Cocaine Experiment

Purpose: Cocaine seems to be the most addictive drug out of all the abusive drugs. This concept is demonstrated in an extreme experiment on lab animals were willingly consumed the drug after it was purposely given to them. The article argues that abnormalities in human brain, before being exposed to cocaine, could be associated with a higher exposure to addicting drugs. In this experiment the authors decided to study how it is possible that some malfunctioning parts of the brain could encourage the dopamine system to promote cocaine self administration. The researchers used tomography to examine the brains of different participants with different drug use history; some of the participants ranged from being acute users to chronic users. The

The 20 cocaine addicts had to meet a criterion to be candidates for this experiment, but there was also a criteria were they could be excluded. Out of the normal controls 20 males had to go through NMS scanning and ages ranged from 23.5-43.5 years old. The 18 left over normal controls males went through FDG scanning and ages ranged from 22-42 years old. Participants were taken to a rehabilitation facility were they had to stay for 3 months. Out of 20 participants, 7 successfully completed the rehabilitation program. The normal controls received the NMS or FDG scan

Results: In contrast to the prediction that dopamine reduction in the cocaine addicts would result to dopamine D2 to extreme respond. Cocaine addicts responded more poorly to NMS scan than the normal controls. The ratio index would drop in all ages for both cocaine users and the normal participants. Dopamine had a correlation with how long cocaine was used, but not the quantity of usage. The second results of the ratio index were very much alike to the first results. In contrast, for both the cocaine user and the normal participant the ratio index went down as you got

I noticed cocaine is the drug of choice to almost all of the Prop-36 probationers. Many of the addicts would share that, after the use of such drug, they would hallucinate and want more after they came off of the drug. This study explains how the abnormality of dopamine in certain areas of the brain are associated in how cocaine takes full control of your will and can lead to drug addiction. A perfect example is that of a female being assessed stated that she felt horrible after the first use and the second use. Eventually she became addicted, but not because she liked it, it was because she was forced to use it in order to survive in the streets. She explained how the drug numbs your body and keeps you awake. The probationer was homeless and used cocaine for survival. Basically she used to to stay up at night and walk around the street for her own protection and slept in the