Risk Factors Of Addiction

Brain chemistry can affect different addicts more then others. Drugs and alcohol are more of the main addictions that brain chemistry affects. Once taking these addictive substances your internal natural drug dopamine is lowers causing you to seek more external addictive substances. This causes craving and makes it a lot harder for the addict to stop. In Olds and Milner’s later experiments, they allowed the rats to press a particular lever to arouse themselves, to the effect that they would press it as much as seven-hundred times per hour. This region soon came to be known as the "pleasure center". Using drugs and alcohol stimulates the pleasure center in the brain that makes your brain think, “feels good- want more“. This can make it increasingly harder for an addict to stop using, until they hit a point called “rock bottom”. This is where choice comes back into play.

All around the world anyone can find people that are addicted to some form of drug. Drug addiction is a huge issue that has been occurring for about thirty years now and is occurring to this day for many reasons. Some of those reasons may be that something is going on back home and they have had enough, or because of stress, peer pressure, biological reasons and the list goes on. However, there has been law enforcement due to drugs since the mid 1980’s. People have many viewpoints to when it comes to drug use and addiction. There are three perspectives people have that view the use of drugs and drug addiction which are structural functionalism, conflict, and symbolic interactionist.

To understand addiction further, it is important to look at how drugs have neurological effects in a human body. Drugs can be ingested in various ways; while some are taken orally, some are smoked (cannabis) while others are injected directly into the blood stream (Heroin). Once in the body, they mainly affect the reward pathway in the brain, known as the dopaminergic pathway, which in turn gives pleasure. Even though all drugs affect the reward and motivation pathways in the brain, their speed depends on the way the drug has been consumed. Over constant use of drugs, the cognitive functions are impaired as the effects become more prominent in learning, memory

There are many models and theories which attempt to explain the causes of substance misuse and dependence. They range from those which highlight the importance of genetic and biological factors to those which stress social and psychological factors and those which may consider the ‘blame’ to be that of the dependent individual (Rassool 2009).

The definition provided above is accessible and easy to understand; however, it initiates false beliefs among individuals because it fails to acknowledge that drug addiction is a mental health problem. Moreover, when words such as, “dependence”, “control” and “craving” are used to define drug addiction, it leaves an impression to the reader that addicts are indeed “people who cannot control their impulses.” Consequently, when we fail to recognize that drug addiction is a mental health problem, our focus is diverted towards the physical aspect of drug addiction. This could cause the belief among individuals that drugs alone cause the addiction. It is essential to acknowledge that there are chemical hooks in drugs; however, individuals need to understand that drugs alone do not cause the addiction. We need to identify and distinguish the “root cause” of addiction and ask ourselves: what caused the individual to take the drug in the first place?

Addicts use drugs to overcome their feelings. If an addict is feeling sad, happy, or angry, they use. This leads to their addictions. After a while, the addict can’t hold a steady job,

According to the biological perspective, drug use may start off as casual, but through continued use, it produces changes in the brain that influences the onset and maintenance of drug addiction. (Horvath et al., 2013). Drugs have their most prominent effects on the function of neurotransmitters. Almost all major drugs of abuse activate the reward system and cause a flood in the levels of dopamine which is a neurotransmitter that is involved in pleasure. As a result, not only do people learn to associate drug use with pleasure, but the brain also starts to reduce its own natural dopamine production in adjustment to the levels of dopamine produced by the drugs. This is called tolerance, and the consequences of tolerance are highly influential

The body, through tolerance, becomes accustomed to the effects of the drug causing a change in the functioning of the reward center in the brain. Neurotransmitters in the brain, at this point, do not function normally and the body “needs” the drug to achieve balance within the system.

Across all addictions, there is a central theory as to how such an addiction can occur. The common mechanism of all addictive substances is the activation of the brain’s “reward system”, made up of dopaminergic neurons of the midbrain and their extensions to the limbic system (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272277/). This system is normally used in advancing evolutionary fitness promoting activity, such as sex, food, or social interactions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272277/). In such normal natural behaviors, the reward system activity is relatively brief and weak. However, addictive substances abuse the system’s circuitry, causing

the brain, flooding it with the neurotransmitter dopamine. This produces euphoria, and the heightened pleasure can be so compelling that the brain wants that feeling back again and again. Unfortunately, with repeated use of a drug, the brain becomes accustomed to the dopamine surges by producing less of it. So the user has to take more of the drug to feel the same pleasure — the phenomenon known as tolerance.

Addictive drugs cause dopamine neurons to release dopamine, the pleasure hormone. The narcotics disable the neurons that would usually keep the dopamine neurons in check; becoming over stimulated. Endorphins are produced and released within the brain, creating a high and reinforcing the individual’s positive associations with the activity. Hence “the rush” (Molintas, 2006)

Substance addiction can hugely impact on a person’s thinking, functioning and behaviour. Whilst depressant drugs such as alcohol and opioids slow down your central nervous system (CNS), stimulants such as cocaine or amphetamine increase the activity of the CNS, leading to higher blood pressure, heart rate and increased alertness. Repeated abuse of the substance leads to tolerance and withdrawal, in turn this leads to the user showing signs of irrational behaviour. Another form of substance abuse is hallucinogens; they can cause powerful changes in sensory perceptions. It works by binding to the serotonin receptors, these neurons control visual information and emotions, and this can lead to various effects on the user. Neurobiology can help us understand the reasons for addiction and the effects they have on us. Groman and Jentsch (2012) discuss key issues of differentiating the causes and consequences of addiction through neuroimaging and behavioural research on monkeys, they found that the dysfunction of the dopamine

The complexity of the human brain creates mystery when determining the influence of neurophysiological factors and their role in the process of addiction. There is a proposed relationship between drug addiction and the mesolimbic dopamine system, with the mesolimbic pathway from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens considered the ‘reward centre’ of the human brain (Alcohol Rehab, 2011). A release of dopamine is necessary for ‘reward’ which is hypothesised to initiate the addiction cycle by providing positive reinforcement for drug self-administration (Feltenstein & See, 2009). Methamphetamine triggers the release of dopamine from synaptic vesicles which flood the synaptic cleft activating feelings of euphoria, well-being

Eventually that addiction leads to drug tolerance. Tolerance is when drug user takes more and more of their drug of choice in order to receive the same type of euphoria feeling they once felt with smaller quantities.

“The overstimulation of this reward system, which normally responds to natural behaviors linked to survival (eating, spending time with loved ones, etc.), produces euphoric effects in response to psychoactive drugs. This reaction sets in motion a reinforcing pattern that “teaches” people to repeat the rewarding behavior of abusing drugs ”(“Understanding Drug Abuse). Using addictive drugs floods the limbic brain with dopamine, taking it up to as much as five or ten times the normal level. A person with elevated dopamine levels now has a brain that begins to associate the substance with an outside neurochemical reward (“Your Brain on Drugs”). As a person continues to abuse drugs, the brain adapts to the overwhelming surges in dopamine by producing less dopamine or by reducing the number of dopamine receptors in the reward circuit. The result is a lessening of dopamine’s impact on the reward circuit, which reduces the abuser’s ability to enjoy the drugs, as well as the events in life that previously brought pleasure. The decrease in normal dopamine levels encourages the addict to keep abusing drugs in an attempt to bring the dopamine function back to normal, except now larger amounts of the drug are required to achieve the same dopamine high, an effect known as tolerance (“Understanding Drug Abuse ). That is what leads to the state of addiction, which leaves the person in a cycle of craving, using, withdrawal, and relapse.