Prevalence and Pattern of Psychoactive Substances Use among Outpatients of Addiction Management Clinic in Assiut University Hospital: A Cross-Sectional Study

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.

Abstract

Background: The use of psychoactive substances has led to legal measures. Government regulations on manufacturing, supply, and prescriptions aim to reduce the excessive use of psychoactive substances; global efforts to combat the trafficking of psychoactive substances and to track the manufacturing of new types of them.
Aim: The current study aimed to determine the new pattern of psychoactive substance use among drug users, socio-demographic characteristics of such population, and correlate substance use with different items of addiction severity index.
The study is a cross-sectional study that included 422 patients from Assiut Government. Data were collected from September 1st, 2019, to August 31st, 2020, at the outpatient clinic of the Addiction Management Unit of the Psychiatry Department, Assiut University Hospital, Assiut, Egypt. For all eligible participants, the socio-demographic data, history of substance use, psychiatric history, Addiction Severity Index, and MSE of the participants were collected.
Results: The lifetime prevalence of new psychoactive substance use is 1.7%. Strox represents 1.2% and 0.5% for Voodoo. The study reports other substances like pregabalin (8.1%), intravenous cycloplegics (5.9%), gabapentin (2.1%), modafinil (0.7%), pheniramine maleate (0.7%), and trihexyphenidyl (0.5%).
Conclusion: In this study, we observed that the pattern of new psychoactive substance use was found to be minimal and did not cause dependence but only occasional use.

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