The Real Cost of Addiction

Try and imagine a life where you felt you needed something more than food and shelter. Being an addict is one way that this could become a reality. The compulsion to get their drug of choice can become the most important thing for an addict, even if they are going hungry or lose their homes.
Not only is it expensive for the drug seeker, but this problem also affects the nation. It has been found that more than $700 billion dollars is spent annually to handle this social issue (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015).
The Impacts on Family
Addiction does not only affect the addict. The families of addicts may face significant problems while trying to help an addict. This disease can cause problems with a family’s mental and physical health, finances, and the family dynamics (National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, 2016).
Family life may be completely overtaken by this problem. Kids may go through scary experiences that make them worry about their parent. Spouses may wonder where all the money for food and bills has gone.
If steps are not taken to solve this disease, it can cause problems for a lifetime. To try and treat an addict there are various options, such as therapy. The use of medications is being investigated, but there needs to be more information about the disease before they can be produced.
The Neurochemistry of Addiction
Drug addicts will experience tolerance, sensitization, and dependence after prolonged use. Scott Philibin and colleagues explain how some of this occurs in an article in the journal of Frontiers in Neuroanatomy. The article explains that there are numerous areas of the brains that are affected by these drugs of abuse.
One of the main points that the researchers make is that drugs of abuse raise the amount of dopamine that is released, which makes the drug more addicting. There are many second messengers and kinases that can be affected as well, but it becomes very complicated at this molecular level.
The researchers of this article performed many experiments using mice to study addiction. One useful technique used was the extinction and reinstatement mouse model. The results from this specific experiment have led to knowledge about recovery and relapse of addicts.
Extinction-Reinstatement Model
For this experiment, mice are taught to self-administer some drug by pushing a lever. The mice will become addicted, and once they are the drug will be taken away. The mice will continue to push the lever, but they will not receive any drug.
This is the extinction phase where the learned association is taken away. Eventually the mice will reach a level of unresponsiveness, and this is when the reinstatement phase begins.
The mice will be given drug cues to see if they revert back to the drug-seeking behavior. If they do, then it is determined that they have relapsed.
Gass and Chandler reviewed a research article in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry that details the use of this method. It was found that the use of pharmacological aids may help the addicted mice refrain from relapse.
Further research is still needed to find further evidence about the use of medications, but the combination of medicine and therapy could be one answer to helping addicts.