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Drugs and Dopamine: Dependency, Depression and Diet...

About this course: This one-day module offers a crash course in the brain-chemistry of drugs. It looks at how drugs impact on brain chemistry, link to dependency and mental health and explores practical interventions to support recovery. In an ideal world everyone would get the chance to do the "Drugs and Mental Wellbeing" course and the "Drugs and Brain Chemistry Course" but - it's not an ideal world.

This course takes the most important elements of both courses and creates a fast paced one day course that has more useful nuggets than any one-day course really deserves.

Especially useful for workers who want to incorporate elements of brain chemistry in key or group work interventions.

Duration: one day

Appropriate for: Workers who undertake education, group work or key work and want to raise awareness of how drugs impact on brain chemistry or support recovery in people experiencing effects of drug use on mental health.

Objectives: By the end of the course, participants will:

be able to describe the function of main brain chemicals
explain key processes related to brain chemicals in terms of production, release and reuptake
explain the role of dopamine in mood, drug effects and craving
describe impact of drug use on dopamine (and other key brain chemicals) during short, medium and long term use
describe and assess for key markers of low dopamine and serotonin
describe key interventions to help support brain-chemistry recovery in abstinent drug users

The course includes:

The key brain chemicals
"normal" brain chemistry function
drugs and reward and dopamine
dopamine depletion and craving
role of digestive tract and diet in replacing chemicals
holistic interventions to support the replacement of key brain chemicals

Format: Taught sections, group discussion, work in small groups and pairs

Handouts: Slides as PDF for download, black and white slides for note-taking

DANOS modules: AA1, AA4, AB2, AB5, AD1, AD4, AG2, AG3, AH4

Notes: This one day course is a shortened version taking elements of the Drugs and Mental Wellbeing and the Drugs and Brain Chemistry courses. It has proved very popular as a stand-alone course but should be seen as complementing rather than wholly replacing the longer courses.

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