Describing addiction/Risk factors Flashcards
What is addiction?
A disorder where an individual takes a substance or engages in a behaviour that is pleasurable but eventually becomes compulsive with harmful consequences.
What is a physical dependence
- demonstrated by the presence of unpleasant physical symptoms (withdrawal syndrome). Person depends on drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms and function normally.
- accompanied by increased tolerance to the drug, in that the user requires increased doses in order to obtain the desired effect.
What is psychological dependence?
Occurs when a drug becomes a central part of an individual’s thoughts, emotions and activities.
- demonstrated by a strong urge to use the drug, despite being aware of any possible harmful effects
What are cravings?
- An intense desire to repeat the experience associated with a particular drug or activity. The desire to use it again may become so intense that it takes over their thinking completely.
- Abstaining from the drug causes intense cravings to again use the substance
- If cravings are not satisfied, the person begins to feel very anxious, such feelings make ending the addiction difficult.
What is tolerance?
When an individual’s response to a given amount of a drug is reduced, this means they need a greater dose to produce the same effect, causing tolerance
- Individuals can learn to adjust their behaviour to compensate for the effects of a drug
What are the 3 ways tolerance can occur?
- Metabolic tolerance
- Prolonged use
- Learned tolerance
What is metabolic tolerance?
Enzymes responsible for metabolising the drug do this more efficiently over time.
Results in reduced concentrations in the blood and at the sites of drug action, making the effect weaker
How does prolonged drug use lead to tolerance?
Leads to changes in receptor density reducing the response to the normal dose of the drug.
What is learned tolerance?
User experiences reduced drug effects because they have learned to function normally when under the influence
What is withdrawal symptoms
Collection of symptoms associated with abstaining from a drug. Symptoms are the opposite of the ones created by the drug and indicate that a physical dependence has developed.
- symptoms include increased anxiety, shakiness, irritability, and headaches
- motivation for continuing to take the drug is therefore partly to avoid the withdrawal symptoms
What are the two phases of withdrawal
Acute withdrawal
Post-Acute withdrawal
What is acute withdrawal
Begins within hours of drug cessation and gradually resolves over a few weeks.
During this stage the physical cravings are intense and persistent as the body is yet to adjust to the lack of the drug its used to
What is post-acute withdrawal?
Can last for months/years after the person has stopped taking the drug.
Characterised by emotional and psychological turmoil as the addict experiences alternating periods of dysfunction and near normality as the brain slowly reorganises itself
What is a risk factor?
internal/external influences that increase the likelihood someone will start using drugs or engage in addictive behaviours.
What are the risk factors of addiction?
- Genetic vulnerability
- Stress
- Personality
- Family influences
- Peers
How does genetic vulnerability increase the risk of addiction
Addiction itself isn’t inherited but a predisposition or vulnerability to drug dependence.
Genes aren’t inevitable causes, an individual will never become addicted unless they try the drug. Once someone is exposed to a drug genetics can explain why people become dependent and others do not.
Outline Blum’s idea of genetic vulnerability
Blum suggests that individuals who are vulnerable to drug addiction suffer from abnormally low levels of dopamine and a decreased ability to activate dopamine receptors in the reward centre of the brain.
- This means that anything that increases the amount of dopamine can produce strong feelings of euphoria.
Theres Different types of dopamine receptor.
- D2 receptor - abnormally low numbers are involved in addiction.
The proportion of all receptors in the brain is determined genetically.
Outline Pianezza et al’s study of genetic vulnerability
Found that some people lack a fully functioning enzyme (CYP2A6) which is mainly responsible for metabolising nicotine.
Such individuals smoke significantly less than smokers with the functioning version.
Expression of the enzyme is genetically determined, individuals with the functioning version are at greater genetic risk of nicotine addiction.
What is a strength and a limitation of Genetic vulnerability as a risk factor of addiction
S: Can explain individual differences
L: Gender differences
Evaluate the explanation of individual differences as a strength of genetic vulnerability as a risk factor
P: Can explain individual differences.
E: Dathesis-stress model can explain why some people develop addictive behaviour, yet others who have the same environmental experiences do not.
Some are more likely to develop an addiction because of their genetic vulnerability. For example, the A1 variant of the dopamine-receptor gene has been found to be associated with cocaine & nicotine dependence.
E: Suggests that individuals who inherit this gene variant are more vulnerable to developing addictive behaviour because of their low levels of dopamine and the increase in dopamine that is possible with drugs that activate the brain-reward pathway.
Evaluate genetic differences as a limitation of Genetic vulnerability as a risk factor
P: There are gender differences to addiction.
E: Studies of male alcoholics have consistently supported the importance of genetic factors in the development of alcoholism. However, research with women produced inconsistent findings.
Only 2 out of 5 twin studies found significantly greater concordance for alcoholism among female MZ twins than among female DZ twins.
E: Suggests that genetic factors may be less important in the development of alcoholism in women than in men.
How does stress increase the risk of addiction?
The ‘self-medication’ model proposes that some individuals intentionally use different forms of pathological behaviour to ‘treat’ the psychological symptoms they experience due to everyday stressors. Stressors may contribute to the initiation and maintenance of addictions.
Although engaging in such behaviour may not actually make things better, the perception that it does is what causes an addiction.
Stress is one of the strongest predictors of relapse and increased drug cravings.
Outline Piazza’s study into stress as a risk factor
- Investigated how stress affected vulnerability to addiction in rats
- Demonstrated how previous repeated exposure to** stressful tail-pinching and amphetamines** increased activity in the dopamine neural system through behavioural sensitisation, making the rats more disposed to self-administer amphetamines.
- This suggests that stress affects drug taking via the action of neurobiology.
