People start using drugs for a reason.
Whether it is to help them deal with anxiety or depression or they need some kind of escape.
What people don’t realize is that these drugs are highly addictive. Our brain processes things differently when we take illegal substances.
You can 100% overcome drug addiction smartly, but you might have to seek professional help.
What are the most common types of drug addiction?
- Nicotine: 59.2% of Americans age 12 or older have tried nicotine.
- Alcohol: 79.5% of Americans aged 12 and older have consumed alcohol
- Marijuana/Cannabis: 17.9% of Americans age 12+ have tried marijuana
- Cocaine: 14.2% of Americans aged 12 and older have tried cocaine
- Painkillers: 3.3% of Americans over the age of 12 have used them in the past year
- Heroin: 2.3% of American aged 12 years or older have tried heroin in the past
- Benzodiazepines (Valium and Xanax): 1.7% of American aged 12 and older have tried benzos in the last year
- Stimulants (Adderall, Ritalin, Meth): 1.8% of Americans over the age of 12 have tried them in the past year
- Inhalants: 9.3% of American aged 12+ have tried them
- Barbiturates (Lunesta, Ambien): 0.2% of Americans ages 12 and older have tried them before.
How is addiction defined?
Addiction is considered a chronic disease involving drug use that is compulsive or difficult to control despite knowledge and understanding of the harmful consequences.
While the initial uses or uses of a drug are voluntary and thought out, repeated use can lead to changes in the brain that challenge self-control. Their ability to resist the intense urge and craving to gain those feelings again becomes weaker and weaker.
Tolerance in the body develops, leading to a dependency on the drug to feel their new ‘normal.’ As tolerance increases, you need either more of the drug to feel better or need it more frequently, or both. This need leads closer and closer to dangerous overdoses and potential death.
If you’re struggling with addiction, there is help out there for you. More information on treatments is available at Gallus Detox.
What is the biochemical process behind drug addiction?
Most addictive drugs rewire your brain’s reward centers. Feelings of euphoria followed by the release of dopamine or feel-good hormones.
Normally, our brain’s reward system functions the same way to repeat behaviors like eating and spending time with loved ones. This makes me feel good, so I want to do it again.
Surges of dopamine, thanks to substance use, cause the same desire to repeat but repeat unhealthy rather than healthy habits, like drugs. Despite the consequences, the brain rewards you highly for the activity, therefore ignoring the risks.
As this process repeats with continued drug use, your brain adapts by making it harder to trigger that reward. Despite following the same steps, you don’t feel as good afterward. This is tolerance.
A typical response to tolerance is to take more. In response, your brain adapts again, requiring you to take more to get the same reward response. Because of these continued adaptations to drug use, you might find it harder to feel those rewards from healthy actions like food, sex, and social activities.
Other areas affected by long-term drug use:
- Learning
- Behavior
- Stress
- Learning
- Memory
- Judgment
- Decision-making
What are other psychological factors that influence addiction?
Briefly, psychology is the science devoted to human behavior. Why do we do what we do?
In general, psychologists agree on three psychological causes of addiction.
- Mental illness. People may engage in harmful behaviors such as addiction because of underlying mental conditions or abnormalities.
- Unhealthy behaviors can be learned from their environment.
- Our feelings are created by our thoughts and beliefs. Therefore, if our thoughts and beliefs are unrealistic or dysfunctional, then our behavior in response to our feelings could be as well.
Most will agree that while some biological reasons for addiction have been suggested, most of the motivation is psychological in nature. Drugs are often turned to as a form of self-medication or coping mechanism.
Drug addiction is highly linked with past trauma, often in youth. This trauma can include physical or sexual abuse and chaos in the home.
Psychological stress, whether caused by trauma or underlying mental health disorders like depression and anxiety, are all strong forces behind the desire to self-medicate.
What are the social causes of addiction?
Even psychologists agree that our cultural beliefs and influences play a significant role in our decision-making and how we react to situations.
Your home and family life will influence your psychological health, your decision-making, your ability to process and work through conflict, and more. What behaviors you deem to be normal or appropriate are often learned at home.
Your parents’ behavior and how they cope with emotions and stress are a guide for how you will react and process similar situations.
Teens who lack strong parental forces in their lives or live in abusive home will often turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the constant strong emotions.
Add in peers, school, and work, and you have the added pressures of popularity, bullying, relationships, and association with gangs. What we’re exposed to while we’re young can have a profound effect on choices made much later in life.
Peer pressure is a common driving force behind trying drugs and continuing to use them long-term. The need and desire to fit in, please your friends and parents, and live up to expectations can all drive the use and abuse of drugs.
Final Thoughts
Drug addiction is a disease with an enormous social component.
If we are to succeed in combating drug use and abuse, the first step is to understand its origins and how it works. Next, we must learn why those who become addicted to drugs don’t just stop using them.
As you can see, the main takeaway is that drugs are addictive because they trigger very powerful reactions in the brain’s reward center, which reinforces and rewards certain behavior, often produced when a person feels pleasure and/or euphoria (byproducts of dopamine).
