What Hari and his findings concluded about addiction is that addiction doesn’t come from drug hooks, more so the root of addiction is depression and disconnection. “The Canadian physician Gabor Maté argues in his book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” that studies examining the medicinal use of narcotics for pain relief find no significant risk of addiction” (Hari). This being said, what we thought we knew about addiction isn’t correct. During the Gin Craze back in the 18th century an enormous amount of people was driven out of their everyday lives to urban slums, which through all their distressed caused them to drink their selves to death. Even if Gin wasn’t around, they would have found something else to ease the pain of everyday life.
Courtney Grove Addictions/Assessments/Interventions Spring 2017 All of the personal stories in this book are an attempt to help individuals identify with the authors. Hopefully, after reading each story we, and alcoholics alike may say to themselves "I'm very much like _____. My alcohol use has followed a similar pattern and I have also tried different ways to control my drinking with similar, pained results. Perhaps the steps that _______ followed will work for me also.” This keeps the sneaky pull of alcohol at the forefront of their minds, learning from the experiences of others and remembering their own experiences from the reality standpoint rather than with fond remembrance.
Addiction is a condition in which a person is compelled to continue an act even if it interferes with ordinary life responsibilities. Life with addiction can become overwhelming and even stressful because there is such a need for a specific item. Addictions cause harm, abuse, fatality, behavioral problems such as, aggressiveness, loss of self-control and paranoia. In “Sonny’s Blues” we see a different type of addiction than what we see in “A River Runs Through It.” In “Sonny’s Blues” Sonny was addicted to heroine, a drug that triggers a release of dopamine into the brain.
A drug addiction occurs when someone uses substances to give themselves a feeling of pleasure even if it has negative consequences for them or others. When an addiction occurs the brain changes too making it extremely difficult to quit. This is because the brain wants more of the pleasurable substance because it’s giving dopamine. Once someone is addicted to something all they want is that thing and they will do anything to get it.
There is a significant relationship between alcohol addiction and the story, Allegory of the Cave by Plato because they share many characteristics. The story refers to a state where people are chained to walls of a cave for the most of their lives. While these individuals wish so much to be cut off the bondage, they are unable to get out of it and instead find a way in which they may be comfortable in the situation that they are in. These people also see shadows of things that are projected on the wall. They are unable to see the actual things the way they appear, and they contend with the fact that that is the closest they will be able to see the actual representation of the things the way they appear outside.
Availability of opioids puts more and more people at risk for addiction. A simple prescription from the doctor for a migraine or back pain can turn into an addiction. Doctors are faced daily with patients who complain of pain, acute and chronic. It has become a simple solution for them to write out a prescription for pain medication to help their patient. In turn, not helping them at all.
When a person falls in love or gets addicted to drugs, their bodies behave in the same way. The warm and cozy feeling of being in love floods the brain with chemicals and hormones that produce feelings of pleasure, obsession and attachment. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet did not just fall in love with Romeo. Lovers also feel a rush of exhilaration when thinking about him or her; it is a form of “intoxication.” Both love and addiction engage the same regions of the brain, the “rewards system.”
we are living through the worst epidemic of addiction in american history, and the drugs causing the most deaths are legal prescription opioids like oxycontin, percocet, and vicodin. How did so many of us get addicted to painkillers? and why are so many americans dying from drug overdoses? to find out you have to go back to the early 90s. Before that time doctors generally considered opioids dangerous but in 1996 a company called purdue pharma released a new drug ,oxycontin.
Addiction is a disorder of the brain where a person feels he has to take the drug despite its destructive effects (Volkow, Koob and McLellan). Dependence is a state normally associated when an
Opiate addiction is much different than that of other substances that are abused and can cause addiction. Opiate addiction is a serious problem in our country and will become an even bigger problem in the years ahead. The persistent use of opiates and is thought to be a disorder of the central nervous system. Though opiate painkillers are prescribed by physicians, opiate addiction is an insidious medical disease. But since opiate addiction is far more than a behavior problem, treatment requires more than just therapy.
Differentiating between spree killers and serial killers in an ongoing debate between criminologists (Montaldo 2019). Criminologists focus a lot on the psychological issues of spree and serial killers when studying. Serial killers differ from spree killers in many ways, this can include their motivations for killing and their behavior at the crime scenes (Morton 2023). When researching, you should look into past spree and serial murders, like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer who were serial killers and Charles Starkweather and William Cook who were spree killers. Serial killers are when somebody kills three or more victims but each victim is killed on separate occasions (Montaldo 2019).
Addiction and drug abuse is used as a way to escape the harsh problems in society.
The biological explanation of the brain in regards to drug addiction is interesting. According to the textbook, "Studies have found convincing evidence that drugs such as alcohol, heroin, and cocaine act directly on the brain mechanisms that are responsible for reward and punishment. " When one use drugs, the drug stimulates the areas of the brain that create the sensation of pleasure and suppress the pleasure of pain, as, a result, the user receives reinforcement to engage in further drug-taking behavior. The psychological explanation of drug abuse, "Focus on either personality disorders or the effects of social learning and reinforcement on drug-taking behaviors."
The effects of addiction on health can be devastating. Once addiction develops, the brain changes interfere with an individual’s ability to make voluntary decisions, leading to compulsive drug craving, seeking and use. 6 Drug abuse can suppress the body’s immune system and is related to risky behaviours, involving the sharing of contaminated syringe, needle or injection paraphernalia and unprotected sex. The combination greatly increases the likelihood of acquiring HIV, hepatitis and many other infectious diseases. 6 Drugs that lead to these diseases are heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.
All these characteristics led to the conclusion that drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use. It is considered as a brain disease because drugs change the structure of the brain, and how it works. Every drug affects different systems of the brain. For example, in the case of cocaine, as the brain is adapted in the presence of the specific drug, brain regions responsible for judgment, decision-making, learning, and memory begin to physically change, making certain behaviors “hard-wired.” In some brain regions, connections between neurons are pruned back.
