HUS 207 (Addiction Dynamics and Intervention)

Addicted Teens is a documentary series that takes an in-depth look at teen addiction. It provides a personal connection with addicts, abusers, families and those in recovery and talks about the risks of trying drugs, an honest look inside substance abuse and the steps towards recovery. Teens and real experts (recovering addicts) discuss their experiences with drug addiction and ex-addicts provide views of their daily battle with addictive behavior and how they changed their lives. It delivers an unforgettable message that will make teens reconsider their next hit and how addiction can happen to anyone.

Begin your course by defining "addiction," which is diagnosed based on characteristics such as abuse, dependence, and craving. Professor Polk then surveys the history of drug use, from ancient history through the development of synthetics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, he reviews government regulation and the substantial costs of drug abuse, both to the individual and to society.

THE ANONYMOUS PEOPLE is a feature documentary film about the 23.5 million Americans living in long-term recovery from alcohol and other drug addiction. Deeply entrenched social stigma and mass participation in widely successful anonymous 12-step groups have kept recovery voices silent and faces hidden for decades. The vacuum created by this silence has been filled by sensational mass media depictions of addiction that continue to perpetuate a lurid public fascination with the dysfunctional side of what is a preventable and treatable health condition.

Some call the 21st century the post-AIDS years, thanks to activism and new medications. New York and other centers of gay life have new generations of LGBTQ people who feel free and safe. Over the years, however, another ravaging threat has continued to rise: crystal meth, a synthetic drug that found quick and willing harbor in the gay dance and sex club scene.

When members of the medical profession take the Hippocratic oath, they never imagine that the drugs they prescribe for pain would kill or destroy the lives of their patients. But that has been happening all across America since the year 2000. Did the pharmaceutical companies, who created and marketed opioids as "safe, non-addictive treatment for pain", realize they were unleashing a modern plague? Or was it a deliberate marketing effort?

"In the 21st century, we have seen the withering of middle-class life in America. Manufacturing, which once held out the promise of a middle-class life for those with a high school education, has shed five million jobs since 2000. Now, as Americans grapple with the growing inequality, something startling is happening to working class white America: an epidemic of suicide and drug and alcohol-related deaths across the heartland. Since 1999, this epidemic has resulted in nearly half a million early deaths -- a figure comparable to all the lives lost to AIDS in the US. In "The Epidemic," Peter Sarsgaard -- whose own family has battled with drug addiction -- travels to Dayton, Ohio, to investigate how the city, once the very definition of industrial invention and middle-class America, has become the epicenter of an epidemic and a symbol of our age of inequality."

Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and re-entry organization, offers an unparalleled 18-month job-training program for recovering drug addicts and ex-gang members. The short documentary HOMEGIRLS intimately follows the lives of two of the programs' female participants, Maria and Joselyn, over four months as they attempt to leave the past behind and start anew.

Here you'll examine the ways addiction alters the brain by numbing the pleasure center, sensitizing the dopamine system, and inhibiting the prefrontal cortex. Combined, these altered brain functions lead to strong cravings and a reduced ability to control one's actions. This foray into neuroscience will forever change the way you think about addiction.

An intimate and revealing look into the lives of four people who are addicted to alcohol. Four very different individuals tell their stories ... a lawyer who wanted to stop his kids from being afraid of him; a first nations man, who wanted the pain of belonging to an underprivileged part of our population to stop and to feel strong; a young woman who drank because it made her feel better about herself; and, a woman who grew up in a privileged home, who attended a private school, who never had to go without anything she wanted, and was simply a party girl who wanted a good time but didn't realize what she was in for. All four finally faced a brutal reality - that their lives and health were falling apart.

A follow-up to What Made Me Stop Drinking, this program investigates how those same people - recovering alcoholics - actually managed to stop drinking. They took different routes and found their own sources of support.

Methadonia is the borderland between high and straight, where recovering heroin addicts on methadone "maintenance" exist. Passing the time on benzos and other prescription drugs that enhance the methadone, addicts find themselves in Methadonia for years, or decades. Selected for the prestigious New York Film Festival and featured on HBO, this unflinching, intimate film reveals the culture of addiction through the eyes and lives of men and women stuck in Methadonia, holding on to the hope they will wake up one morning and not think about getting high.

With unparalleled access on both sides of the issue, this 90-minute HBO Documentary Film is at once a cautionary tale of meth addiction in rural America, and a high-stakes drama told from inside the war on drugs.

Profiling four subjects (filmed over the course of several months in 2014), who fall at different points on the spectrum of problem drinking, from binge drinking to alcohol dependence, the film provides an up-close-and-personal look at men and women from different walks of life, united in their struggle with alcohol and its detrimental effect on their physical health, relationships and happiness. Interspersed with these powerful stories are informative interviews with addiction experts, who explain the science behind alcohol-use disorder, as well as stunning statistics about its prevalence and hazards.

Round out your survey of the world's major drugs with an examination of opium and its derivatives, from regularly prescribed painkillers like codeine and morphine to heroin, often considered the most harmful drug of abuse in the world today. Learn about the neurological effects and treatment options for opiate drugs.

Impish and twinkle-eyed, Sh'mal Ellenberg can joke about his chaotic work: helping mentally-ill drug addicts reclaim their lives.

Shift your attention from the nature of addiction to the nature of drugs. Here you'll delve into the process of neurochemical transmission and see how drugs mimic this activity by binding to neural receptors. This process is responsible for everything from a drug's physical and psychological effects to its potency.