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Trevor H. Darland

PSYC500

4 October 2015

References

Addiction in all it’s entirety i.e. whether substance and drug abuse related addiction or behavioral related addiction, plays a very crucial role in impending development. Here development entails personal life development, society development or the national development of a country. Thus it is the priority of every person, society, government and organizations to try and curb this menace.

The understanding of addiction (it’s nature, it’s causes and it’s effects) is the only rational way of controlling it’s demise. There have been numerous studies, researches and experiments conducted to try and understand the basis underlying addiction. The following is a list of the various articles on this endeavor.

Robinson, T., & Berridge, K. (2003). Addiction. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 54(1), 25-53.

doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145237

Terry and Kent review the theoretical explanations of how the transition from casual to compulsive drug use happens. They focus on how the use of drugs causes changes to the psychological function of a person leading to addiction. According to them the pleasure from the use of a given drug doesn’t lead to addiction which contrasts the hedonic views of addiction. Another common theory they rule out on transition to addiction is relief from withdrawal symptoms. Aberrant theory is also ruled out in that abnormalities of associate learning do not lead to addiction. They suggest that addiction is brought about by an abnormal generation of incentive salience by the neural system leading to cognitive deficits. Thus according to them addiction starts from the brain itself.

Boddiger, D. (2004). Battling addiction. The Lancet, 364(9438), 923-924. doi:10.1016/s0140-

6736(04)17041-4

In this article Bodigger studies drug use in the Central American region. According to him the rate of drug abuse among school attending children is on the rise. This, he blames to the high availability of drugs in the streets, high use of drugs by adults in the society, traffickers investing more in the trade than the government is investing against the trade, use of children for trafficking and the early age of exposure of children to these drugs. Children have also been identified to indulge in drugs to escape emotional and physical abuse by family members or step-parents. Some of the measures that has been put up to control the epidemic are; creating of rehabilitation programs for street children, treating the addicts by detoxification, governments investing more on the fight of drug trafficking etc. Elsavador is the leading country in the fight of drugs in the region. According to him the fight against drug use in the region is expensive and governments need to work together to conquer it.

Grant JE, e. (2015). Introduction to behavioral addictions. - PubMed - NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved

2 March 2015, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20560821.

In this article Jon et al 2010 compare behavioral addictions and other types of addictions especially substance addiction. They employ the statistical method of analysis by studying data on both behavioral and substance addictions. According to their findings these two addictions resemble each other in many aspects such as tolerance, phenomenology, neurobiological mechanisms and response to treatment. According to them behavioral addictions such as sexual addiction, internet addiction, video/computer game addictions and gambling addictions have as dire consequences as substances abuse and their studies should be enhanced to improve their treatment. According to them these addictions leads to limited development due to wasted time.

Wise, R., & Koob, G. (2013). The Development and Maintenance of Drug Addiction.

Neuropsychopharmacology, 39(2), 254-262. doi:10.1038/npp.2013.261

In this article RA Wise and GF Koob discusses their views about the role of positive and negative reinforcement in the process of addiction respectively. According to Wise the pleasure a person gets from an experience is the main reason why they end up developing a compulsive consumption of the same leading to addiction. According to Koob, the negative affect experience (May it be mild discomfort or extreme distress) one have in the absence of an experience (say, a drug, object, role or any other stimulus-source) leads to addiction. They agree on the limitations on the use of such subjects as rats in the study of addiction in that rats can’t model human beings. They agree on the fact that both negative and positive reinforcement plays a role to addiction but disagree on which stage of transition each of then comes to play. Both are hopeful that there will be better methods used to study addiction and its complexity in the future.

Nestler, E. (2000). Nat. Genet., 26(3), 277-281. doi:10.1038/81570

According to Nestler addiction is as biological as it is behavioral. Biological study of addiction is thus a pivotal aspect in deciphering this multidimensional mystery called addiction. There are two main areas of enquiry in the study of biological basis of addiction; these are; identifying the genes in humans that make us susceptible to addiction and indentifying which genes play the major role in the development on addiction by use of animal models. According to Nestler, the latter area is at its infancy and a lot of development is needed in order to make any worthy results from it. He is optimistic that with the development of sophisticated methods in genetics the study of animal models will be of great importance in the study of neurological mechanism associated with addiction. This will lead to a better understanding of addiction thus its cure and prevention.

Dodes, L. (2009). Addiction as a psychological symptom. Psychodynamic Practice, 15(4), 381-

393. doi:10.1080/14753630903230468

Dodes in this article contracts the clinical applicability of psychological study of addiction and the neurological study of addiction. According to him addiction is a psychological compulsion just like any other compulsion. Its treatment thus can be handled in the same manner like others i.e. one, it can be substituted and replaced by psychological symptomology such as psychologically-induced forgetting and two, if it is limited to the settings in which the addictive object is present, finding a different settings might help in its cure. He argues that the use of animal models to study addiction leads to a lot of misconception in that addiction in itself involve higher functions of the mind that are not available in animals such as emotional defenses and consciousness. According to him psychological study of addiction is more essential in finding a cure to addiction than neurological study which is mostly being focused on as of late.

Niekerk, J. (2011). Addiction. South African Medical Journal, 101(10), 673. Retrieved from

http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/5291/3572

According to the author the fight against drug abuse has been full of misconceptions and politicized in South African and the rest of the world. The drugs addicts have been stigmatized and incarcerated in jails instead of being given expert medical help and being treated like any other sick person. Addiction may arise from pursuit of intoxication, celebrations, medication, annihilation, deviation or obfuscation. To cure addiction the knowledge of the nature and effects of addiction has to be provided to both the addicts as well as their families and those affected. The traditional fight against drug and substance abuse has been questioned in this article with the policies used being criticized. As a recommendation the article insists on the review, research and evaluation of these policies.