Drug Addiction

Question 1

What is the history of drugs over the centuries?

Answer 1

People have always used drugs and always will

Question 2

What is drug addiction?

Answer 2

Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease
that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite
harmful consequences to the addicted individual and
to those around them.

Question 3

Why do people take drugs?

Answer 3

feel good, self medication, perform better, curiosity

Question 4

What are the 4 stages of drug use?

Answer 4

Experimentation, regular use, risky use/abuse, addiction

Question 5

What is the experimentation stage of drug use?

Answer 5

The voluntary use of drugs without experiencing any negative social or legal consequences

Question 6

What is the regular use stage of drug use?

Answer 6

Some people will be able to enter the stage of regular use without developing a dependence or addiction
able to stop the drug use on their own.

Question 7

What is the risky use/abuse stage of drug use?

Answer 7

continued use of drugs in spite of severe social and legal
consequences
thin line

Question 8

What is the addiction stage of drug use?

Answer 8

withdrawal symptoms and compulsive use of the drug despite severe negative consequences.

Question 9

What has happened to the rate of drug use over the years?

Answer 9

stayed consistent even with more money being spent on it

Question 10

Who have been people to blame for drug use? (and proven wrong)

Answer 10

poor, uneducated, minorities

Question 11

Why do some people get addicted?

Answer 11

kind of unknown, mix of environment and genetics

Question 12

What are risk factors of addiction?

Answer 12

genetics, gender, adolescence, mental health disorders, bad patterns (binging, needles), early life stress/abuse, community/social acceptance, personality traits (impulsive)

Question 13

Our inability to effectively treat people who abuse drugs
is tied to ____

Answer 13

inability to treat mental illnesses

Question 14

If drugs make you feel good, what is the problem?

Answer 14

most drugs are abused and addictive

Question 15

What are some of the main effect on the brain from drugs?

Answer 15

Addicts have lower levels of dopamine receptors in the brain and is long lasting
Shrinking of gray matter

Question 16

what is physiological tolerance?

Answer 16

The liver gets more efficient at breaking down the drug before it gets to the brain.
less drugs make it into the bloodstream

Question 17

what is cellular tolerance?

Answer 17

Plasticity in nerve cells makes them less responsive to drugs.
decreased number of receptors

Question 18

What is the drug addiction pathway in the brain?

Answer 18

neurons of the ventral tegmentum to release dopamine in the nucleus accumbens.

Question 19

What does sensitization do?

Answer 19

Increases the response from the brain the more the drug is taken
greater increase of dopamine

Question 20

What are the methods for modeling drug abuse in animals?

Answer 20

Conditioned Place Preference: Reward
Locomotor Activity: Sensitization
Self-Administration: Voluntary Drug Taking

Question 21

What happens after an abstinence period of drugs?

Answer 21

the use after regaining access goes up at a higher rate

Question 22

What does impulsive personality and female rates have in common?

Answer 22

They are higher than normal
Female drug use is though to be higher due to hormones– when reproductive organs taken out they look more like male levels

Question 23

What is the motivation/reward pathway?

Answer 23

after repeated activation by drugs (plasticity) becomes the addiction pathway. So addiction is a pathology of motivation.

Question 24

What is the plasticity of accumbens neurons?

Answer 24

Repeated experience with sex or drugs will increase
dendritic spines in the nucleus accumbens. As spines
are the site of excitatory synapses, this means the
nerve cells are more excitable (sensitization).

Question 25

Why aren’t drug treatments effective?

Answer 25

Failure to treat co-morbid mental illness.

The motivation pathway learns to see drug
abuse as another motivated behavior. Our
brains resist eliminating motivated
behaviors (think anorexia, for example).