one drinks, or how often. One can not drink everyday or drink a whole lot but still abuse alcohol, or be at risk for addiction. The feature shares several signs for both.

Signs of alcohol abuse that people should watch out for include having problems at school or at work – such as tardiness, absence, injury or being unproductive. Irresponsible behavior – such as drinking and then driving, is also considered a sign of abuse, as is experiencing blackouts, or not remembering anything after drinking.

One can tell that they may be at risk for addiction if they start drinking more often than they used to – or start drinking more than what they planned to drink. Another sign will involve a change in the amount of alcohol that it will take for one to become drunk, and experience withdrawal symptoms – such as shakiness and anxiety – when one stops drinking.

The first step, of course, is acceptance. It is very important to reach deep within and admit that one has a problem, so that one can get the help he or she needs.

Last September, an off-duty cop reportedly ran over a woman in Brooklyn, an accident that resulted in the latter’s death. The victim was 32-year-old Vionique Valnord, the daughter of a minister. She was reportedly trying to hail a cab in the rain after attending a wedding when she was hit by a vehicle and killed.

First responders claimed that the driver, off-duty NYPD police officer Andrew Kelly, “smelled of alcohol and seemed to be drunk,” according to a report on Gothamist.com. The thing is Kelly reportedly scored a perfect zero after taking a court-ordered blood alcohol test – seven hours after the incident.

The same thing could not be said for the blood alcohol levels of Valnord, which, according to toxicology reports, were 0.22% in the blood, 0.23% in the eye fluid and 0.28% in the urine. The report was released Tuesday.

Kelly’s lawyer Arthur Aidala told the New York Daily News that Valnord’s blood alcohol levels – almost three times the legal limit, if she had been driving, that is – may have clouded her judgment and wandered into traffic, insinuating that she had caused the accident in the first place.

Valnord’s family is furious at this insinuation. Her sister Ruth said: “She was at least hailing a cab and not driving. He chose to drive drunk.” It is said that Kelly had refused a breathalyzer on the scene, but appeared drunk. There is also reportedly a video that shows him drinking before the accident – but he appeared clean in the blood alcohol test, which seems to have been taken more than just a wee bit too late to find anything of consequence.

New York Health Screening

The Russian New Year and Orthodox Christmas holidays are usually a time for merry-making and drinking. It is a rather lengthy affair, lasting from January 1 until 11, and involves a whole lot of drinking; and drinking usually involves what is perhaps the most favored liquor in that part of the world – vodka. This year, however, keeping up with the old (drinking) traditions will entail more roubles than usual, as the prices for the cheapest vodka were doubled this year.

The move is said to be an attempt at curbing the rate of alcohol consumption in the country. According to statistics, the average Russian can finish as much as 18 liters of pure alcohol every year, which led to the ordering of increased efforts against alcohol abuse by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in August 2009. Duty on beer has tripled since that time.

The cheapest price for a half-liter bottle of vodka will now be 89 roubles. This is just the minimum price, though; Moscow shops carry a wide variety of vodka, with the more expensive luxury brands costing as much as ten times the minimum price. There are cheap vodka brands that are packaged in rather attractive bottles that are in the form of the traditional Russian Matryoshka dolls; these are said to be part of a museum that demonstrates the development of vodka since the 15th century.

This is not the first time that a Soviet leader has tried to manage the Russian drinking habit. Mikhail Gorbachev, one of the more charismatic Soviet leaders, also set forth his own war against alcohol abuse in the mid-80’s by reducing the production of alcohol as well as strictly controlling its public consumption. What this drive resulted in, however, is the emergence of illegal production of low-quality alcoholic drinks.

The body of a woman from Woodbridge, Virginia who has been missing since December 16 has been found. Police and firefighters recovered the remains of 39-year-old Julie Ann Kroll from a 100-ft ravine behind a row of townhouses near the intersection of Forestdale and Beaumont roads in Dale City, according to a report.

The circumstances surrounding her disappearance were sad and disheartening, to say the least. Apparently, Kroll was intoxicated on the afternoon of December 16 and drove her SUV with her 8-year-old daughter. Investigators believe that she received a call on a mobile phone to stop her SUV and let the child out of the vehicle.

Kroll eventually did stop the SUV as a neighbor shared how he witnessed a little girl get out of the vehicle and go to a neighbor’s house for help; this was around 5:45 pm on December 16. Kroll herself reportedly got out of the SUV, but even as she did so she left the vehicle in drive. The car then drove off by itself and came to rest in a bush. Kroll was then seen walking down the street and did not return to take her daughter. It was the little girl’s father who picked her up in the evening.

Warrants of arrest for Kroll on charges of felony child neglect, driving on a revoked operator’s license and driving with an open alcoholic container were issued by the police.

Neighbors pitched in and organized search parties to find Kroll since her disappearance, to no avail.

According to Jim Patricio, Kroll’s father, Julie Ann had been struggling with alcoholism for many years. Court records show that she had had a few alcohol-related incidents, ranging from charges of drunken driving, refusal to undergo breath analyzer testing from a police officer and driving with a revoked license.

Alcohol abuse has become a particularly hard to treat problem in the UK prompting drastic measures by the federal and local government to help prevent abuse of the substance and other products that contain it. Last week it was reported that UK hospitals and prisons had been forced to remove hand sanitizing gel dispensers (installed to aid in thwarting the spread of germs like those related to the H1N1 flu) from the premises to prevent ingestion of the substance for the purpose of inebriation.

This week problems with parents drinking alcohol outside the gates of a school in Barnsley, South Yorkshire caused the school to instate fines to prevent the habit from continuing. Administrators at the Doncaster Road Primary School took measures to ban street drinking after reports were made to the police in the area about parents seen imbibing the substance outside the school’s gates at the time of pickup and drop-off of their children.

Should the suggested ban be passed it will mean that anyone caught drinking near the school’s premises will receive a 500 pound fine. School officials hope this will be enough to deter parents from repeating the offense and say they made the motion in order to avoid the children from being exposed to such inappropriate behavior.

Russia has been dealing with what it calls a “natural disaster” of an alcohol problem for decades. Now they’re making motions to decrease the problem through taxes and bans focused on beer, which is often viewed as a soft drink rather than an alcoholic substance in the country ( the alcohol level in the drink is considered nearly non-existent and therefore negligible culturally compared to the m,ore popular vodka.). The move hopes to instate a 300% increase on the tax of beer and is accompanied by a ban on its sale at kiosks across the country.

Russia’s industry and trade ministry drafted the law as part of an effort to resolve the problem before it becomes worse. According to Russia’s chief oversight body there are 500,000 deaths each year that are related to alcohol abuse in some fashion; a staggering sum that caused President Dmitry Medvedev to call it a natural disaster in the first place.

It’s hoped that such measures will decrease the rate at which beer is consumed and therefore reduce the risk of alcoholism and boost the understanding that it’s indeed an alcoholic beverage. In smaller doses beer consumption shouldn’t lead to alcohol dependency. About 66% of alcohol sales came from vodka in 2008 and about half of alcohol sales this year thus far. Beer made up about 25% of sales last year and has increased to about 33% this year. Those who oppose the law declare it a risk for small business and kiosks in particular who earn about 40% of their income from beer sales alone. 65% of Russians polled about the law supported it.

Drinking early has been found to have an effect on the genes related to alcoholism, increasing the likelihood of the subject developing a serious drinking problem later in life. Using twins, a researcher in Australia analyzed the affects of early drinking on heritable genes. When these subjects began drinking at an early age it increased the likelihood of their developing alcoholism by as much as 90% among the youngest drinkers. Those who drank at older ages were not affected in this way. While genetic changes occurred for the younger subjects for the older subjects factors like environment were much more likely to influence them in their drinking habits. The reason for this age difference having different effects isn’t clear but if a younger drinking age is responsible for changing genetic traits related to alcoholism as the study shows then it does become even more important to prevent such habits from developing at a young age.

The twins in the study were between the ages of 24 and 36 at the time of interview but some of the subjects reported drinking ages as young as 5 or 6. Those who were 15 or younger when they began drinking were more likely to develop drinking problems than those who were older. Twins offered the researchers an opportunity to study behavioral differences in two people with the exact same DNA. Differences in things like drinking between the pair are concluded to be caused by environmental factors for this reason.

I have a 15 year old son who I think has been drinking. He chews gum and takes mints most of the time so I do not smell it on his breath. I heard him talking about drinking with his friends and am worried because alcoholism runs in our family. I have found that there are home testing kits that can be used to test kids as well as adults for alcohol in the system. They work to test urine as well as saliva. There is even alcohol testing kit that can be used to test alcohol on the breath and it cannot be fooled with ordinary mints and gum.

I plan to test my teen for alcohol using an at home testing kit. I wonder if there are any other parents out there who have experienced this type of behavior in their teens and have used these kits to test their children for alcohol. I feel as though I am going over the top a bit on this, but I do not want to see him drinking at this young age.