[Does chronic psychosis due to amphetamines abuse exist? Study of 25 drug addicts]. / La psychose chronique due à l'abus des amphétamines existe-t-elle? Etude de 25 toxicomanes

The development of a psychotic process was noted in seven amphetamine addicts who had been seen over a period of several years before onset of the psychosis and who had no psychotic tendencies before the addiction. This group was compared with two from the standpoint of the symptomatology of acute psychosis; i.e. acute psychotic episodes under the effects of amphetamines in individuals who were not psychotic before addiction and who were cured at present, and acute psychotic episodes under the effects of amphetamines in individuals who were psychotic at the time of becoming amphetamine addicts. This comparative study attempts to define the signs which precede the development of a chronic psychosis and includes a discussion concerning the clinical picture and its correlation with the pre-existent personality.

[Identification in drug addiction]. / Sur l'identification de la toxicomanie

There is a need to define the field of drug addiction from both the theoretical and the practical point of view, but any attempt to do so encounters difficulties that are inherent in the many types of approach as well as in the polymorphism of drug addiction. The difficulties are also due to the present day consumption of pills which is very high both among members of our "square" society and in the marginal fringes, and occurs in and outside the field of drug addiction proper -- the guide being here the progressive increase of doses. The modes of use are not sufficient to determine the presence of drug addiction: the drug substance must have a psychism-oriented tropism; the increase in the dose of a non-psychotropic product is therefore a matter of hypochondria and not of drug addiction. The means of administering a drug also occupies a privileged place, in so far as the intravenous method suffices alone to label non-medical use as drug addiction. It is the hallucinogens that, despite the absence of physical dependence, most frequently pose the question of the definition of drug addiction, in view of the ritual dimension and the transgressive significance of the absorption of these products, even at relatively moderate doses, and hallucinogens pose this question all the more since their use emerges from a sub-cultural environment that produces typical drug addiction, namely intravenous heroin addiction. The latter does not raise the question of definition, but is used as the basis for a drug addiction referential system.