Epidemiologically, it is well established that social determinants of health, including major racial and ethnic disparities, play a significant role in the risk for addiction [75, 76]. Contemporary neuroscience is illuminating how those factors penetrate the brain [77] and, in some cases, reveals pathways of resilience [78] and how evidence-based prevention can interrupt those adverse consequences [79, 80]. In other words, from our perspective, viewing addiction as a brain https://curiousmindmagazine.com/selecting-the-most-suitable-sober-house-for-addiction-recovery/ disease in no way negates the importance of social determinants of health or societal inequalities as critical influences. In fact, as shown by the studies correlating dopamine receptors with social experience, imaging is capable of capturing the impact of the social environment on brain function. This provides a platform for understanding how those influences become embedded in the biology of the brain, which provides a biological roadmap for prevention and intervention.

This is the same explanation that drives most biological health problems, such as heart disease, breast cancer, and diabetes. That’s why if you have a family member with breast cancer, (which puts you more at greater risk of developing breast cancer), it’s recommended you have regular check-ups to ensure the disease has not yet been triggered. In my research, I’ve found four main “camps” that attempt to explain addictive behaviors. People have been fighting about which of these is the true cause of addiction for decade. In isolation, each of these camps tells us something interesting about human behavior, but together they give us a complete picture of why someone becomes addicted in the first place and how addiction is maintained.

Other Addictions

This website will address how this mechanism works, how it is conserved across animal species, how a clearly non-adaptive thing like addiction can survive and be induced in many animals, and how the brain changes with addiction. These statements are all necessary in identifying how to best deal with addictive behavior, especially biological addiction (when the body adapts to need a drug and will go through a painful sick period or withdrawal without it). The etiology of addiction has to consider environment as it is an integral part of human life, and some genetic researchers admit that environment should be investigated and even separated from genetics in order to comprehend better addictive behaviour.

A study of 900 court cases involving children who experienced abuse found that a vast amount of them went on to suffer from some form of addiction in their adolescence or adult life. This pathway towards addiction, which is opened through stressful experiences during childhood, can be avoided by a change in environmental factors throughout an individual’s life and opportunities of professional help. If one has friends or peers who engage in drug use favorably, the chances of them developing an addiction increases. Dr. Nestler studies the molecular basis of addiction and depression in animal models, focusing on the brain pathways that regulate responses to natural rewards such as food, sex and social interaction.

Effects of chronic stress

The findings emanating from this work are vitally important if we are to continue to make inroads against addictions, particularly with respect to improving prevention and treatment strategies [3]. Despite significant efforts, excessive patterns of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs have been estimated to cost the United States alone over $400 billion annually [4]. Worldwide, addictions are prevalent and low- and middle-income countries may not have the resources to adequately address these disorders [5, 6]. The impact of addictions typically is widespread, with some estimates indicating seven people being affected for each identified addicted individual, and there often exist substantial social consequences [7]. Addictions may influence employers as well as families, and the impact may be felt trans-generationally as parents with addictions may neglect children or model unhealthy behaviors [8].

• Dysregulated substance use continues to be perceived as a self-inflicted condition characterized by a lack of willpower, thus falling outside the scope of medicine and into that of morality [3].
• Such interactions appear to have important clinical implications with respect to addictive behaviors in adolescents; for example, greater stress-induced risk-taking has been linked to poorer treatment outcome in adolescent smokers [168].
• Environmental risk factors for addiction are the experiences of an individual during their lifetime that interact with the individual’s genetic composition to increase or decrease their vulnerability to addiction.
• And when it comes to genetic expressions that would encourage drug and alcohol addiction, one of the most significant impactors is stress.

Most of the work done to observe drug addiction with Rhesus monkeys has been with stimulant drugs, primarily cocaine. In order to maintain a logical continuum, the information here will also focus on cocaine. As a person continues to use substances, the brain tries to get back to a balanced state by reacting less to those rewarding chemicals. As a result, a person may need to use more of the substance just to feel the same way they felt with lower amounts.

Addiction and Mental Health Resources

In biological models focusing specifically on adolescent addiction vulnerability [50], the function of brain regions contributing to other states (for example, relating to hunger, thirst or sex drive) relating to motivational drives and behaviors has been cited as important. For example, brain regions such as the hypothalamus and septum that are involved in these homeostatic processes may contribute importantly [50, 71, 72]. Environmental risk factors for addiction are the experiences of an individual during their lifetime that interact with the individual’s genetic composition to increase or decrease their vulnerability to addiction. A number of different environmental factors have been implicated as risk factors for addiction, including various psychosocial stressors. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) cites lack of parental supervision, the prevalence of peer substance use, drug availability, and poverty as risk factors for substance use among children and adolescents. The brain disease model of addiction posits that an individual’s exposure to an addictive drug is the most significant environmental risk factor for addiction.

It is true that a large number of risk alleles are involved, and that the explanatory power of currently available polygenic risk scores for addictive disorders lags behind those for e.g., schizophrenia or major depression [47, 48]. The only implication of this, however, is that low average effect sizes of risk alleles in addiction necessitate larger study samples to construct polygenic scores that account for a large proportion of the known heritability. The brain disease model of addiction has contributed greatly to the current view of substance use disorders.

Lessons from genetics

Specifically, multiple factors (both external influences like parental monitoring, peer behavior and access to drugs or addictive materials, as well as internal states, all of which are particularly relevant to adolescents) may influence decisions to use drugs or engage in addictive behaviors [62]. Both internal and external influences may be relevant to adolescents’ initiation and continued engagement in addictive behaviors. For example, one’s emotional state may contribute, and periods of feeling upset or stressed may lead to drug use [63, 64].

In spite of the fact that addiction is obscured by biological problems (Campbell, 2003), certain environmental factors have to be defined. Synthesized, the notion of addiction as a disease of choice and addiction as a brain disease can be understood as two sides of the same coin. Viewed this way, addiction is a brain disease in which a person’s choice faculties become profoundly compromised.