Intrigued by the latest news from Yahoo! News story, Agassi admits using crystal meth in autobiography, I thought to myself – how do drugs and alcohol play into one’s drive to be successful in sports?

The article describes, world renowned tennis player, Andre Agassi’s introduction to Crystal Meth from a friend and the feelings associated with taking the drug.  Interestingly enough, the thoughts and experience accurately describe the obsession of the mind when an addict experiments with a drug for the first time.  The guilt and remorse are overcome by the intense feelings of pleasure and power.

From the sounds it, Agassi is lucky to have not developed a full on addiction to Methamphetamines, which would have more than likely required addiction treatment.  It appears that Agassi learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of using a drug like Meth, but made it out the otherside without losing everything.

Sports can be a great alternative to drinking and druging, but they can also lead young adults to use drugs to perform above and beyond their limits.  We find at Gatehouse Academy, some young people develop their addictions at a young age using performance enhancing drugs like steroids, methamphetamine and cocaine. Feeling pressure from peers and parents to preform well can put a young adult in a position to develop an addiction.

We also understand that Sports are a social activity that can introduce young people to others that use drugs and alcohol regularly. Many young people describe drinking as a way to fit in with older teammates, and feel a part of the team.

The danger of this behavior is that young people do not know if they have a predisposition to become an addict or an alcoholic.  If they are, then it will be a long and arduous battle for years to come, and they will most likely end up in one of three places: prison, mental institution or, God forbid, death.

According to an article from genomeweb.com, a zebrafish gene expression study has found indications that adult neuron formation may be involved in drug addiction.

The article states the study as this:

“Researchers from Germany and the Netherlands used microarrays to compare gene expression in the brains of normal and mutant zebrafish that had or had not been exposed to amphetamine. Following amphetamine exposure, they found 139 transcripts that were differentially expressed between wild type zebrafish and mutant fish that don’t respond to the drug.”

The study hopes to gain more information on what triggers addictive behavior.

“They assessed zebrafish drug response using an assay called the conditioned place preference, in which the fish change their location in a tank as a result of amphetamine use.”

The study is a step in changing the ideas of drug addiction, that is could be a response that is triggered in the brain. A new link between neurogenesis and addiction.

Here is another quote to further explain the study:

“By screening through zebrafish that had been exposed to a mutagenizing chemical called N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea, the researchers found a dominant mutation that renders zebrafish indifferent to amphetamine. They then used Agilent microarrays to compare the gene expression profile in this mutant, dubbed “no addiction”, with wild type zebrafish in the presence or absence of amphetamine.”

This study could be the first step in understanding why the brain becomes addicted to substances and therefore needs drug rehab.

According to an article from the New York Times from May 28, 2009, “Government spending related to smoking and the abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs reached $468 billion in 2005, accounting for more than one-tenth of combined federal, state and local expenditures for all purposes, according to a new study.”
The report was released by the National Center on Addiction and Drug Abuse which is a private group that operates at Columbia University. Most of the spending, according to the article, goes to health care costs that occur after abuse, such as lung cancer or overdoses. Only 2 percent of the spending goes toward prevention.
This study was the first of its kind to calculate abuse-related spending by all three levels of government, legislative, executive and judicial. The approach now leads to other social problems that require government spending such as homelessness or child abuse.
“Federal studies show that the best drug treatment programs pay for themselves 12 times over, the report said, because patients who succeed have quick improvements in health and behavior.”
A promising piece of the report cited the education that has been provided by the anti-smoking campaigns. With the combination of educating people about the effects of smoking and the taxes on cigarettes, smoking is down overall.
The center thinks that addiction treatment centers should be covered more widely by insurance companies because then more people will take advantage of it.
Insurance companies argue that record of drug treatment is not sufficient enough to implement any sort of changes. The report overall suggests that we need to invest more in prevention and less on the law enforcement aspect of drug abuse and addiction.
There is that old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and this report is just an indication of how true that really is.