Addiction is a chronic brain disease that affects the brain’s reward, pleasure, memory, and motivation. Like many chronic diseases, it does not just spring up one day.
Often, several circumstances line up that, over time, cause a person who would otherwise enjoy casual drinking or avoid substance misuse to become addicted to drugs or alcohol. The process of developing addiction, in this case, tends to occur over a series of stages and, like other chronic illnesses, often turns into a cycle of addiction, treatment or abstinence, and relapse.
Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry.
Just like diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions, addiction is an illness that requires treatment.
Multiple areas of the brain are involved in the neurobiology of addiction. Addiction especially impacts the neurotransmission, how parts of the brain “talk” to one another, and function of the brain’s reward system, also known as the mesolimbic dopamine pathway.
Signs of Addiction
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), symptoms of a substance use disorder may include:
- A desire or unsuccessful attempts to control, decrease, or stop substance use.
- Using more of the substance or for longer than intended.
- Continued substance use despite the interpersonal problems it causes or exacerbates.
- Cravings to use the substance.
- Excessive time spent obtaining, using, or recovering from the substance.
- Ongoing need to increase use to achieve same effect or the same amount no longer produces the same effects. This is called tolerance.
- Recurrent use of substance in risky situations.
- Continued use of the substance despite the problems with physical and mental health that it has caused or worsened.
- Stopping or decreasing important activities because of substance use.
- Substance use interferes with fulfilling obligations at home, work, or school.
- Withdrawal symptoms surface if substance use is stopped or is drastically reduced.
Risk Factors for Addiction
There are many factors that can increase an individual’s risk of developing an addiction, including their genetics, environment, biology, psychology, age of first use, addictiveness of substance used, and frequency of substance use. Environmental risk factors may include family, culture, peers, social support (or lack thereof), trauma, stressors, toxins, and availability/accessibility of substances. Biological risk factors may include deficits in neurological function, inflammation from various causes, and other physical illnesses. Psychological risk factors may include thought patterns, cognitive and affective distortions, temperament, impulse control, and other mental illnesses.
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