Anxiety during Withdrawal from Cocaine | Drug Addiction Treatment

09:49 Relapse is common among those struggling to overcome an addiction to cocaine. 0 Comments

Anxiety during Withdrawal from Cocaine | Drug Addiction Treatment: "Relapse is common among those struggling to overcome an addiction to cocaine. Besides the physical ailments associated with discontinuing use of a drug, often psychological factors cause the drug user to be susceptible to a relapse.
It is important to understand the symptoms of a withdrawal, so that treatment centers may be able to better assist individuals with avoiding a relapse. The symptoms of withdrawal are often combated with other medications to ease their potency, making withdrawal more successful.
Santucci and Rosario (2010) recently examined the consequences of withdrawal in an animal model study, looking at how symptoms of anxiety develop during withdrawal from cocaine. The objective of the study was to examine the ways that anxiety levels are influenced by withdrawal, in anticipation that when applied to human beings, relapse risk might be reduced.
The researchers randomly assigned 26 male adolescent Long-Evans hooded rats to one of three groups. The first received daily injections of saline, the second received daily injections of 10 mg/kg of cocaine hydrochloride, and the third received daily injections of 20 mg/kg cocaine hydrochloride."