Brain And Drug Addiction Essay

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People may have some mental and behavioral issues and problems. Reasons of those problems and the ways to deal problems vary. Addiction is one of those problems. It is also termed as substance abuse and dependency. It causes different difficulties for people and society. Thus, many treatment methods have been developed and used to help people deal with addiction. Some of those methods are psychotherapy, medications, hospitalization or neurofeedback training. Addiction is a mentally and financially big problem for individuals and society. In the United States, 12.5% of the population has the problem related to alcohol and drug use. Cost for an untreated alcoholic is approximately 3 times bigger than treated alcoholic. 70% of the addicts work …show more content…

Also, rates of relapse are very similar to rates for other chronic illness. Thus, addiction should be treated by taking consideration of its being chronic. Like other chronic illness, addiction requires repeated intervention to decrease the risk of relapse (Gunkelman & Cripe, 2008).
The Brain and Addiction
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), there is not only one brain area is related to the addiction of food, sex, alcohol, and drugs. ASAM informed that specific brain parts, amygdala, frontal cortex, cingulate cortex, and hippocampus have a vital role in the addiction (Amen et. al., 2012).
Researchers informed that there are different types of addictions which are basically related dopamine neurotransmitter. For example, smoking cigarette shows similar characteristics with other drug use that dopamine releasing is facilitated by nicotine in the ventral striatum which is responsible brain’s reward circuitry (Jasinska et. al., 2014). In addition to cigarette smoking, dopamine releases in the ventral striatum affect other types of addictions such as obesity and pathological gambling (As cited in Jasinska et. al., 2014). Basically, researcher emphasized midbrain is holding dopamine neurons that many addictions is because of the dopamine release in the ventral

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