The Psychopharmacological Revolution
Petteri Pietikainen in Madness, 2015
Compared to cannabis, opium, obtained from the opium poppy, had been known and used in Europe since antiquity. Opium produces a pleasant lassitude and drowsiness, and it was the most potent form of pain relief. In antiquity, all known antidotes included opium. In the sixteenth century, the innovative physician Paracelsus described an opium-based tincture that he called ‘laudanum’, and he recommended that it be used – sparingly, though – as a potent painkiller. The seventeenth-century British doctor Thomas Sydenham praised opium as the most universal and efficacious drug for the relief of suffering, and he compounded a proprietary opium tincture that he also named laudanum (Jones 1983, 39). When the East India Company became involved in the opium trade through India in the late eighteenth century, laudanum became popular among doctors and their patients in Britain.
Chronic Pain Management and Arthritis
Deborah Fish Ragin in Health Psychology, 2017
Opium itself is rarely used. The reason? Opium is a highly addictive drug. The addictive nature of the drug prohibits its use as a long-term treatment option either alone or in combination with other therapies. Instead, other agents, including morphine or morphine derivatives such as codeine, may be used. These agents are also very addictive, and this is one reason for their limited use. One reason for the concern when using opioid analgesics can be seen in the World Health Organization’s manual on the treatment of pain in children with serious medical illnesses (World Health Organization, 2012). WHO states that for opioids such as morphine, there are no upper-dosage limits; dosage is increased until it is effective. Such open-ended dosing for this powerful agent means that medical providers must exercise great care on when and how much to administer.
Historical overview
G. Hussein Rassool in Alcohol and Drug Misuse, 2017
By the late-1700’s, the British East India Company controlled the Asian opium trade. Opium was already heavily used in China as a recreational drug. In 1839, the Qing Emperor ordered his minister to take action and instructed the confiscation of 20,000 barrels of opium and detained some foreign traders. The British retaliated by attacking the port-city of Canton. Thus began the First Opium War, launched by Britain. The Chinese were defeated and were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. The British required that the opium trade be allowed to continue; that the Chinese pay a large settlement and open five new ports to foreign trade and that China cede Hong Kong to Britain. A Second Opium War began and ended in 1856 over western demands that opium markets be expanded. The Chinese were again defeated and opium importation to China was formally legalised. By the end of the 19th century, it has been estimated that over a quarter of the adult male Chinese population were addicted.
The effects of Papaver somniferum (Opium poppy) on health, its controversies and consensus evidence
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
Mahdiyeh Hedayati-Moghadam, Seyyed Ali Moezi, Toba Kazemi, Abdul Sami, Muhammad Akram, Rida Zainab, Mohammad Reza Khazdair
Papaver somniferum, commonly known as “Opium poppy” is an annual plant growing to about 100 cm (40 inches) tall, which belongs to the Papaveraceae family (Dasgupta 2019). Opium is the latex (a milky fluid) of unripe pods of poppy, which is obtained from the plants 1–3 weeks after flowering (Figure 1). The milky fluid is collected by the notch of green seed pods (Dasgupta 2019). Since past, up to now, it was believed opium consumption attenuated metabolic disorders risk factors thus, prescription of opium as a traditional drug has been more common among people who struck to Diabetes mellitus (DM) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) (11.2%) than healthy people (2.6%) (Fatehi et al.2013). Herbal medicines are popular in most populations, and people who have used them possess valuable information about these plants (Mortazavi Moghaddam et al.2020, Khazdair et al.2021). Although several pharmacological activities of herbal were reported, some herbs have several toxicity effects on animals and the human body (Anaeigoudari et al.2020, Farkhondeh et al.2020). Although the prevalence of opium abuse was declined compared to the increase of the other substance abuses in the world, although in some societies, such as Iran, opium consumption is still the major drug of abuse (Ziaaddini and Ziaaddini 2005).
Current and emerging pharmacotherapies for opioid dependence treatments in adults: a comprehensive update
Published in Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy, 2022
Jonna M. Leyrer-Jackson, Amanda M. Acuña, M. Foster Olive
Opium is a naturally occurring substance derived from the opium poppy Papaver somniferum, and contains various bioactive opioid alkaloids, such as morphine, codeine, thebaine, papaverine, and others. Recorded history of use of opium for relief of pain and a variety of other medical ailments date back more than six millennia. In the latter half of the 19th century, chemical isolation of morphine from opium, the discovery of its conversion to diacetylmorphine (heroin) by boiling in acetic anhydride, and the invention of the hypodermic syringe, collectively led to widespread intravenous opioid use which revealed the high abuse dependence of these otherwise therapeutic compounds [1]. Over the next century, a multitude of synthetic and semisynthetic opioids were developed for use in the treatment of chronic pain, cough, and diarrhea, the most commonly prescribed being hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxycodone, oxymorphone, fentanyl, tramadol, and meperidine.
Opium use and type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Published in Journal of Substance Use, 2022
Elahe Piraiee, Soheil Hassanipour, Layla Shojaie, Mohebat Vali, Hossein-Ali Nikbakht, Fatemeh Rezaei, Haleh Ghaem
Impoverished nutritional status, poor mental state, and lifestyle modifications such as noncompliance with medications, especially insulin, and not referring to diabetes clinics can result in diabetic patients with substance use to have low blood sugar level control (Gautam et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2018).There is a two-way relationship between dependence on opium and adherence to medicine (Snyder et al., 2016). Taking opium can cause sedation in the patient and affect the patient’s perception and ultimately affect the patient’s self-care (Walter et al., 2017). Therefore, to investigate the effect of opium consumption on blood glucose levels in diabetic patients, we require to have data about patients’ prescriptions. A majority of studies did not report the effect of the dosage and the severity of dependence (Kim et al., 2015). Substance abuse can lead to noncompliance with prescribed medications for diabetes, including insulin (MartÍnez‐Aguayo et al., 2007).
Related Knowledge Centers
- Alkaloid
- Morphine
- Papaver Somniferum
- Papaverine
- Thebaine
- Codeine
- Analgesic
- Heroin
- Opioid
- Opiate