How Does Addiction Take Hold in the Brain?

Addition is one of the severe problems seen in the developed countries like United States. How does addition take hold in the brain? In fact, what changes does it do in the brain chemicals is associated with the addiction. The rewarding effects of drugs of abuse come from large and rapid upsurges in dopamine, a neurochemical critical to stimulating feelings of pleasure and to motivating behavior. The rapid dopamine “rush” from drugs of abuse mimics but greatly exceeds in intensity and duration the feelings that occur in response to such pleasurable stimuli as the sight or smell of food, for example. Repeated exposure to large, drug-induced dopamine surges has the insidious consequence of ultimately blunting the response of the dopamine system to everyday stimuli. Thus the drug disturbs a person’s normal hierarchy of needs and desires and substitutes new priorities concerned with procuring and using the drug.

Drug abuse also disrupts the brain circuits involved in memory and control over behavior. Memories of the drug experience can trigger craving as can exposure to people, places, or things associated with former drug use. Stress is also a powerful trigger for craving. Control over behavior is compromised because the affected frontal brain regions are what a person needs to exert inhibitory control over desires and emotions.

That is why addiction is a brain disease. As a person’s reward circuitry becomes increasingly dulled and desensitized by drugs, nothing else can compete with them—food, family, and friends lose their relative value, while the ability to curb the need to seek and use drugs evaporates. Ironically and cruelly, eventually even the drug loses its ability to reward, but the compromised brain leads addicted people to pursue it, anyway; the memory of the drug has become more powerful than the drug itself.

The underlying reason of any addiction can be severe stress, depression etc. In case if addiction or while quitting addiction, healthy brain vitamins can help to reduce stress or depression by increasing levels of certain neurotransmitters. Thus, brain supplements can work better for addiction or getting rid from addiction.