What makes certain drugs more or less addictive? Why do patients often become addicted to morphine? This week in class we discussed opioids and what causes their addiction. You may recognize the term opioid from the drug opium, but it is actually a higher classification of drugs that also includes morphine, codeine, heroin and even our body’s natural endorphins.
The brain chemical that causes addiction is called dopamine. When it is released it causes our brain to think that whatever we are experiencing is very pleasurable. We want this pleasurable experience to happen again and again so we keep going back to that thing that causes the release of dopamine, like drugs. After so much release of this chemical we gain a tolerance to the drug, which means more is needed to reach the same desired effect. Since opioids are sometime used for pain relief, this is can cause serious drug tolerance when the morphine levels are increased over time. That is typically why long term morphine use is not used in clinical settings and why the hospitals have settings that max out the dosage.
Another portion of our paper talked about different portions of the brain that may also play a role in our drug addiction. Two of these brain regions are the amygdala, which is responsible for all of our emotions and our prefrontal cortex which is responsible for cognitive functions such as planning and decision making. Although our article didn’t explicitly say anything about how drugs may affect our moods and decision making process another article that I found discussed how opioids are used in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder to elevate their mood when they are down. For more information about the mood aspect of this you can check out this link: http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/19/4/449 Since this chemical also activates our decision making area of our brain, it may show why some people become addicted to these various drugs even though they know of its harmful effects. Maybe we could even generalize it to say that we aren’t making the decision to do the drugs continually, our brain has taken over control?
Dear Dad, I want more. The basis of addiction.
