Back From Addiction, and Sharing the Lessons

By LAURIE BESDEN; As Told to PATRICIA R. OLSEN
Published: March 23, 2008, New York Times

But I was addicted to Vicodin, a prescription medication for pain relief, and was taking up to 50 pills a day. In feeding my habit I broke the law and went to jail and had my law license suspended. For the last three years, I’ve been working my way back, thanks to two law partners who have given me a chance. I hope to have my license to practice law in Pennsylvania reinstated one day.

I think I had addictive tendencies even as a child. When I would get codeine pills for tooth pain, I’d save a few for a rainy day. I even asked my dentist for laughing gas for a cleaning. A month before I was to graduate from law school, I found some Vicodin at the house of a friend whose father was in the medical field and took a few sample packs. No one even noticed they were missing.

Studies Find Genetic Link To Smoking

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: April 3, 2008

Scientists say they have pinpointed a genetic link that makes people more likely to become hooked on tobacco, causing them to smoke more cigarettes, making it harder to quit and leading more often to deadly lung cancer.

The discovery by three separate teams of scientists makes the strongest case so far for the biological underpinnings of the addiction of smoking and sheds light on how genetics and cigarettes join forces to cause cancer, experts said. The findings also lay the groundwork for more tailored treatments to quit smoking.

”This is kind of a double-whammy gene,” said Christopher Amos, a professor of epidemiology at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and author of one of the studies. ”It also makes you more likely to be dependent on smoking and less.

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