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26 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is at the heart of drug addiction?
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Compulsion - "loss of control"
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What accounts for aprrox. half of prisoners?
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Drugs! Huge jump in 1980
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What are the two opposing views of addiction?
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Moral Failure - addicts are people who choose drugs because they are weak or bad.
Medical model: Addicts are victims of a chronic brain disease, and cannot be expected to control their drug-taking. |
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Why do people take drugs?
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Several reasons, such as experimentation, hedonics (drug effects as desired rewards; want to obtain liked/pleasurable effect); medication to relieve unpleasant states.
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Physical Dependence Hypothesis
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With the development of tolerance and physical dependence, drug use continues to avoid the unpleasant somatic consequences associated with the withdrawal.
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What is wrong with the physical dependence hypothesis?
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Not all abused drugs are associated with substantial physical withdrawal.
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Distress Syndrome Reduction Theory
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Drug use is sustained to avoid unpleasant psychological or somatic symptoms associated with withdrawal.
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Psychiatric definition of dependence
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Tolerance & Withdrawal
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Downward spiral effect
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Take drugs to relieve unpleasant states, but brain adaptations to the drug results in even more unpleasant states, so drug use continues. Helps explain contribution of stress to drug-taking.
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What are problems with dependence as addiction?
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Administration of drugs at doses that are too low to produce dependence, the extent and nature of withdrawal symptoms is variable between different abused drugs, and withdrawal is relatively brief (days to weeks) while the liability to relapse can last up to years.
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Relapse is often prompted by what?
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Cues associated with the drug use
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What role do drug-associated cues play in relapse?
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Dependence-centered theories argue that cues could produce a "mini-withdrawal", that would drive continued drug use. (See heroin - induced chills - effects opposite to those of drug itself). Relapse liability lasts longer than withdrawal.
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Persistence of addiction = ? (Drug-associated cues)
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Persistence of memory
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What are problems with drug-associated cues resulting in relapse?
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Not all drugs produce drug-opposite reactions, such as cocaine producing drug-like reactions. Many opiate addicts deny feeling conditioned withdrawal and even those that do deny that it provoked the relapse.
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Incentive-Sensitization Theory
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Repeated drug use leads to sensitization of brain systems involved in motivation, specifically wanting.
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Incentive Salience
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Neutral cues gain motivational significance by being paired with rewards (they become wanted). This concept is used for Incentive-Sensitization Theory
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Craving - Incentive-Sensitization Theory
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abnormally strong wanting resulting from this sensitized system, triggered by drug-related cues.
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Experiment that showed relapse after one year.
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Two groups - one pretreated with saline and the other with amphetamine. Amphetamine group had a high response for administration after one year.
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What important distinction about liking, wanting, and choosing should be made about Incentive-Sensitization Theory?
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This theory does not say that addicts take drugs because they like drug effects. Liking does not mean wanting. Under some conditions, people may not like it, but still want it.
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Experiment to show difference between wanting and liking.
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Allowed people to self administer drugs - showed that people administered a low dose of morphine and rated that dose as no "liking" afterwards.
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Experiment with cocaine and placebo
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People said they were sampling both and not choosing cocaine over placebo. However, subjects were clearly choosing low doses of cocaine. Subjects seem to not be aware that they are preferentially choosing cocaine.
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Problems with incentive-sensitization theory
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In humans, there is little evidence for a general sensitization of wanting. That is, drug addicts don't also experience addiction to food or sex. Is doing what you want really a "loss of control"?
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Multiple control systems.....
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Multiple learning systems that cooperate or compete for influence over behavior. The systems rely on distinct neural circuity within the brain.
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Deliberate vs. automatic actions
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Deliberate - goal-directed, conscious, flexible
Automatic - habitual, unconscious, inflexible |
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Why are habits useful?
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We don't have to think about it - they allow us to free up our minds for thinking about other things. They build up slowly and reflect stable features of our world and are actions we perform each day (habitually)
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How can habits cause problems?
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When we are running on "automatic pilot", we may end up performing one action when we intended to form a different action. Habits are hard to extinguish
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