Addiction to Psychoactive Prescription Drugs: Can the Excipients of the Formulations Play a Role?

Abstract

In the development of drugs misuse and addiction, references are often made to the study of the API (active principle ingredient) as the main cause, which is certainly true, but there is a tendency to overlook the possible role of certain excipients which may be involved in the preferential development of certain formulations, especially in the case of benzodiazepines and opioids and other psychoactive legal drugs. In this article, we will try to describe the reasons why some excipients can be involved in this phenomenon, briefly describing their main characteristics and evaluating both how they can affect the biopharmaceuticals of the active ingredient and how they can specifically be involved in the development of addiction.