How Do Drugs Affect The Brain

Everyday thousands of teenagers are peer pressured into trying drugs or alcohol. Which can lead to early addiction, in a critical time in a teen's life. Many teens try drugs or alcohol to boost their social status.

Drug addiction is a brain disease because drugs change the brain’s structure and how they work. Over a period of time drugs start to affect the brain by challenging an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. “Most drugs affect the brain's reward circuit by flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. This overstimulation of the reward circuit causes the intensely pleasurable "high" that leads people to take a drug again and again. Over time, the brain adjusts to the excess dopamine, which reduces the high that the person feels compared to the high they felt when first taking the drug—an effect known as tolerance. They might take more of the drug, trying to achieve the same dopamine high.”, States National Institute on Drug Abuse. After long term use of drugs it affects functions such as learning, judgment, decision-making, stress, memory, and behavior. Even though an addict knows this, they still use

In today’s session, group members received education on how alcohol and drug abuse affects the brain chemistry. Group members learned how different categories of substances and how they act in the mind and body.

Most people associate dangerous addiction with the use of illegal drugs, but substance abuse consists of any dangerous dependence, including alcoholism and reliance on prescription drugs. For centuries, substance abuse was regarded by society as a personal failing or moral fault, and addicts were shunned and forced to the fringes of the community. Substance abuse today is recognized as a disease, typified by the brain becoming reliant on certain substances to deliver neurotransmitters like dopamine or serotonin. Street drugs like marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines react with the brain in a similar way to legal addictives, such as alcohol, tobacco, and inhalants.

What is substance use and abuse and why is it that some people seem to be drawn to drugs and alcohol while others can go through life without any substance problems at all? We can define drug addiction as a repetitive use of a given substance even though it may be harmful to the person using the substance physically, psychologically, socially, and financially. Repetitive uses of drugs and alcohol can cause chemical changes in the body, especially the brain causing a physical need to have these substances in the body in order to function properly. Many substances can cause a physical dependence making the individual use the substance multiple times a day just to get through the day. Unfortunately, a lot of these drugs and alcohol can have very

Drug addiction is a very complicated illness. People have a compulsive and uncontrollable urge to keep using the substance. Addiction affects many circuits in the brain, including the ones that are involved in memory, learning and reward.

Substance abuse is the use of drugs, alcohol, or chemicals. The substance abuse results in physical, psychological, emotional harm to the user or others. People abuse substances such as drugs and alcohol for varied and complicated reasons, but it is clear that it comes at a significant cost. 0Substance abuse can be recognized through it 's signs and behavior changes, as well as short and long term effects. There are various ways however to treat substance abuse.

The drugs affect the brain by either increasing the amount of a neurotransmitter by activating the release of a neurotransmitter, or by inhibiting the release of a neurotransmitter, or by blocking the degradation of a neurotransmitter. This action depends on the type of drug used. All drugs activate the reward center of the brain. Virtually all drugs of abuse directly or indirectly augment dopamine in the reward pathway. The neurotransmitters involved in drug addictions are dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, Glutamate, and Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) plus endogenous opioids and cannabinoids. The standard functions of these neurotransmitters are regulating the pleasure and reward system, attention, mood, and memory. Dopamine

I have learned some valuable information about substance abuse and addiction, especially about how the use of drugs and alcohol affect the brain. Psychoactive drugs and compulsive behavior will destroy the brain cells if the activity is practice for a long period of time. According to Inaba & Cohen (2014) say psychoactive drugs and compulsive behavior “overwhelm the brain’s ability to rebalance itself and can induce epigenetic changes that can last a life time” (p. 145). I have learned from reading the book Uppers, Downers, All Rounders’, 8th edition written by Inaba & Cohen (2014) reveals gambling is a serious addiction for the gambler. There are four levels of gambling that classify as an addiction that I did not know, so that was new insight

Unfortunately, in our society today, people have misused and became addicted to drugs. This drug addiction has left a major impact on the brains of each user. Drug addiction is a relapsing brain disease that is characterized by brain malfunction that alters the way the users think and behave. Normal balancing Mechanisms go haywire, allowing the drug to control the brain. Drug addiction has been a major concern for scientist in recent years. With research drug addiction is categorized as a neuron-disease from its large impact on the brain.

Drugs have been around for a very long time. They are used for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include relaxation, socialization, curiosity, stress relief, or a form of escapism. However, most people don’t know the threats and danger that it can cause to the body. In this paper, we are going to examine the changes that happen inside the brain due to the effects of different drugs. We will look closely at how drugs such as hallucinogens, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, and cannabis affect an individual psychologically. I will explain the origin of the drugs, how a person feels while on the drug, how the drugs

These are some of the ways drugs affect the brain. These are good reasons not to abuse drugs. There is more bad than good in drugs, make sure to stay away from

Many psychiatric and psychoactive drugs that are available on the market, pharmaceutically or illegally, closely resemble neurotransmitters and are actually able to mimic it to the extent that it fools the receptors. Basically, these drugs hijack the neurotransmitters. Once these drugs are ingested, it enters into the brain, gets into the synapse and binds itself to the receptor. This then causes the inappropriate release of neurotransmitters and alter the breakdown and recycling of neurotransmitters or can be used to destroy particular neurotransmitters completely (Sapolsky, 2005, p. 14).

Today a large problem in society is drugs. drugs can affect the human body in many ways. it causes a lot of harm that people are not swear of. one spot in the body that drugs affect you is the brain. drugs can affect the brain in ways people never thought it would.

Drug addiction is the chronic disease affecting the brain, and just everyone is different. Drug affect different ways. One person can take and abuse drugs, yet never become addicted, while another merely has one experience and is immediately hooked. Addiction explain and is charactererized by a person having to used the drugs repeatedly, regardless of the damage it does to their health, family career, and their rrelationshipwith friends and the community. Addiction is not limited to drugs a nd alcohol. People can be addicted to many things, such as food, gambling, shopping or most anything that gets in the way of a healthy lifestyle.when things get out of hand, and people behave compulsively, regardless of the