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How Does Drug Use Change The Brain

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  How Does Drug Use Change The Brain Sunday Egerer <sundayegerer@gmail.com> - 2023-12-21 02:19 -0800

#68931 — How Does Drug Use Change The Brain

Other drugs, such as amphetamine or cocaine, can cause the neurons to release abnormally large amounts of natural neurotransmitters or prevent the normal recycling of these brain chemicals by interfering with transporters. This too amplifies or disrupts the normal communication between neurons.



How Does Drug Use Change The Brain

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Some drugs like opioids also disrupt other parts of the brain, such as the brain stem, which controls basic functions critical to life, including heart rate, breathing, and sleeping. This interference explains why overdoses can cause depressed breathing and death.


For the brain, the difference between normal rewards and drug rewards can be likened to the difference between someone whispering into your ear and someone shouting into a microphone. Just as we turn down the volume on a radio that is too loud, the brain of someone who misuses drugs adjusts by producing fewer neurotransmitters in the reward circuit, or by reducing the number of receptors that can receive signals. As a result, the person's ability to experience pleasure from naturally rewarding (i.e., reinforcing) activities is also reduced.


To add to that, repeated use of drugs can damage the essential decision-making center at the front of the brain. This area, known as the prefrontal cortex, is the very region that should help you recognize the harms of using addictive substances.


NIH is launching a new nationwide study to learn more about how teen brains are altered by alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and other drugs. Researchers will use brain scans and other tools to assess more than 10,000 youth over a 10-year span. The study will track the links between substance use and brain changes, academic achievement, IQ, thinking skills, and mental health over time.


NIH-funded researchers are also evaluating experimental therapies that might enhance the effectiveness of established treatments. Mindfulness meditation and magnetic stimulation of the brain are being assessed for their ability to strengthen brain circuits that have been harmed by addiction. Scientists are also examining the potential of vaccines against nicotine, cocaine, and other drugs, which might prevent the drug from entering the brain.


These brain scans highlight dopamine receptors, with areas of highest density shown in red. The meth abuser has severely reduced receptor levels. Other drugs, including alcohol, cocaine, and heroin, have the same effect. Images courtesy Dr. Nora Volkow, Brookhaven National Laboratory.






Addiction involves craving for something intensely, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences. Addiction changes the brain, first by subverting the way it registers pleasure and then by corrupting other normal drives such as learning and motivation. Although breaking an addiction is tough, it can be done.


For many years, experts believed that only alcohol and powerful drugs could cause addiction. Neuroimaging technologies and more recent research, however, have shown that certain pleasurable activities, such as gambling, shopping, and sex, can also co-opt the brain.


The scientific consensus has changed since then. Today we recognize addiction as a chronic disease that changes both brain structure and function. Just as cardiovascular disease damages the heart and diabetes impairs the pancreas, addiction hijacks the brain. This happens as the brain goes through a series of changes, beginning with recognition of pleasure and ending with a drive toward compulsive behavior.


In nature, rewards usually come only with time and effort. Addictive drugs and behaviors provide a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Our brains do not have an easy way to withstand the onslaught.


Substance abuse impacts the brain in the short-term to create a euphoric high or exert other effects such as sedation, pain relief, etc.1 However, long-term drug use can also result in more fundamental changes in the brain that can last for years or even a lifetime.2,3


These changes in brain functioning can propel the compulsive use indicative of a substance use disorder, but they can also impact the brain in ways that create other lasting issues such as problems with learning, memory, and judgment.4,5


Drugs produce much larger bursts of dopamine than a natural reward like a meal would, however, so they create a very strong connection between taking the drug, the pleasure that comes afterward, and all of the cues around the person that are linked to their drug consumption (for example, the location where the drug is used). As these connections are created and strengthened, the brain begins learning to prioritize getting and taking drugs over seeking out natural, healthy rewards.4


Because dopamine helps to create such powerful connections in the brain, the external cues associated with drug use can trigger overwhelming drug cravings years after a person has gotten clean.4 This is one of the reasons that recovery is a lifetime pursuit and that relapse is so common.


Addiction is characterized by a compulsion to keep using a drug, or drugs, in light of the adverse consequences that arise as a result of doing so. Addiction, once thought to be a problem of morality and bad decision-making, has now become recognized widely as a chronic and relapsing disorder that involves changes to the brain that can be long-lasting.7,8


Different drugs are associated with varying long-term effects on the brain. While the changes that drive addiction are relatively universal, specific classes of drugs are associated with other unique effects on the brain.


Chronic methamphetamine use may also cause significant functional and structural brain changes in areas related to emotion and memory. Additionally, similar problems with flexibility as those that occur in relation to prescription stimulant use may occur as a result of meth use. These individuals may find it incredibly difficult to stop useless or counterproductive behaviors, again making long-term recovery from addiction that much more difficult.21


Integrated treatment that addresses both the substance use disorder and the mental health disorder may be needed for a person to find and sustain recovery. Laguna Treatment Center offers co-occurring disorder treatment in a beautiful California setting. Getting treatment can prevent or, in some cases, reverse the harmful effects of drugs on the brain and help restore you to optimal health. Call us at "props":"scalar":"","helpline":"true","children":"" today to learn more about our hospital-based detox and inpatient rehab programs.


Long-lasting brain changes can make it challenging for individuals struggling with addiction to stay drug-free. They often experience intense cravings for years, which can lead to relapse. However, the brain has neuroplasticity. That means it can repair itself, over time.


The human brain does not fully mature until the mid-twenties. The limbic system governs feelings of reward and pain. It develops before the pre-frontal cortex which is the last part of the brain to fully develop. The pre-frontal cortex is responsible for executive functions such as insight, judgment, planning and impulse control.


When heroin, oxycodone, or any other opiate travels through the bloodstream to the brain, the chemicals attach to specialized proteins, called mu opioid receptors, on the surfaces of opiate-sensitive neurons (brain cells). The linkage of these chemicals with the receptors triggers the same biochemical brain processes that reward people with feelings of pleasure when they engage in activities that promote basic life functions, such as eating and sex. Opioids are prescribed therapeutically to relieve pain, but when opioids activate these reward processes in the absence of significant pain, they can motivate repeated use of the drug simply for pleasure.


One of the brain circuits that is activated by opioids is the mesolimbic (midbrain) reward system. This system generates signals in a part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) that result in the release of the chemical dopamine (DA) in another part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens (NAc) (Figure 1). This release of DA into the NAc causes feelings of pleasure. Other areas of the brain create a lasting record or memory that associates these good feelings with the circumstances and environment in which they occur. These memories, called conditioned associations, often lead to the craving for drugs when the abuser reen-counters those persons, places, or things, and they drive abusers to seek out more drugs in spite of many obstacles.


When drugs stimulate mu opioid receptors in the brain, cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) produce dopamine and release it into the nucleus accumbens (NAc), giving rise to feelings of pleasure. Feedback from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) to the VTA helps us overcome drives to obtain pleasure through actions that may be unsafe or unwise, but this feedback appears to be compromised in individuals who become addicted to drugs. The locus ceruleus (LC) is an area of the brain that plays an important role in drug dependence.


Repeated exposure to escalating dosages of opioids alters the brain so that it functions more or less normally when the drugs are present and abnormally when they are not. Two clinically important results of this alteration are opioid tolerance (the need to take higher and higher dosages of drugs to achieve the same opioid effect) and drug dependence (susceptibility to withdrawal symptoms). Withdrawal symptoms occur only in patients who have developed tolerance.


Opioid tolerance occurs because the brain cells that have opioid receptors on them gradually become less responsive to the opioid stimulation. For example, more opioid is needed to stimulate the VTA brain cells of the mesolimbic reward system to release the same amount of DA in the NAc. Therefore, more opioid is needed to produce pleasure comparable to that provided in previous drug-taking episodes.

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