Author: Charles Frank

Understanding Drug Use and Addiction DrugFacts National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA

You may misuse drugs to feel good, ease stress, or avoid reality. But usually, you’re able to change your unhealthy habits or stop using altogether. This knowledge can be used to develop better care plans with the potential to increase patient compliance and make treatment more effective.

Fears about addiction should not prevent you from using narcotics to relieve your pain, but it’s smart to use caution. If your parents or siblings have problems with alcohol or drugs, you’re more likely as well. Some love the feeling the first time they try it and want more.

Drugs & Supplements

Other examples include ketamine and flunitrazepam or Rohypnol — a brand used outside the U.S. — also called roofie. These drugs are not all in the same category, but they share some similar effects and dangers, including long-term harmful effects. Help from your health care provider, family, friends, support groups or an organized treatment program can help you overcome your drug addiction and stay drug-free.

In fact, prescription painkillers are the most abused drug in the US after marijuana. More individuals die from opioid painkiller overdoses every day than from traffic accidents and gun deaths combined. When a person has addiction and stops taking the substance or engaging in the behavior, they may experience certain symptoms.

This can lead to a wide range of issues that impact professional goals, personal relationships, and overall health. Over time, these serious side effects can be progressive and, if left untreated, fatal. Addiction is a chronic condition that can also result from taking medications. In fact, the misuse of opioids — particularly illicitly made fentanyl — caused nearly 50,000 deaths in the United States in 2019 alone.

Marijuana, hashish and other cannabis-containing substances

The drugs that may be addictive target your brain’s reward system. The three models developed here – the cultural model, the subcultural model, and the Critical Medical Anthropology Model – display how addiction is not an experience to be considered only biomedically. The best way to prevent an addiction to a drug is not to take the drug at all. If your health care provider prescribes a drug with the potential for addiction, use care when taking the drug and follow instructions.

1. If you have a severe addiction, you may need hospital-based or residential treatment.
2. This can lead to a wide range of issues that impact professional goals, personal relationships, and overall health.
3. Brain changes can be long-lasting, and the disease can be fatal without treatment.
4. Many people who are directed to go to the emergency department may not have any physical signs of poisoning.
5. Aside from overdose, there are many adverse medical effects of drug addiction.

Risk and protective factors may be either environmental or biological. Drug addiction, also called substance use disorder, is a disease that affects a person’s brain and behavior and leads to an inability to control the use of a legal or illegal drug or medicine. Substances such as alcohol, marijuana and nicotine also are considered drugs.

Opioid painkillers

Understanding the pathways in which drugs act and how drugs can alter those pathways is key when examining the biological basis of drug addiction. The reward pathway, known as the mesolimbic pathway,[26] or its extension, the mesocorticolimbic pathway, is characterized by the interaction of several areas of the brain. Drug use can have significant and damaging short-term and long-term effects.

Numerous research-based therapies and treatment interventions have been proven effective in treating those living with drug addiction. The DSM-5 doesn’t currently include other behavioral addictions due to a lack of research on them. When they first use a drug, people may perceive what seem to be positive effects. Some people may start to feel the need to take more of a drug or take it more often, even in the early stages of their drug use. Drug addiction can start with experimentation in social settings, becoming more frequent with time.

Repeated drug use can change the brain and lead to addiction. Adolescents and adults are more likely to overdose on one or more drugs in order to harm themselves. Attempting to harm oneself may represent a suicide attempt.

People struggling with addiction usually deny they have a problem and hesitate to seek treatment. An intervention presents a loved one with a structured opportunity to make changes before things get even worse and can motivate someone to seek or accept help. Use of hallucinogens can produce different signs and symptoms, depending on the drug. The most common hallucinogens are lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and phencyclidine (PCP). Stimulants include amphetamines, meth (methamphetamine), cocaine, methylphenidate (Ritalin, Concerta, others) and amphetamine-dextroamphetamine (Adderall XR, Mydayis). They’re often used and misused in search of a “high,” or to boost energy, to improve performance at work or school, or to lose weight or control appetite.

What are the signs that someone has a drug problem?

Research shows that combining addiction treatment medicines with behavioral therapy ensures the best chance of success for most patients. Treatment approaches tailored to each patient’s drug use patterns and any co-occurring medical, mental, and social problems can lead to continued recovery. Addiction is a disease that affects your brain and behavior. When you’re addicted to drugs, you can’t resist the urge to use them, no matter how much harm the drugs may cause.

Other drug addictions (especially those involving opioids) start when taking prescribed medications. Healthcare providers and the medical community now call substance addiction substance use disorder. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has concrete diagnostic criteria for substance use disorders. Most drugs affect the brain’s “reward circuit,” causing euphoria as well as flooding it with the chemical messenger dopamine. A properly functioning reward system motivates a person to repeat behaviors needed to thrive, such as eating and spending time with loved ones. Surges of dopamine in the reward circuit cause the reinforcement of pleasurable but unhealthy behaviors like taking drugs, leading people to repeat the behavior again and again.

Purposeful overdoses are for a desired effect, either to get high or to harm oneself. There’s no cure, but treatment can help you stop using drugs and stay drug-free. You can also get addicted to prescription or illegally obtained narcotic pain medications, or opioids. In 2018, opioids played a role in two-thirds of all drug overdose deaths. Once you’ve been addicted to a drug, you’re at high risk of falling back into a pattern of addiction.

Consider how a social drinker can become intoxicated, get behind the wheel of a car, and quickly turn a pleasurable activity into a tragedy that affects many lives. Occasional drug use, such as misusing an opioid to get high, can have similarly disastrous effects, including impaired driving and overdose. Addiction is a lot like other diseases, such as heart disease. Both disrupt the normal, healthy functioning of an organ in the body, both have serious harmful effects, and both are, in many cases, preventable and treatable. If left untreated, they can last a lifetime and may lead to death.