The research will also allow for medications to be discovered to treat those with a cocaine addiction or those that continuously relapse due to a former addiction. The Neural Mechanisms of Cocaine Addiction, Cocaine Cues, and Psychotherapy will be discussed. [National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2015]
Table 1: shows those in their late teens and early twenties have the highest rate of illicit drug use. Table 2: shows the rate of illicit drug in the United States among those in their fifties and sixties.
Neural Mechanisms of Cocaine Addiction When Cocaine is abused over a short period of time it causes homeostatic adaptations within the Dopamine transporter, known as antagonist-cocaine resulting in dependency and tolerance for the drug. When a drug abuser experiences stress it may cause a relapse. Stress-induced relapses activate the brain’s reward pathways that stimulate the release of glucocorticoid stress hormones. There is a major difference between drug rewards and natural rewards; especially since drug rewards are often chosen at the sacrifice of other rewards. Since addictive drugs such as Cocaine have no homeostatic benefit or reproductive