– actions the person does not have to actively think about doing, such as breathing, digesting, and pumping blood through the body. The limbic system oversees emotional responses, motivation, learning, and memory. The cerebral cortex has sections that process information from the five senses. It is also the location of the decision and problem-solving center. This explains why drug users often have poor judgment and decision-making skills.
The first way that drugs interfere with the brain is through the reward pathway. Drugs that affect the reward pathway include nicotine, cocaine, marijuana, and many more. With a normally functioning reward pathway, dopamine is released which creates feelings of pleasure following healthy activities such as eating, exercise, and seeing friends. However, using drugs releases a large amount of the dopamine, rewarding drug users with the same pleasurable feelings. This is how addiction occurs. Drug addicts continue to use these drugs to get the "high" of the dopamine release. Over time, the repeated releases of dopamine lead to the body's tolerance of that amount of dopamine. They no longer experience the same "high" that they did when they originally took the drugs and must now take higher dosages of the drugs to get higher releases of dopamine to experience the same "high".
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Drugs such as marijuana and heroin have chemical structures that are similar to neurotransmitters and can therefore attach to receptors and trick the body. Since they are not actually neurotransmitters, they send abnormal messages through the brain that would not normally occur. This leads to mixed signals in the brain as well as the body. Cocaine and methamphetamine cause too much dopamine, another neurotransmitter, to be released. An excess of dopamine leads to amplified messages in the brain and miscommunications between