Addiction Audio

In this episode Zoe Swithenbank talks to Professor Robert West about his work on ontologies within addictions. Robert begins by summarising the definitions and constructions that relate to addiction, as well as their meanings and the implications for treatment. He also explains how different definitions can frustrate progress in addiction-related research. Zoe and Robert then discuss how the addic...

In this episode Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Sammie Back and Emese Kroon about nitrous oxide. The discussion happened on 8 November 2023, on the day that possession of nitrous oxide became a Class C substance in the UK. The group discuss the existing evidence for harms, addiction and other disorders, exploring this relatively under-researched area. They cover the lack of research and how researchers...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Professor Gerald (Jerry) Cochran about his article based on a randomized multisite pilot trial investigating the impact of Patient Navigation. Jerry begins by describing Patient Navigation, explaining how it works and how it can help people stay engaged in care. The research team explored whether this approach helps pregnant people to stay in contact with treatme...

In this episode Rob Calder talks to Francesco Manca about his research on Scotland's Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) policy for alcohol, and specifically about the impact that MUP has had on road traffic accidents. Francesco discusses how the research team selected appropriate comparitors to assess whether changes to road traffic accidents could be attributed to MUP. He also talks about how this study...

In this episode, Zoe Swithenbank talks to Drs Amy O'Donnell and Kat Jackson about their recent study on how to improve care for people with coexisting heavy drinking and depression. The discuss the theoretical concept of Relational Autonomy and how it influenced their research. Amy and Kat describe how they set up the research, and in particular the challenges of recruiting participants from group...

In this episode, Rob Calder talks to Zoe Swithenbank about her recent article looking at how to improve research reports on smoking cessation trials. Zoe talks about the challenges of organising an international meeting of experts before the COVID-19 pandemic (before people were used to online working). She talks about some common errors and omissions that researchers make when reporting smoking c...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Professor Laurence Lalanne about drug consumption rooms and the recent publication based on the COSINUS cohort study. They cover the range of interventions available in drug consumption rooms and how they can increase people's access to psychiatric support alongside barriers to accessing drug consumption rooms. Laurence talks about the epidemiological point of vi...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Marie Jauffret-Roustide about drug consumption rooms and the recent publication based on the COSINUS cohort study. They cover a range of issues including the history of drug consumption rooms, the evidence on effectiveness and the challenges of studying this particular intervention. They also reflect on the social determinants of health and how drug consumptio...

In this episode, Rob Calder talks to Drs Caroline Copeland, Patrick Courtney and Paul Royall about their recent article assessing the time it would take for drones to deliver naloxone to people who are overdosing on opioids. The study team used NPSAD (National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths) data to map out overdoses in Teeside over recent years and then to predict how long it would have take...

In this episode Dr Merve Mollaametoglu talks to Dr Catherine Paradis director of health promotion and scientific alcohol lead at the Canadian Centre of Substance Use and Addiction, Dr Kevin Shield from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and Dr Peter Butt clinical associate professor Department of Family Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. They discuss their recent articl...

Dr Elle Wadsworth talks here to Brandon Cheng about his research on social media posting and drinking behaviour. Brandon talks about the influence that media and social media have on young people and how they can influence their drinking behaviour. “A young person watching a short video of people enjoying drinks [is] likely to develop a much more vivid imagery of what drinking can be like … compar...

In this episode Dr Rob Calder talks to Dr Thomas Hudzik about his work with the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA). Tom talks about the three principles by which a substance is assessed and how they use the latest research and policy changes to make decisions about whether a substance is banned and how it is detected. They specifically cover the decision to implement and in-competition ban cannabis a...

Ben Scher talks to Dr Joseph Friedman about his research on fentanyl overdoses. Joseph explains the four waves of opioid overdoses in the US and how opiate and opioid overdoses have changed. They discuss how patterns of poly-substance use are different across the US and how the combination of fentanyl and methamphetamines is become more prevalent across states. Along with the challenges of standar...

Rob Calder talks to Vassilis Sideropoulos about a recent paper on the role of vaping products in smoking cessation. The first author for this paper was Dr Catherine Kimber. Vassilis talks about the array of components that can contribute to quitting smoking when using vaping products. He summarises the research team’s work on identifying which combinations of support types are most effective. He t...

Rob Calder talks to Dr Eleni Domzaridou about her recent article on the risk of overdose among people prescribe medication for opioid use at the same time as being prescribed other medication - such as for mental health disorders. People who use opioid drugs are often prescribed drugs for physical or mental health problems or for pain management. Eleni and the research team studied non-fatal overd...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Rebecca McKetin about her recent article looking the relationship between psychosis, psychotic symptoms and methamphetamine use. They discuss the implications and talk about who exactly is at risk of methamphetamine-related psychosis. Along the way, they cover the background of methamphetamine use in Australia and how this varies from country to country. They...

In this episode, Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Dr Katherine Keyes about her study examining changes to hallucinogen use among young adults in the US. Katherine also talks about using the Monitoring The Future survey to identify patterns of substance use among young adults. "...going from 2020 to 2021 we really saw substantial increases in the prevalence of young adults who are reporting that they use...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Professor Louise Nadeau about her recent article anaysing the content of a Latin-language treatise on gambling addiction written nearly 500 years ago. Ben and Louise discuss the medical model of gambling and issues of historic identification. They unpick how the original authors wrote about the medical model of addiction long before it was called that. Parts of t...

In this episode, Chloe Burke talks to Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce about new guidance from the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group (TAG) on assessing and minimising risk of bias in tobacco cessation trials. Jamie explains some of the key challenges in this area and explains some of the primary sources of bias that authors need to be aware of when analysing tobacco cessation trials. This article was publis...

In this episode, Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Dr Janni Leung about her work on a systematic review of the evidence on cannabis arrests, cannabis products and prices since Canada legalised cannabis. Janni talks discusses how arrest figures have changed, along with trends in legal and illicit purchase of cannabis. She covers issues relating to cannabis packaging and the potential for this to have an i...

In this episode Ben Scher talks to Dr Thomas Brothers about his qualitative systematic review looking at infections from injecting drug use. Tommy and Ben talk about bacterial and fungal infections and how social and structural factors can have a detrimental impact on access to treatment and health outcomes for people who use drugs. Tommy discusses the differences between countries, highlighting t...

In this episode, Rob Calder talks to Marleen Olthof and Dr Matthijs Blankers about their research into ICan - a digital health app designed to reduce cannabis use. They initially talk about the potential of using apps to improve health and support people who use drugs before also discussing how apps can improve access to support.   “It’s a much smaller step to sign up for a digital interventi...

Professor Joanne Neale talks to Addiction Audio about her latest research into how people feel during the first 72 hours of having long-acting buprenorphine (Buvidal). Jo talks about the recent history of this medication and how it predated the COVID-19 pandemic and was then brought to attention because it meant that people did not have to attend a pharmacy on a daily basis. Jo also talks about ho...

Dr Perski explains the evolution of Ecological Momentry Assessment (EMA) studies and how they have been used to collect granular data relating to everyday experiences. Olga's latest review focuses on EMA studies and smoking, looking at lapse and relapse. She talks about how EMA can be used to test and develop models and theories of addiction in ways that cross-sectional studies cannot. She also co...

Rob talks to Dr Will Lawn about his research into the acute effects of cannabis on young people and adults. Will talks about setting up a study looking at young people and adults’ experiences of using cannabis with different levels of cannabidiol. He talks about the challenges of blinding participants to different types of cannabis; about how to manage the placebo effect when participants can beco...