September 6, 2012

• Addiction

  The book I read to research this post was The Addicted Brain by Michael Kuhar which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. There is evidence that addictions like sex and gambling affect the same part of the brain as what drug addiction does. Special centres for dealing with drug addiction have been with us for a while but they are just starting to do the same with things like gambling. In time they may develop drugs that prevent the high you get when you for example have risky sex. Already there are drugs like this for certain addictions like heroin but they are developing ones that will have a similiar effect on things like speed and MDMA. Somebody wrote a book about an american midwest town where some of the dealers gave away MDMA to get people hooked. The result was a crimewave as addicts desperately tried to fuel their habits once they were hooked and obviously by then had to pay. Many became dealers and some tried to make their own MDMA which you need a laboratory for. Many got burnt in explosions and some lost fingers. In alot of cases despite their injuries they still continued to take MDMA such was their addiction. There is evidence that young people are more likely to become addicted to drugs than adults because their brains are still developing. You might be interested to know I did a post on Cocaine at http://scratbagroberts.com

  In a lot of cases the drugs no longer make the addict high especially with heroin and he must take them just to feel normal. With alot of these people it's a conditioned response where they don't know what else to do. Some drugs like heroin require more and more to achieve the same high while with other drugs like Cocaine less and less is needed to achieve the same result which is called sensitization. Drugs change the structure of the brain and provide chemicals which are used instead of DNA which we don't know the full implications of. Many places have female only and male only drug clinics which is a response to a lot of pressure for that particularly female addicts. In america there are 50 million smokers which gives us a good idea how bad the drug problem could get. I have experimented mostly with speed and cannabis and I am lucky I never got hooked on anything addictive. A lot of the reason I took drugs was peer pressure but luckily nowadays I have a different circle of friends. I also had a nasty experience where I smoked a joint of weed and I went a bit crazy temporarily but it was a wake up call. Prior to that I never had any experiences like that and normally if I smoked weed it didn't do much.

  • 7:29 pm
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