Figure: Addiction causes you to become dependent on an activity or substance and you can abandon all other parts of your life that are important to you. Eventually you start to fade away as a functional member of society.
Since the beginning of our school lives we have heard about addicts. The thing that came to my head every time I heard this was “Why would anyone even do drugs?”. After growing older I could see how some people could get pressured into drugs, but then I would think “Why would people keep doing drugs even if they know that they can kill them?”. Drugs keep people from experiencing healthy family lives, keep some from working, and experiencing a normal life in general. This addiction can be attributed to a broken reward system in the brain and the cycle of addiction that keeps bringing people back to the drugs.
Cycle of Addiction
Drug abuse and addiction is a vicious cycle that feeds into itself. It starts with usage of the drug. Then as you use more and more you start to build up a tolerance to the drug, which takes more of it to give you the same effects. This means that the brain has adapted to the drug and “put up defenses”. At the same time, it takes less of the drug to make the pathway go through into your brain. This is sensitization. It means that there is a change in the pathway of the brain to make this effect easier to acquire. It is now dependent on the drug. Eventually you stop taking the drug and there are feelings of withdrawal which are the brain trying to adapt back to the way it was before this stimulus entered it and made changes. Sometimes the brain can become clean and is no longer dependent upon the drug. However, there are still cravings and environmental factors that cause individuals to acquire the drug and get a relapse, starting the cycle over again. Since that pathway has already been made into a priority in the brain it is really easy to go back into the cycle of abuse.
http://ccbhc.org/drug-abuseisstill-a-growing-problem/
Reward System
The reward system in a normal, healthy brain gives doses of pleasurable dopamine as a reward for certain activities. This dopamine binds to receptors and once the activity is over the dopamine is taken away, or goes through reuptake. Many drugs block this process of reuptake and the dopamine remains bound to receptors for a longer time. The drugs may also cause a release of dopamine without an activity taking place. The dopamine receptors get used to having this much dopamine and do not associate it with activities that would normally bring it this dopamine since it is getting supplied by the drug. Along with that the receptors are building up a tolerance to the dopamine resulting in the need for more drugs to duplicate the same sensation when originally taking the drugs. More drugs are then needed to cause the same feeling.
https://www.care2.com/greenliving/3-prescription-drugs-that-do-more-harm-than-good.html
How can we stay away from drugs? This seems like a pretty easy question to answer: Just don’t do drugs. This is getting harder and harder as prescription drugs are so commonly used in our world today. They are very addictive as well and there is no discrimination for who can become addicted. If you are ever prescribed drugs, use them as directed and if you no longer need them, stop using them. You can do this by bringing them to a local DEA, National Drug Prescription Take-Back events, or DEA registered collectors, which are generally pharmacies or drug stores.
