Health-Sciences - Course - Topics in Addiction

Addiction is a medical, psychosocial, and economic issue that affects the human population of every nation on earth. It severely disrupts bodily functions, ruins families and destroys societies. This course will introduce basic aspects of addiction and identify their toxic effects on the human body. In this course, students will explore how addiction develops, looking at the environmental, genetic and personal risks involved. They will also understand what happens when a drug enters the body and how it affects the brain, and how this process can make recovering from addiction a challenge. Substances like alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, sedative-hypnotics, cannabis, hallucinogens, opiates, and other substances causing health problems in our culture are identified and discussed. Emphasis on symptoms of use and abuse, and the treatment approaches for drug abuse and addiction.