About Addiction.
Opioid Addiction
In 19th and 20th centuries new research in pharmacology and biology of opioids brought new deeper understanding on nature of addiction. The discovery of body’s natural opioids: endorphines and enkephalins and opioid receptors contributed to better understanding of evolutionary processes leading to addiction to opioids.
Today addiction is considered a neuro-psychological disease and not a sin or a weakness as before. Many addicted patients were initially prescribed opioids to treat pain after auto accidents, dental procedures of after surgeries and quickly developed addiction due to peculiarities in their brain circuitry.
For addicted individuals, their families and their loved ones it is important to know the basis for their disease in order to be successfully treated.
Interestingly enough it all begins with evolution !
In the wild, animals spend most of their time foraging for food and water, avoiding predators and looking for sexual partners thus guaranteeing their own survival and survival of their genes because procreation is the ultimate reason for existence of living organisms. Nature derived a system of reward which is a natural positive reinforcement for behaviors that are conducive to procreation. This means that when we eat, drink, have sex, we repeatedly induce endorphine action which is felt like pleasure.
Eating, when we are hungry, drinking when we are thirsty, sexual encounters are all associated with release of endorphins and their action when they attach to endorphin receptors in the brain creating feeling of pleasure.
Morphine, heroin, oxycodone or other opioid medications attach and stimulate the same receptors as endorphines, but are usualy taken in amounts that far excedes natural endorphines and stimulate endorphine system hundreds time stronger than endorphins do. This results in positive reinforcement of opioid use and person time and again craves to experience this artificial intense feeling of pleasure. With repeated use as time progresses production of body’s own opioids stops and brain becomes less and less sensitive to the action of endorphins, requiring higher and higher doses to achieve stronger stimulation.
As soon as drug action on the brain stops an addicted individual experiences an acute feeling opposite of pleasure ( displeasure or withdrawal ) which makes him to crave more opioids even at the expense of his well-being. This leads to taking unnecessary risks, spending most of the time trying to obtain drugs, breaking laws, loosing social network, etc.
Stopping an addiction is a courageous, difficult but necessary life-saving step every addicted individual needs to take.