Methamphetamine dependence has grown into an epidemic in the United States. An estimated 10.4 million people aged 12 years or older have tried methamphetamine.1 While the prevalence of methamphetamine use has remained constant in recent years, severity of use is increasing. The number of methamphetamine users in the past month meeting criteria for amphetamine abuse or dependence during the past...

BACKGROUND Patients in harm-reduction treatment programs are switching from intravenous to other routes of methamphetamine (INN, metamfetamine) administration to avoid risks associated with needle use. Relatively little has been reported about the bioavailability of methamphetamine when smoked or used intranasally. METHODS Eight experienced methamphetamine users were administered smoked or in...

Methamphetamine use has increased significantly and become a global health concern. Craving is known to predict methamphetamine use and relapse following abstinence. Some have suggested that cravings are automatic, generalized, and uncontrollable, but experimental work addressing these claims is lacking. In 2 exploratory studies, we tested the boundary conditions of methamphetamine craving by a...

In healthy human volunteers, we have previously shown that isradipine, a dihydropyridine-class calcium-channel antagonist, reduces some methamphetamine-induced positive subjective effects associated with its abuse liability, presumably by antagonizing cortico-mesolimbic dopamine pathways. In the present study, we combined acute immediate-release (IR) isradipine with repeated sustained-release (...

Relapse rates following current methamphetamine abuse treatments are very high (∼40-60%), and the neuropsychiatric impairments (e.g., cognitive deficits, mood disorders) that arise and persist during remission from methamphetamine addiction likely contribute to these high relapse rates. Pharmacotherapeutic development of medications to treat addiction has focused on neurotransmitter systems wit...

Aim: To validate the street terminology used to describe the various forms of methamphetamine used in Australia, namely ‘speed’ (powder methamphetamine), ‘base’ (a damp or oily product) and ‘crystal meth’ or ‘ice’ (crystalline methamphetamine). Materials and Methodology: Regular methamphetamine users (N = 309) were asked which form of methamphetamine they took on their last use occasion, and th...

OBJECTIVES Social network analysis can provide added causal insight into otherwise confusing epidemiologic findings in public health research. Although foster care and homelessness are risk factors for methamphetamine use, current research has failed to explicate why homeless youth with foster care experience engage in methamphetamine use at higher rates than other homeless young adults. This s...

AIMS To examine how race and methamphetamine legislation are associated with changes in cocaine and methamphetamine use among untreated rural stimulant users. DESIGN A longitudinal study of stimulant users identified through respondent-driven sampling. SETTING Rural areas of three US states. PARTICIPANTS Participants at baseline were current users of methamphetamine and/or cocaine. MEAS...

Background: Methamphetamine abuse is a reemerging epidemic in the United States and in many Asian countries. Clinical and preclinical observations suggest that methamphetamine may cause longlasting injury to the brain. In humans, some of the psychiatric conditions, such as paranoid psychosis, may occur not only acutely during methamphetamine exposure, but may persist for months or even years af...

AIMS: This study lays the foundation for a clinical prediction model based on methamphetamine craving intensity and its ability to predict the presence or absence of within-treatment methamphetamine use. DESIGN: We used a random effects logistic approach for estimating repeated-measures, generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) using craving as the sole predictor of methamphetamine. A multivaria...