Addiction Review

Its not a Style!!!!!

Imagine you are taking a slug of whiskey, a puff of a cigarette, a toke of marijuana, a snort of cocaine, a shot of heroin.Put aside whether these drugs are legal or illegal.The moment you take that slug, that puff, that toke, that snort, that shot, trillions of potent molecules surge through your bloodstream and into your brain.Once there, they set off a cascade of chemical and electrical events, a kind of neurological chain reaction that ricochets around the skull and rearranges the interior reality of the mind.

Addiction is a continued involvement with a substance or activity despite the negative consequences associated with it.It can be defined as physical and psychological dependence on psychoactive substances such as:- alcohol, tobacco, heroin and other drugs, which cross the blood-brain barrier once ingested, temporarily altering the chemical milieu of the brain.

Addiction too include abnormal psychological dependency on such things as gambling, food, sex, pornography, computers, Internet, work, exercise, idolizing, watching TV or certain types of non-pornographic videos, spiritual obsession, self-injury and shopping.In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user themselves to their individual health, mental state, or social life.

Ways of getting addicted:

Stress - One of the fundamental target for addiction treatments is the stress network.Animal studies have long shown that stress can increase the desire for drugs.In rats trained to self-administer a substance, stresses such as a new environment, an unfamiliar cage mate or a change in daily routine push the animals to depend on the substance even more.Among higher creatures like human beings, stress can also alter the way the brain thinks, particularly the way it contemplates the consequences of actions.

Hormones - Hormones of the male-female kind, may play a role in how people become addicted as well.Studies have shown, for instance, that women may be more vulnerable to cravings for nicotine during the latter part of the menstrual cycle, when the egg emerges from the follicle and the hormones progesterone and estrogen are released.



According the scientists what ties all the mood-altering drugs together, is a remarkable ability to elevate levels of a common substance in the brain called dopamine.Its main function as a hormone is to inhibit the release of protactinium from the anterior lobe of the pituitary.

Medications alone will not solve the drug problem.In fact, one of the most hopeful messages coming out of current research is that the biochemical abnormalities associated with addiction can be reversed through learning.For that reason, all sorts of psychosocial interventions, ranging from psychotherapy, can and do help.Cognitive therapy, which seeks to supply people with coping skills (exercising after work instead of going to a bar, for instance), appears to hold particular promise.