Adolescents have access to a variety of legal or illicit substances that they use to alter their mood or "get high." The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of common substances adolescents use to get high, including the illicit substances synthetic marijuana or "Spice," salvia, MDMA, synthetic cathinones, and 2C-E. Dextromethorphan and energy drinks are easily accessible substance...

Prescription stimulant abuse has dramatically increased over the past 10 years, but the amount of research regarding college students and illicit prescription stimulant use is still very limited. This has important implications for college mental health professionals and higher education administrators. In this comprehensive literature review the author explores factors contributing to illicit ...

This study examines differences in psychosocial characteristics, substance use history, and psychiatric comorbidity in relation to heroin use among youths aged 15 to 22 incarcerated in 2003 for illicit drug use in northern Taiwan. Factors associated with heroin use included experiences of child abuse, having friends with illicit drug use, poor school attendance, polydrug use, and early age of d...

Substance abuse has crossed social, economic, and geographic borders and--throughout the world--remains one of the major problems facing society today. The prevalence of substance abuse in young adults (including women) has increased markedly over the past 20 years. Nearly 90% of drug-abusing women are of childbearing age. Consequently, it is not unusual to encounter pregnant women who abuse il...

Drug abuse in pregnancy is not uncommon, and the use of illicit opioids during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes. The aim of the study was to assess neonatal outcome of pregnancy with maternal addiction. Materials and Methods:   In this cohort study we assessed 100 pregnant women 15 -49 years old. To identify drug exposure was used self- questionnaire (Self-Repo...

OBJECTIVE This study evaluated rates of self-harm and substance use in women with either bulimia nervosa (BN) or binge eating disorder (BED) and assessed whether differences in self-harm and substance use are related to sexual or physical abuse. METHOD Alcohol abuse, self-harm, and use or abuse of various illicit drugs were evaluated in a sample of 53 women with BN and 162 women with BED. R...

Using a prospective cohort design, the authors examined in this study whether childhood victimization increases the risk for illicit drug use and related problems in middle adulthood. Court-documented cases of childhood physical and sexual abuse and neglect and matched controls (N = 892) were first assessed as young adults (mean age = 29 years) during 1989-1995 and again in middle adulthood (me...

Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis is a neuroinflammatory disease mediated by autoantibodies against the NMDAR, typically presenting with psychiatric symptoms, cognitive dysfunction, and motor dysfunction. These neuropsychiatric symptoms may be mimicked drug abuse, development of anti-NMDAR triggered certain substance use. Here we report case who developed after illicit use...

The schizotypy analog allows researchers to control for many of the confounding factors associated with schizophrenia (e.g., medication/illicit drug use and health complications) (1–3). There are, however, still extraneous factors that should be considered when schizotypy samples are employed. The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the areas of consideration including age, educatio...