Drug Addiction

Drug Addiction

Introduction

Drug Addiction is a serious life threatening disease of the brain that can affect anyone. It is cunning, demonstrative and often lethal. According to the National Institute of Health addiction, has been characterized by compulsive craving of drug that seeks, use and continue in the face of negative consequences. Drug Addiction is a relatively recent construct in a social phenomenon. That is, regardless of the use of psychoactive drugs for many years, drugs only became a social trouble when the working of a member of a specific group or the actions of the group itself became weakened through another's drug-taking activities. Therefore, drug addiction evolved through the impact and interconnectedness which anyone's behavior has on another.

Drug addiction is a state denoted by an irresistible need to keep on taking a drug to which one has become accustomed due to recurring utilization as it generates a specific outcome, typically a change in attitude, mental activity, or outlook. Addiction generally goes along with an urge to acquire the drug, an inclination to boost the quantity, a physical or psychological reliance, and damaging results for the society and individual. General addictive drugs are cocaine, barbiturates, morphine, and crack and other opioids, particularly heroin, which has a little greater euphorigenic properties than other opium offshoots.

Discussion

Without intervention, treatment and remission the addict, a person who is much more than their disease, will ultimately land in either jail, an institution or simply die! Every human being is a candidate for addiction. Wealth, education, a successful job, race, ethnicity or children cannot protect a person from developing an addiction. Once the addiction switch is triggered the brain encodes a memory of the euphoria in the limbic system, also known as the reward center of the brain. Drugs of abuse, cross the blood brain barrier and target the brain's reward system by flooding the circuitry with dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that releases an overwhelming sense of pleasure and an addict will go to any length to repeat that feeling. Recently, scientists have revolutionized the understanding of addiction and drug abuse through advanced neuro imaging. According to Nora Volkow, M.D., the Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) drug addiction is a disease of the brain.

During the early part of the 20th Century people who abused alcohol and drugs were “morally flawed and lacking in willpower.” The ability to observe how drugs interact with neurotransmitters allows scientist to observe the changes that take place when drugs are introduced into the brain. The initial decision of taking a substance is a choice; however, there is no protection against addiction once a drug is introduced into the system. Not everyone who tries or uses drugs will become an addict, but for those who experience the warmth and comfort that drugs facilitate there is no turning back. Cravings, obsessive thoughts and desire to obtain euphoria become the number one priority at the expense of everything including life. Addiction is a disease that affects a person's behavior ...