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What causes addiction?

rickolasnice

rickolasnice

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This might ring true for some here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Do drugs lead to addiction? Or is it environment? Apparently - It's environment.

Basically - A lot of the studies into addiction done on Rats where they were given two water bottles - one with plain water and one with Cocaine in it - The rats drank the cocaine water until they died. but why? These rats were all living in a small box with nothing in but two water bottles to choose from.

Some clever mofo by the name of Bruce K. Alexander repeated the experiment but this time gave the rats something to do.. other rats to knock about with.. toys to play with.. wheels to run on.. etc etc etc.. No rats were harmed in the making of this experiment. Because they shunned the drugs.

Obviously, when it comes to people, the lack of external stimuli could be a sense of stagnation, of the same ol same ol.. or of a sense of loneliness and / or isolation.. sadness or depression.. A feeling of "Is this all there is to life?"
 
Yes. Bored people with not much to do take drugs, as attested by this entire forum. Did they really have to kill rats to prove that??
 
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Pain whether that be emotional or physical , loneliness boredom etc..
 
This 'study' is flawed because (shock horror), people are not rats. Certain physiological reactions to drugs in rats can be extrapolated to humans, but not behaviour.

@Raas. It's not only bored people with nothing to do that take drugs ya know. Surprisingly, even affluent intellectual types with a fulfilling life also take drugs. The only difference is possibly the choice of drugs they take. Humans just seem to enjoy altered states of consciousness - always have, always will.
 
It's a personality trait I reckon, i.e. I know I don't have an 'addictive' personality. I know this because I've tried various drugs and even tried smoking when I was younger, whilst some of it was really enjoyable I never had a sense of "I need more of that", even with alcohol which I drink most weekends I quite often go a month or two sober.

No doubt a lot of it is to do with your local environment as well, groups of pals, social upbringing etc.
 
This is my basic understanding of it having just done 5 minutes of research.... as far as I am aware the dopamine reward system plays a large role in developing addictions. Basically one gets a large release of dopamine & feels pleasure as a consequence but this leads to wanting to feel this pleasurable effect yet again due to reinforcement. Each time one repeats the drug use the brain compensates by reducing the sensitivity to the drug. This builds tolerance.
 
I think it's a perfectly innate trait in every human. Some addictions carry more negatives than others but we're all just seeking something to make us feel better whether it be through food, exercise, shopping, fighting, computer games, smart phones, reading, drugs etc etc, the list is endless but every single person will have at least one thing they probably do just a little too much of. An unhealthy level of, whether it be financial, physical or mental.. Dammed drugs tick all of those bastard-ing boxes though 8(

We just want to feel different to our natural state, drugs have the tendency to incur more negatives than most but I guess that's the price to pay the piper for having the most effective feel good factors..
 
Drugs (or any stimuli) that elicit a pleasant response - such as a dopamine release, for example, tend to be repeated; there are evolutionary reasons for this (think about this in the context of food and sex).
A lot of people i've known to fall into addiction have their own reasons for having done so. Stress, anxiety, pain, trauma - in my anecdotal observations, at least - seem to be present in the lives of a lot of people with histories of substance addiction.
Some people get hooked on the rush of a certain drug, for some it is the escape, the deadening of negative emotions or any number of other reasons.
I don't really buy into the explanation of "addictive personalities" or genetic predisposition. These ideas may play a role in human drug addiction, but i think environment and circumstances can be just as influential in addictive behaviours.
It is complicated though, and there is no simple explanation; it varies between groups, individuals and types of drug use.
 
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As mentioned, dopamine release is the main reason that people repeatedly take drugs. Again, as stated, not only drugs cause this type of behaviour. Gambling, shopping, sex, eating and a load of other things have a similar 'reward' effect on humans. In my case, suffering from ADHD, which is when too little dopamine is present in certain areas of the brain, drugs are very rewarding (and hence addictive).
 
spacejunk said:
Drugs (or any stimuli) that elicit a pleasant response - such as a dopamine release, for example, tend to be repeated.
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I've never found the dopamine release drugs addictive tho - is that cocaine and such like? The ones I like are the serotonin effect ones - and all of those stop working if you take them addictively.

I don't really buy into the explanation of "addictive personalities" or genetic predisposition

So how come I can take or leave coke and some other poor motherlicker can't?
 
Choices play a big role. I can't think of a single drug that causes addiction from a single hit. Sure they feel good, but at some stage you make that choice, to take a drug or not. The difference is up until a point, non addicts choose life, responsibilities and their health over a hit. It's when the drug takes precedence over these responsibilities that addiction hits home.

I'm sure genetics plays a role once addiction takes home. I've known many who can turn their drug use off and on no matter how hard they dive into their habit, while others will forever be jonsing, never able to even dabble once they recover. Perhaps their brains are in fact damaged beyond repair, or perhaps they are simply happy to make excuses. No one theory fits all it seems.
 
One Thousand Words said:
Choices play a big role. I can't think of a single drug that causes addiction from a single hit. Sure they feel good, but at some stage you make that choice, to take a drug or not. The difference is up until a point, non addicts choose life, responsibilities and their health over a hit. It's when the drug takes precedence over these responsibilities that addiction hits home.
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As Albert Goldman once said "The vital moment in any mans drug history is not when he starts taking drugs it is when the drugs start taking him".
 
I don't agree with this "we're all vulnerable to addiction" theory tho. Every time I take a dopamine releasing drug like speed or coke I simply end up flogging myself off and thinking "what a fucking waste of a life". Even worse the fucking stuff affects you so that after 60-90 minutes you can't even shoot your muck. You come to the despairing realisation that you're going to be sat there flicking it off for the next 4 hours with no hope of ever shooting your muck.

The chance of me ever becoming addicted to that is about fucking nil.
 
F.U.B.A.R. said:
This 'study' is flawed because (shock horror), people are not rats. Certain physiological reactions to drugs in rats can be extrapolated to humans, but not behaviour.

@Raas. It's not only bored people with nothing to do that take drugs ya know. Surprisingly, even affluent intellectual types with a fulfilling life also take drugs. The only difference is possibly the choice of drugs they take. Humans just seem to enjoy altered states of consciousness - always have, always will.
Click to expand...

I thought one of the main points of the study was to show the flaws in previous rat studies (and the divergent results were extrapolated to humans to compare to the usual extrapolation of the horrible studies (which they did repeat raas, though only to try and stop that sort of thing)). Agree with the second bit though.

There's clearly something about dopamine involved in addiction. I don't think the genetic component is all that significant (saying george best's mum was alcoholic could just as easily be 'nurture') - anyway, claims of genetic components of behaviour generally are getting weaker and weaker (usually 30% at most) as they discover more about how dna and genes work (ie as an active complex modifiable system, rather than a passive deterministic code)
 
Vurtual said:
There's clearly something about dopamine involved in addiction. I don't think the genetic component is all that significant (saying george best's mum was alcoholic could just as easily be 'nurture'
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Why is it most people are immune to addiction tho? How do you "nurture" someone not to be an addict? Tell them "Just say no"?
 
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