What happens to your brain when you take drugs?
The Effects of Drug Addiction
When a person consumes drugs, the body undergoes a physical reaction, mostly within the brain. Drug addiction and chronic use will cause the body to deteriorate, due to over-exertion, infection and malnourishment, but the effect on the brain is caused directly by the use of narcotics and is often irreversible.
Drugs and their effect on the brain
Drugs affect the nerve cells of the brain by disrupting the message signals sent to the rest of the body. The chemicals in drugs can imitate the neurotransmitters of the brain, the natural chemicals that transmit messages from the brain cells to the body.
Most drugs also cause the reward system (the part of the brain responsible for positive feelings) to become over-active. This happens because drugs cause the system to over secrete the neurotransmitter called dopamine, which is present in the areas of the brain that control emotion, movement, motivation and pleasant feelings. Dopamine is stimulated in the brain by survival instincts such as eating, yet when drugs are consumed, dopamine levels are far higher, causing euphoria.
Such a good feeling...
The pleasant feelings caused by drug consumption often establish the basis for a person with the disease of addiction to continue using drugs. Over time, the brain changes in response to the continuous surges of dopamine. The number of dopamine receptors in the reward circuit of the brain are reduced, or the brain reduces its dopamine production. This causes a tolerance to the drugs and means that the addict needs to increase their intake of drugs to achieve the same result they did when they first began consuming them.
Long term consequences of drug addiction
Studies have shown that chronic drug abuse causes difficulties in decision-making, learning and memory, and behavioural control and stability. Long-term effects cause serious changes in the chemical systems and circuits of the entire brain. This leads to difficulties such as impaired cognitive functioning (a reduction in the ability to learn) as well as non-conscious learning (conditioned learning) leading to cravings when in familiar company, situations and locations related to an addict's drug use.
An admission to rehab is often necessary for an addict to become abstinent. In-patient rehab facilities in South Africa help addicts to keep safe, and to learn appropriate reactions to life instead of resorting to drug use.
If someone close to you has a drug problem, or you need help with addiction, contact Oasis Counselling Centre, an addiction centre in South Africa, for assistance from one of our qualified addiction counsellors.
