Research Paper on Drug Addiction

Introduction

One of the biggest misunderstandings on drug addiction is that a person is always taking drugs or drinking alcohol because they have made bad friends, have no job, in a bad mood, not happy, spoiled, and not strong. However, the fact is that addiction is a disease, not a question of life choice. There are many reasons for going to drug or alcohol abuse, perhaps because of social, curious, fun, ignorant, belonging, escaping, deliberate...but once you become addicted, you have entered the brain disease program, and the reason for alcoholism or drug abuse. It has nothing to do with it, it is under the control of brain damage. That is to say, continuous drug addiction or alcohol abuse after addiction is a symptom of the disease, not a choice of life, due to the adaptation of the brain to drugs or alcohol, and this adaptation constitutes irreversible damage so that the patient repeats. Drug addiction is not just a medical issue, but also legal, social and ethical issues. Among many problems, how to define addiction is not only related to the attitude of the society to the addicts, but also affects the state's public health policy on the addiction problem, so it becomes the logical starting point for explaining the addiction problem. In view of this, this paper focuses on the problem of drug addiction as an addiction rather than an individual choice.

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Addiction refers to a repetitive compulsive behavior, even if these behaviors are known to cause adverse consequences, and are often repeated (Volkow, Nora, George, Koob & McLellan, p.364). In essence, addiction is a pathological memory based on changes in neuroplasticity. Its main features are compulsive medication, persistent desire for desire, and weakened ability to control desire. The compulsive medication is the core feature. The addict loses self-control of drug search and intake (Koob & Volkow, p.220). At present, the idea is that addiction is a neuropsychiatric disease caused by changes in neuroplasticity in the ventral tegmental area of the midbrain to the dopaminergic reward pathway in the nucleus accumbens (Fuccillo, Marc, Rothwell & Malenka, pp.4-6)

Under normal circumstances, according to the definition of the World Health Organization, the process of using psychoactive substances in the human body will be tolerated, and when the user is stopped, withdrawal syndrome will occur (Fuccillo et al., p.5). Among many addictive behaviors or phenomena, drug addiction has attracted much attention because of its great harm to individuals, families, and society. The drug situation facing our country is severe and complicated, and the total number of drug users is still growing slowly. By the end of 2016, there were almost 21 million drug users aged over 12 years in America (Miller, p.1). Although there are many drug rehabilitation modes in the country to treat and help drug-dependent people in different ways, the drug rehabilitation work still faces various problems, such as high relapse rate, underutilization, and attention of community resources, and unreasonable resource allocation (Pickard, p.169). An important reason for these problems is that the public and even drug addicts and professionals have prejudice, misunderstanding and negative moral judgments for addicts. To solve this problem, we need to eliminate discrimination and prejudice and let people correctly treat addicts in order to provide better help to addicts.

The idea that addiction is a disease originated in the Aristotle era and became popular in the early 19th century. With the development of neuroscience, society's understanding of addiction has changed a lot: from the definition of addiction as a lack of self-control personality defects to the classification of chronic neurological disorders (Wakefield & Jerome, p.42). Today, the idea that addiction is a disease is generally accepted and recognized by relevant research institutions and societies. The National Institute of Drug Abuse defines addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disease characterized by ignoring harmful consequences and forcing the search for and use of drugs (NIDA, 2014). American addiction medicine defines addiction primarily as a brain disease, motivation, memory, and chronic diseases associated with the brain circuit (ASAM, 2011). It has been found that physical changes in the brain regions of addicts that are closely related to judgment, decision making, learning, memory, and behavioral control, and the decline in synaptic density in addicts have long been considered addictive. There is now evidence that many repetitive behaviors that reward rewards, emotions, and memory are also part of addictive disease [24-25]. Vonasch et al. (p.57) consider it reasonable to treat addiction as a disease: after all, the neurological changes caused by addiction are obvious. Scientists believe that these organic changes have also changed the way the brain works, just as diabetes has changed the way the islets work. The compulsive effects of disease make the consequences of addiction often harmful.

From the argument of the theory of addiction disease, we see that the basic approach is to start from the damage of the addiction to the brain and the damage of the nerve function. In other words, the mechanism of the addiction causes the deviation of the behavior of the behavior subject (Hyman, p.9), thereby having the characteristics of a disease. This research approach is an intrinsic reason for recognizing the deviation between disease behavior and normal behavior and emphasizes that it is of great social significance to give necessary care and treatment to addicts. Although most people believe that drug addicts can choose to just divert attention, find things busy, don't be bored, have goals in life, don't worry or think about drug or alcoholism, the fact is that since drug addiction and alcohol addiction are physiological diseases, we naturally think that as long as we stop using these substances and restore brain and body damage, it will be fine. Unfortunately, the compensation function of our brain is too powerful. Instead, the addicts continue to develop the damage after stopping the use of the substance, prompting the addict to continue to want to take drugs or alcohol again.

According to Snoek (p.7), drug or alcohol abuse can reorganize brain cells to resist and repair the damage caused by drugs. For example, in order to cope with the potentiation of amphetamine release by amphetamine, the receiver of the brain neuron reduces the sensitivity to dopamine and reduces the number of receivers to reduce the stimulus. Because of the self-correction of brain neurons, addicts need more doses to achieve previous pleasure, which means that addicts have already tolerated the drugs used. The signal intensity of drugs or alcohol in neurotransmitters is incomparable to general stimuli. For example, cocaine and amphetamine can stimulate the massive release of dopamine, resulting in a strong pleasure. The adaptation of our brain to such a large number of signals is an irreversible damage. Even if the addict has stopped using drugs or alcohol, the damage still exists, so that the addict can no longer be without drugs or alcohol. Feeling the previous satisfaction, he will also desire alcohol or drugs. Therefore, other daily satisfaction, such as food, sleep, sex, love, affection, and achievement, are now difficult to satisfy addicts because of the satisfaction of the material.

Addicts suddenly have no drug, his brain secretion will be immediately imbalanced, leading to acute withdrawal syndromes in the nervous system, such as vomiting, muscle spasm, convulsions, convulsions, anxiety, fever, diarrhea, symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, etc., but as long as he again takes drugs or drinks, he can restore the balance of the brain (Slate, Steven, Mark, Scheeren & Dunbar, p.14). In other words, the brain has a substantial dependence on the drug, and the presence of the drug must be in place for the body to function normally. Once there is no drug, the addict will have to suffer from discomfort and even death. This is why many addicts know that no matter how strong their willpower is if they only force themselves not to touch drugs or drink alcohol, they will end up inexplicably going to take drugs or alcohol and repeat the old drama that is out of control.

The satisfaction of addictive substances not only includes desire but also includes "likes", which allows addicts to pursue the satisfaction of drugs or alcohol regardless of the consequences, which is called psychological addiction (Snoek, p.10). This "like" is not the will of the addict. The choice is derived from the stimulation of the prefrontal cortex by drugs and alcohol, which produces the secretion of endorphins, which creates a sense of pleasure and encourages addicts to feel or like the substance they used. The ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain is our reward center, and the nucleus accumbens is our center of pleasure. Both are the main producing areas for dopamine signaling and are responsible for complex planning, individuality, the task of adjusting decisions and social behaviors, combined with thinking and action to achieve goals, will also extend the neurons to the prefrontal cortex.

The operation of drugs and alcohol on the reward route mainly affects the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (Volkow, Nora, Koob & McLellan, p.368). The signal route of the cranial nerve is transmitted from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens and then to the prefrontal cortex, and the destruction of this route leads to the addict's desire to satisfy and "like" the drug. Unfortunately, all drugs and alcohol are concentrated in the VTA and nucleus accumbens of the brain and cause damage, so the signal of pleasure, the ability to assess signals, and the ability to predict outcomes and the ability to suppress impulses is in turn destroyed. In general, even if an addict has stopped taking drugs or drinking alcohol and exerts their greatest willpower to endure the pain of withdrawal and sequela, their brain's reward and the signal of pleasure will still cause his desire for drugs or alcohol and "like". In addition, the damage to the prefrontal cortex of the addict also made him difficult to extricate himself and succumb to drugs or alcohol.

The damage left by drugs and alcohol in the midbrain of an addict is often unrecoverable, resulting in his brain being unable to function properly without the influence of drugs or alcohol, causing him to think about getting stuck (Fuccillo et al., p.5). There is a whirlpool of thinking, just like shackles, and the deeper and deeper is what we call the recurring "bringing" period. Our brain is like a large wire, and the signal is transmitted on the neural circuit. The effects of drugs or alcohol will rewire the circuit and become operational and satisfying around drugs or alcohol. Even if the addict stops using drugs or alcohol, the memory engraved in the neural circuit still exists. Once you encounter signs related to drugs or alcohol, such as happiness, conflict, sleep, friends, etc., called "addictive thinking", the neural circuit is transmitted to drink or take drugs. This memory from the neural circuit problem is unrealistic and always better than the facts (Angres, Daniel & Kathy, p.702). For example, when you are alone in recollecting the taste of drugs or alcoholism, or when you blame yourself, you believe that you can solve the current pain as soon as you take another poison or drink another drink, so it is called the "cool" period of recurrence.

Conclusion

Whether the cool memories are good or painful, addicts have begun to expect drugs or alcohol to experience the beauty or escape the pain through poison or wine, and fall into deeper addiction thinking. On the surf...