Drug Addiction: Do You Have the Willpower to Overcome It?

As society has developed, it has slowly promoted an increasingly faster pace of life. By increasing the pace at which one is forced to live promotes and accelerates the development of a more stressful standard of life. This has almost directly lead to the development of

I have personally experienced the effects and the addiction of methamphetamines, or speed. I have tried crystal meth and even after the first use knew what it felt like to be addicted to a substance. I have used it only twice more, and have vowed never to touch it again. After each individual use, my body would need a massive amount of sleep to recover from the damage that is caused by dumping large amounts of dopamine into the brain. Amphetamines also block the reuptake mechanism of dopamine, as well as attach and continually stimulate D2 dopamine receptors (North, A., 1992). These receptors are directly involved in the dopamine reward pathway, which is the brain’s method of giving your body a reward for either a pleasurable experience or state of mind. The normal high, euphoria, for speed can last for many hours, which is highly dose dependent. If you take hits of it after the initial one, it amplifies the energy effects and renews the high. Side-effects of speed inc!

In Health, Nov/Dec 1990; eye-balling by Harel Barzilai; relative rankings are definite, numbers given are (+/-)1%

Figure 1: Relative Addictive Tendencies of Major Drugs. To rank today's commonly used drugs by their addictiveness, we asked experts to consider two questions: How easy is it to get hooked on these substances and how hard is it to stop using them? Although a

more bouts of depression and other related psychological illnesses. To combat these added “diseases” and other physical problems, we have created new drugs and compounds. In the past century, drugs have become an integral part of society and the ability to survive in the current world. With these new drugs however, come new diseases that we don’t understand and need to research. For example, an unfortunate side-effect of some drugs is a positive change in emotional state, an increase in energy, euphoria, or other very pleasurable effects that causes users to become “addicted” to the substance. This “addiction” is currently under much scientific investigation to determine the psychological and physiologi!

At this point a definition of addiction and dependence is in order to further discuss addiction with relation to drug intake. There are two characteristics that are common to most clinical definitions of dependence and addiction: a compulsion to take the drug with a loss of control in limiting intake and a withdrawal syndrome that results in physical as well as motivational signs of discomfort when the drug is removed (Koob, G. et al., 1998). The concept of reinforcement or motivation (ie reward) is a crucial part of both of these characteristics. Reinforcement can be defined operationally as any event that increases the probability of an addictive response. This definition can also be used to signify a definition for reward, which often connotes some additional emotional value such as pleasure. As more and more reinforcement occurs, especially with reward, the body becomes less able to cope with the absence of the drug. This essentially means that although addiction cou!

As the body gets used to the flood of dopamine, and other bodily functions become more accustomed to the presence of these drugs, the body will start to adapt and modify the way In which it proceeds to function. It has been shown that with cocaine, neurons remember the presence of it even after the first use (Ungless, M. et al., 2001). If the body has such propensity to remember the presence of drugs in the system and also has such adaptability, it is not hard to believe that it can become dependent upon and therefore require the presence of many of these drugs. It shows its addiction to a drug through withdrawal symptoms which have been well documented in the cases of nicotine and alcohol (Hoffman, P. et al., 1992). Once addiction becomes strong enough, regardless of th

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