Drug addiction is a hot topic of late, both with regards to scientific understanding and social action. The United States has been ramping up border protection in an effort to mitigate drug usage, and Portugal has legalized all drugs for recreational use in hopes of improving public health by de-stigmatizing drug addiction.
The question at the forefront of this issue is whether or not it is within our power to break away from our addictions.
Tackling this issue becomes difficult for several reasons. From a social standpoint, our society has been deeply influenced by Cartesianism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesianism ), and we think that our mind has the power to overcome every and all obstacles with sheer determination. The glorification of the mind over body mentality continues today with movies depicting soldiers and athletes overcoming their respective pain and achieving the goal they set out to achieve.
This is all fine and dandy, but it minimizes the power of the brain, and I believe it is the root of stigmatism in the U.S.
So what is happening in a person’s brain who’s struggling with addiction? For starters, addict’s “reward centers” in the brain are being overwhelmed. Our brains help us out by making us feel good whenever we do something that’s supposed to be good for ourselves. One example of this is eating some ice cream. Our brain processes the 
signal from our mouth, and tells us “Ice cream good, eat more.” So we eat more because it feels good.This feeling good comes from a place in the brain called the Striatum (marked in green on the picture below). Our Striatum releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine, and we receive a feeling of pleasure.
Drugs:
So where do drugs fit into all of this? Particularly addictive drugs like methamphetamine and heroin hijack your Striatum. These drugs cause a huge amount of dopamine to be dumped into your brain and cause a feeling of intense pleasure and euphoria. Herein lies the problem with drug addiction. The Striatum’s job is to promote continued action by making us feel good. When we stimulate that region of our brain with an action, such as taking some prescription pills or illegal substances, our brain becomes hardwired to wanting to repeat that action. The dial gets turned up to 11 when we do this with addictive drugs because of the amount of dopamine released. Several proteins and cellular pathways become activated in our brain to rewire it. Some of the proteins such as protein kinase A and C serve to cause cellular restructure and proliferation.
When we take all that’s happening to our brains into account, we see that drug addiction becomes less and less of a choice and more of necessity. Our brains become trained to want drugs more than things like life-sustaining food. It seems confusing that our brains would rather have drugs and die instead of being healthy. But that’s because living healthy doesn’t always activate our striatum. Simply put, our brain gets turned against us when addictive drugs are put into the equation. We become erratic and irrational.
Regardless of your stance on drug addiction, please let anyone you know struggling with addiction that there are people out there who are willing to help them without any judgement. The hotline for drug abuse is 1-877-978-2486, and you can find there website here http://drugabuse.com
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