Brain, Chemicals and Addictions

Question 1

What is addiction?

Answer 1

• a chronic progressive relapsing disease
• compulsive drug use regardless of the detrimental effects of the behavior on various aspects of health and life
• a disease of the young

Question 2

What characterizes addiction?

Answer 2

Compulsion to seek/take drugs
Loss of control limiting intake
Emergence of a negative emotional state

Question 3

Two Important Components of Addiction

Answer 3

Impulsive Behavior throughout progression

Compulsive Behavior - Later stages

Question 4

Psychological Theories of Substance Abuse

Answer 4

Personality - have addictive personality due to pleasurable sense of relief from realities of life that normal people don’t receive because life is no special burden to them
Social Learning - learned by observing and imitating models
- behavior modeling, neutralization (doesn’t lose positive self-image when drifting behavior), conflict
Operant Conditioning - drive, cue, response, reinforcement
Classical Conditioning - CS + UR - exposure to cues alone is sufficient to elicit very intense cravings or urges that are often followed by substance abuse

Question 5

Avoidance Learning

Answer 5

Classical conditioning + instrumental conditioning

Drug use is reinforcing because it changes the way a person feels, thinks or behaves

Question 6

Hedonic Homeostatic Dysregulation

Answer 6

get lower set point following chronic drug use

Initially used to get high, now use to get normal

Question 7

Continuum of Use

Answer 7

Experimentation and recreational use
Habituation and use - use despite negative consequences
Dependence/addiction - need drug to avoid pain and depression

Question 8

Self-Efficacy

Answer 8

belief that one can perform a novel or difficult task, or cope with adversity - in various domains of human functioning

Question 9

Treatments supported by random clinical trials

Answer 9

Cognitive-behavioral based treatment
Community reinforcement approach
Motivational interviewing
Relapse prevention (cognitive-behavioral)
Social skill training

Question 10

Treatments shown by random clinical trials to be ineffective

Answer 10

Educational lectures and films
Exploratory psychotherapies
Undifferentiated counseling
Confrontation
Mandated 12-step meetings
Time in milieu (short term inpatient/residential)
Stand alone detox

Question 11

Most common theory used for substance abuse

Answer 11

personal recovery process

Question 12

What the science shows about substance abuse

Answer 12

• drug use is a chosen behavior
• problems emerge gradually and occur along a continuum of severity
• motivation is central to prevention and intervention
• drug use responds to reinforcement
• problems do not occur in isolation, but as part of behavioral clusters
• relationship matters

Question 13

Contingency programs

Answer 13

modest everyday incentives to stop drug use in addicts

Question 14

Motivational Interviewing

Answer 14

Precontemplation - unawareness/denial 
Contemplation - considering change
Preparation
Action
Maintenance

Question 15

Purposeful Behavior

Answer 15

All voluntary behavior is purposeful
All behavior has 4 components:
 - doing
 - thinking
 - feelings
 - physiology

Question 16

Anhedonia

Answer 16

Pleasure “deafness”

• client is no longer able to derive normal pleasure from those things that have been pleasurable in the past
• addiction is a dopamine induced hedonic dysregulation

Question 17

Quality of Life

Answer 17

an individual’s sense of well-being, state of health, and level of functioning as measured by their mood, attitude, and ability to interact with their environment and perform various tasks