Psychology in Order to Develop Effective Treatment

Psychology In order to develop effective treatment programs for drug addicts, it is essential to maintain a basic knowledge of the physiological basis of their cravings. Given social and political mandates calling for a cessation of drug abuse or at the very least for the implementation of harm reduction, it is just as important to administer to those exposed to addictive substances as it is to develop methods of preventing exposure.

In addition, an ability to explain the neuro-scientific effects of drug use allows those that are responsible for prevention to provide potential users with deterrents that are less dogmatic and more circumspect. To these ends, neuroscience has developed a new understanding of the reasons for addiction. Behavioral neuroscience has taught us that humans, like other animals, crave certain pharmaceutical agents. Studies have enabled scientists to better understand the neuro-chemistry of pleasure and of cravings.

A side effect of these studies is that scientists are now armed with many more methods of artificially inducing pleasure and other moods in the human brain. The agents that have provided the strongest reaction include opiates and amphetamine-like psycho-stimulants. Two of the most emotionally attractive types of drugs have been narcotics such as morphine and heroin, and psycho-stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamines. Studies have shown that animals share the human propensity to self-administer these drugs if this opportunity is available to them.

This is because these drugs interact with specific receptors in the brain. These receptors normally help mediate various pleasures and psychic excitement. This In the example of heroin addiction, considered one of the most socially disruptive opiate-derivative addictions, the brain contains mu-opiate receptors. According to Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions by Jaak Panksepp, These receptors normally control an animal's urges to maintain various brain and bodily balances (i.e., homeostatic balance) via feeding, sexual/social behavior, and so forth.

The psychic reflections of doing "the right thing biologically" are feelings of satisfaction and pleasure. Which of the many brain opiate systems actually mediate this subjective feeling is not well understood, but animals will self-administer opiates directly into various parts of the brain. The most effective locations are in the brain stem, near the central gray of the midbrain, and the ventral-tegmental area, where the A10 mesolimbic DA cells are situated. Panksepp 118) Cocaine and amphetamines also increase DA availability at synapses of the mesolimbic circuit, causing the same addictive effect.

Self-administration of psycho-stimulants declines when this system is damaged. The normal function of this system is to energize appetitive behavior - that is - to provide motivation for action. This function is integral to the brain, in that the chief end of the human brain is to provoke action by making these actions appetizing. The psycho-stimulant allows animals to bypass other brain functions that contextualize desire and appease the brain's desire centers directly. These brain systems might normally motivate an animal to explore and to vigorously pursue courses of action.

Therefore, the effect of self-stimulation is duo-fold: it not only taxes brain centers that are responsible for the creation of appetite, but are eventually pulled from their innate desires to better themselves through pro-active conduct. The appeal of cocaine is tempered by the dopamine reuptake site; knockout mice without this receptor do not desire psycho-stimulants. The main receptor stimulated by psycho-stimulants is the D2 type of the receptor rather than D1, the dominant receptor.

Scientists hypothesize that other addictive behaviors, such as compulsive gambling, are controlled by internal urges brought about by dopamine chemistries. One of the key questions faced by neurologists is how to diminish these cravings once the desire to diminish them has been established. In the case of cocaine, scientists have been able to diminish cocaine addiction in animals by inducing them to create antibodies to the substance. Many scientists argue that the abatement of addictive propensities can be accomplished through the disassociation of things that provoke addiction with desire.

This has been explored in depth by those wishing to tackle cigarette addiction. According to Russell Leaf et all, who propose a psychological process that will wean people away from their addictions. This team claims that when nausea is used as an unconditional response, aversions develop to undesired activity after a relatively small number of trials. The physiology of neurological appetites and aversion has been studied at length. These studies included stimulating animals electronically with implanted electrodes.

Scientists confirmed that overt behaviors such as flight, threat, or defensive areas were directly correlated to chemical imperatives in the brain. These effected the periventricular-periaquenductal gray matter and parts of the amygdala. Stutied found that electrical stimuli were an example of how to abate cravings thought of as undesirable, such as heavy drug abuse. Thompson, Dews and Barrett 129) According to Oriental scientists.

Moreover, a correspondence between the aversive behavior of laboratory animals and subjective discomfort was established when patients undergoing stereotaxic neurosurgery reported strong feelings of fear, impending death, or nonlocalized pain sensations caused by electrical stimulation of the amygdala (Chapman et al., 1954) and of the dorsal midbrain, near or inside the periaqueductal gray matter. Thompson, Dews and Barrett 129) There is overwhelming evidence that addiction is genetic and inherited from one generation to the next, pointing to the existence of certain metabolisms that are particularly susceptible.

Studies have showed that the children of alcoholics were four to five times as likely to develop drinking problems as the children of non-alcoholics. Whereas a margin of error could be attributed to environmental factors common to the children of alcoholics, this variance doesn't statistically allow us to discount the effect of inhereitance.

Although "no precise biological mechanism corresponding to metabolic imbalance has ever been located, the best that can be said about this theory is that the treatment program based on it, methadone maintenance, has helped a certain proportion of addicts." Some psychological theories associated with drug use also stress personality differences between people who use drugs and those who abstain.

Although these theories deserve our attention, they are secondary in importance to studies of addiction and brain physiology in that they are less likely to describe the nature of addiction and more likely to reflect an individual's proclivity to accept societal norms. Even if we can prove this to be a physiological distinction, this predilection is materially different from the mechanism of addiction. Most behavioral neuroscience points to the idea that breaking addictive propensities would entail the forcible dissociation of the act of using a drug with its pleasurable effects.

Unfortunately, many of the methodologies utilized in the laboratory on animals aren't suitable.