Addiction to morphine

Morphine is known to produce in human beings a multitude of different side reactions which vary from individual to individual. In a study in which several drugs were compared for their effects on 29 healthy students, using saline control tests, it was found that morphine caused nausea in 18, sleep in 16, drunkenness in 9, dizziness in 13, itching in 9, and indistinct speech in 7.23 The proneness to addiction to morphine is also known to vary from individual to individual and sometimes this drug excites instead of depressing the individual to whom it is administered. 

Good health and productive work are thus not incompatible with addiction to morphine. As an example may be cited of the case of a physician who was a morphine addict for 62 years and exhibited no evidence of mental or physical deterioration due to the drug, when carefully studied at the age of 84. 

Codeine acts less on the stomach and bowel than does morphine but, when given in large doses, also causes constipation. It is excreted unchanged in the urine. Tolerance for codeine is difficult to develop, but cases of addiction to it have been reported. They are usually secondary to the use of morphine that is, the patient, addicted to morphine and unable to secure this drug, resorts to codeine. 

Meperidine has replaced morphine to a large extent in medical practice because of the physician s reluctance to use an opiate and the belief that meperidine manifests less undesirable side effects than does morphine. However, both of these assumptions are ill founded. Addiction to meperidine is much less amenable to treatment than is addiction to morphine. Meperidine, similar to morphine and codeine, causes spasm of the upper gastrointestinal tract and typical attacks of biliary colic in biliary tract disease. Meperidine, in doses giving an equal analgesic effect, induces as much respiratory depression as does morphine. Similar to morphine, it also crosses the placental barrier and must therefore be used cautiously in the latter stages of labor. 

The antisocial behavior of some opiate addicts seems more a function of personality, cultural background, expectation, and setting than of the drugs. Medical patients who become addicted to morphine in hospital settings usually do not conform to stereo-... 

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, one of the worst results of the ill effects of patent medicine use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the number of healthy babies who became addicted to morphine, heroine, opium, or alcohol. How did babies develop these addictions Well, imagine being a mother or father with an infant who won t stop crying. The baby shrieks night and day. You never get to sleep. You can t rest. You re exhausted and your child is miserable. As a parent, if you could find a cure for your baby s misery, would you buy it Of course you would, just as thousands did at the turn of the twentieth century. 

It did, of course, cure many addicts of their addiction to morphine or alcohol—they instead quickly became addicted to cocaine. Freud had advocated that cocaine be taken orally, a method that would have enabled some of the cocaine to be broken down in the liver before it reached the brain, resulting in a less intense experience of euphoria. But in the 1880s the use of the syringe was perfected, and soon hypodermic needles were more widely available. Morphine addicts quickly began injecting themselves with cocaine or cocaine mixed with morphine. It... 

The way to prevent people from drinking too much alcohol, or becoming addicts to morphine or cocaine, is to give them an efficient but wholesome... 

I he seeds of the oriental poppy contain morphine. Morphine is a narcotic that has a variety of effects on the body and the brain, including drowsiness, euphoria, mental confusion, and chronic constipation. Although morphine was first isolated in 1805, not until the 1850s and the advent of the hypodermic was it effectively used as a painkiller. During the American Civil War, morphine was used extensively to reheve the pain of wounds and amputations. It was at this time that the addictive properties were noticed. By the end of the Civil War, over 100,000 soldiers were addicted to morphine. 

In subjects who are addicted to morphine, the initial symptoms of the abstinence or withdrawal syndrome usually appear 6 to 12 hours after the last dose and consist of CNS irritability and feelings of fatigue, autonomic hyperactivity such as tachycardia and hypertension, gastrointestinal hyperactivity such as diarrhea, and autonomic supersensitivity such as insomnia and restlessness. 

The way to prevent people from drinking too much alcohol, or becoming addicts to morphine or cocaine, is to give them an efficient but wholesome substitute for these delicious and (in the present imperfect world) necessary poisons. The man who invents such a substance will be counted among the greatest benefactors of suffering humanity. 

It is still uncertain whether individuals, once addicted to morphine, lose their tolerance completely following withdrawal or whether some degree of tolerance to morphine continues for an indefinite period of time (55). For the most part differences between post-addicts (individuals once addicted to morphine) and non-addicts are difficult to establish. The greatest difference lies in the ease and incidence with which post-addicts become active addicts. Over 11,000 addicts have been treated at American federal institutions since 1935. Sixteen per cent of these patients have remained abstinent over a 7-year period, and probably at least an additional 20% have remained abstinent for extended periods of time. Two-thirds have returned to a state of drug addiction within 2 years. 

Abstinence syndromes could be induced after the subcutaneous injection of 15 mg. of N-allylnormorphine as early as 1 week after experimental addiction to morphine 15 mg. or methadone 10 mg. four times daily. The syndrome was recognized by the subjects themselves, who nicknamed the... 

Addiction to meperidine is much more common than is addiction to codeine. Meperidine will produce physical dependence in individuals who have never been addicted to morphine, as well as in former morphine addicts. Although physical dependence is milder, the toxic effects of meperidine are so pronounced that meperidine addiction is even more undesirable than addiction to morphine (6, 50). 

Note. (1) It is one of the drugs of ehoice in the withdrawal management of patients addicted to morphine, heroin, and allied narcotic drugs. 

Antinociceptive effect in animal models a dose-dependent analgesic activity is seen which appears to be mediated by alpha-2 receptors at the spinal level. Tizanidine attenuates the abstinence syndrome precipitated by giving nalaxone to rats addicted to morphine. 

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