Better Understanding Opioid Addiction
Over the past year alone, the average lifespan of certain groups of Americans have dropped by 2.5 months due to opioid overdoses. While numerous federal and state organizations are scrambling to find a solution, the answer perhaps, exist through grassroots efforts, in particular through better education. While it is quite difficult to forgive and forget some of the burden and heartache caused by individuals who are addicted to opioids the least we can do is to try and begin to understand their problems.
Science provides us with some insight into the problem of opioid addiction and how difficult a solution is. First, like many other diseases, drug addiction is quite multi-factorial, whereas some people, at no fault of their own are genetically predisposed to addiction. This is similar to the Knudson hypothesis of cancer development, whereas it takes multiple “hits” to alter DNA and cause cancer development and the first “hit” is an inherited mutation.
Opioid use changes the brains “neuroplasticity”. Neuroplasticity is a way to describe how the entire brain changes due to new learning experiences, like learning to ride a bike. Opioids trigger the release of dopamine, this is part of our brains reward system and provides us pleasure. Multiple uses create a “Pavlovian” learning effect to the environmental “cues“associated with opioid use. These “cues” predispose individuals to a more potent dopamine release than before. These newly conditioned responses are engrained in the brain similar to how the ability to ride a bike becomes engrained in your brain. This explains why those who are addicted to opioids still have cravings even after its prolonged disuse. Drug use also has the ability to bypass the internal system that satiates dopamine release present in “natural” rewards (food, exercise etc.), so the user remains unfulfilled after opioid use unlike what occurs after you finish a meal.
Lastly, another unfortunate effect is that over time dopamine receptors “burn out”, both drug induced, and non-drug induced stimuli (food, exercise, music etc.) no longer produce the same pleasurable responses. During this stage, an opioid addict is now in a constant state of “dysphoria” and no longer uses drugs to “get high” but rather to escape a state of constant stress and dissatisfaction. The joys of daily living cease to exist. Opioid users are not “bad people” or “losers” they are simply a group of people who need help.
— John J. Guers, PhD,
Hamilton Square