What is Drug Addiction?

It’s no secret the abuse of drugs has become a widespread epidemic. Although it seems to be stereotypical for teens, this problem is rising more in the adult population. There really is no set population or genre to label as the specific drug abuser. Many people don’t understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. They may mistakenly think that those who use drugs lack moral principles or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to.

In reality, drug addiction is a complex disease, and quitting usually takes more than good intentions or a strong will. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. Fortunately, researchers know more now than ever about how drugs affect the brain and have found treatments that can help people recover from drug addiction and lead productive lives. A question most people ask is “what is drug addiction?” Addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive, or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences. The initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, but repeated drug use can lead to brain changes that challenge an addicted person’s self-control and interfere with their ability to resist intense urges to take drugs. These brain changes can be persistent, which is why drug addiction is considered a ‘relapsing’ disease—people in recovery from drug use disorders are at increased risk for returning to drug use even after years of not taking the drug. It’s common for a person to relapse, but relapse doesn’t mean that treatment doesn’t work. As with other chronic health conditions, treatment should be ongoing and should be adjusted based on how the patient responds. Treatment plans need to be reviewed often and modified to fit the patient’s changing needs. Another question that is asked a lot by people is “What happens to a person when a person takes drugs?” Most drugs affect the brain’s ‘reward circuit,’ causing euphoria as well as flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. A properly functioning reward system motivates a person to repeat behaviors needed to thrive, such as eating and spending time with loved ones. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy behaviors like taking drugs, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.

As a person continues to use drugs, the brain adapts by reducing the ability of cells in the reward circuit to respond to it. This 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 to try and achieve the same high. These brain adaptations often lead to the person becoming less and less able to derive pleasure from other things they once enjoyed, like food, sex, or social activities. Long-term use also causes changes in other brain chemical systems and circuits as well, affecting functions that include: Learning, Judgment, decision-making,stress, memory, and behavior. Despite being aware of these harmful outcomes, many people who use drugs continue to take them, which is the nature of addiction. As with most other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, or heart disease, treatment for drug addiction generally isn’t a cure. However, addiction is treatable and can be successfully managed. People who are recovering from an addiction will be at risk for relapse for years and possibly for their whole lives. Research shows that combining addiction treatment medicines with behavioral therapy ensures the best chance of success for most patients. Treatment approaches tailored to each patient’s drug use patterns and any co-occurring medical, mental, and social problems can lead to continued recovery. More good news is that drug use and addiction are preventable. Results from NIDA-funded research have shown that prevention programs involving families, schools, communities, and the media are effective for preventing or reducing drug use and addiction. Although personal events and cultural factors affect drug use trends, when young people view drug use as harmful, they tend to decrease their drug taking. Therefore, education and outreach are key in helping people understand the possible risks of drug use. Teachers, parents, and health care providers have crucial roles in educating young people and preventing drug use and addiction. They have these key roles because of the trust people have in them and by doing so they try to keep teens and adults away from drug abuse to help guide them to live lives where they don’t need to depend on these things on a daily basis to go on with their day. Having to depend on drugs for a daily use gets very costly and tends to have the users do anything to obtain the drug such as stealing money from family members, steal valuable items from the household to sell for money, and lie to get the drug. Neighbors, friends, and coworkers also experience the effects of substance abuse because a person who abuses substances often is unreliable. Friends may be asked to help financially or in other ways. Coworkers may be forced to compensate for decreased productivity or carry a disproportionate share of the workload. As a consequence, they may resent the person abusing substances. People who abuse substances are likely to find themselves increasingly isolated from their families.

A main psychoactive drug that many people have an addiction to is alcohol. Alcohol is a major depressant even though some people don’t feel that it isn’t. Alcohol acts as a disinhibitor, which slows brain activity that controls judgement and inhibitions. Prolonged excessive drinking characterizes alcohol use disorder and can shrink the brain. Adult women have less of a stomach enzyme that digests alcohol and can become addicted to alcohol more quickly than men, they are at risk for lung, brain, and liver damage at lower consumption levels. Along with alcoholism lower doses of alcohol relax the the drinker by slowing sympathetic nervous system activity. While larger doses cause reactions to slow, speech to slur, and skilled performance to deteriorate. If paired with sleep deprivation, alcohol is a potent sedative. When you add these physical effects to lowered inhibitions, the result can be deadly. Alcohol can also be life threatening when heavy drinking follows an earlier period of moderate drinking, which depresses the moderate response. Memory disruption is also affiliated with alcohol. It can disrupt memory formation and heavy drinking can have long term effects on the brain and cognition. Also if a person drinks too much it may lead to that person blacking out, in which drinkers are unable to recall the people they met that night, what they said, or even did while intoxicated. These result partly from the way alcohol suppresses REM sleep, which helps fix the day’s experience into permanent experiences. 

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