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literature_review.docxRunning head: LITERATURE REVIEW 1
LITERATURE REVIEW 11
Literature review
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Introduction
Drug abuse is the unlawful or unauthorized use of illegal or pharmaceutical drugs for purposes of self-stimulation. It has become a common and household disaster due the rapid growth in the percentage of users. Addiction is a situation where an individual has developed tolerance to something, be it drugs, food, games, pornography and other forms of habitual tendencies. Major contributions of drug abuse are peer pressure and distress. Peer pressure is the influence by certain groups or cliques resorting to similar habits among the members. Distress is the emotional detachment due to loss of something or someone, traumatic experiences and other instances of stressful situations. All this are contributors to substance abuse, which can be through doctor’s prescriptions, leading to overdoses due to minimal supervision offered to patients. It can also be voluntary by individuals seeking pleasure, satisfaction or comfort in drugs. However, these habits when prolonged or overdone have dire consequences. They play a very major role in impending development in terms of self-development, social development and the national development of a country as a whole. The priority of every individual, society and nation is to work hand in hand to curb this menace. This essay will discuss summaries of articles by several researchers, on studies concerning understanding addiction and the basis underlying addiction, to help in pushing forward to its demise.
According to Terry and Kent in (Robinson T., 2003), the use of drugs causes the psychological focus of a person and leads to addiction. They state that the use of a drug does not entirely lead to addiction; however this view contradicts the hedonic views of addiction. They also rule out the view that relief from the withdrawals could lead to addiction. They continue to rule out the aberrant theory that states that, the abnormality of the concerned parties does have a positive effect to the addiction process. According to them addiction is brought about by an abnormal generation of incentive salience by the neural system leading to cognitive deficits. This means that the drugs as stimulants have an effect on the brain making it produce a pleasurable effect towards the drug effect. This overtime develops a system where the brain is already used to a certain pleasure effect, and deficiency of the effect can have withdrawal effects. Some effects are severe to the extent that it can damage the patient’s brain function or alter perceptions, even leads to hallucinations which may have severe consequences to the patient or to people around. This triggers an urge for the consumption of more drugs and this however graduates to addiction.
In relation to Terry and Kent’s notion that addiction is a neural system related effect, further studied are going on to get information about the psychology behind the neural system effect from drugs. It has come to a point where research is being done to animals to review the idea more critically. In his article (E., 2000) Nestler supports the idea that by use of animals in study experiments, humans can unlock the key to identifying the genes in humans that make us susceptible to addiction and identifying which genes in particular play a major role in the development of addiction.. 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. He believes that these experiments will lead to a better understanding of addiction and hence will lead to finding the ultimate cure.
Related research conducted by Dodes in his article (L., 2009) contracts the clinical applicability of psychological and neurological study of addiction as stated above in (Robinson T., 2003). According to him addiction is a psychological compulsion just like any other compulsion. He states that its treatment can be handled just like any other disease. It can be substituted and replaced by psychological symptomology such as psychologically-induced forgetting, and also limiting the object of subjecting addiction and a change of the setting can also be of much help. However, he does not support the notion of using animals as a subject for psychological valuation to retrieve answers as stated above by Nestler in his article (E., 2000). He argues that the use of animals to measure and compare the mental capabilities and effects from drugs is a misconception. The human brains capability cannot be compared to that of animals. It is much more complex in very many different ways. He suggests that psychological study of addiction should not focus on getting answers from the many animal and human studies; however, it should be focused in finding an alternative and a cure to the problem of addiction.
As stated above by Dodes in his article (L., 2009), the use of animals to gather evidence of the psychological effects of drugs on humans is totally misunderstood. In the same way RA Wise and GF Koob in their article (G, 2013) do not support the fact about animals being the solution to solving psychological problems. They say that limitations should be placed in the use of subjects like rats in experimenting about any neurological disorder that humans face. They say that rats can’t model human beings in any way whatsoever. In their article they add that positive and negative reinforcements do have an effect on the addictions of subjects. 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 effect one has in the absence of an experience leads to addiction. The negative effects are characterized by mild comfort and extreme distress. They agree on the fact that positive and negative reinforcements play a major role in the event of addiction. However, both researches are hopeful that there will be better methods enforced by researchers to study addiction and the complexity involved in future.
In the search to find better methods of curbing addiction, Grant supports the notion that positive effect known as pleasure a person gets from an experience is associated with the behavior of the individual later onwards, as stated by Wise above in (G, 2013). In his article (Raymond NC, 2015)Grant compares the behavioral addictions and the other forms of addictions like substance abuse. In the process to acquire some truth, they employ the statistical methods of analysis by studying data on both behavioral and substance addictions. According to the study, the results prove that the two forms of addictions resemble each other in very many aspects. They both have effects like tolerance, phenomenology, neurobiological mechanisms and response to treatment. Further studies also show that behavioral addictions such as sexual addictions, internet addiction, video or computer games addiction and gambling addiction among others could also have dire consequences similar to substance abuse. They continue to emphasize that the addictions should be taken seriously and their studies should be enhanced to improve their treatment. According to them these addictions leads to limited development due to wasted time, which in turn leads to students falling out of school and engaging in drug trafficking or criminal related activities.
In relation to the above article by Grant about the behavioral mechanisms and addictions, some addictions have gone to the extent of rendering both adults and children useless. This has an impact in the perception of the affected towards society. They in turn resort to defiant behaviors since they do not have any means of livelihood, and no money to support their addictions. According to Bodigger in his article (D, 2004) on his study about drug use in the Central American region, he states that drug use among school children is on the rise. He blames it to the existence and high availability of a lot 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 drugs. Children have also been identified as abusers of drugs in the excuse of escaping emotional and physical abuse by parents, family members or step parents. However, measures to control the epidemic have and are coming into existence. The establishment of rehabilitation centers and programs for street children, treating the drug addicts through detoxification methods and the government investing more on the fight against drug trafficking among others are the means to which the demise of the immoral behavior will come to a halt. In his research he discovered that El Salvador is the leading country in the fight against drugs and gangs. According to him, drug use and trafficking in the region is a household name, hence it is expensive to conquer it due to the heavy gangs existing in the region. Governments should unite and come together to fight the growing rate of drug traffickers in the region, and save the younger vulnerable generation.
In the same way Niekerk supports the fight against drugs and calls onto governments to come together in fighting it out. In his article (J, 2012), the researcher reflects on the issues about drugs and people and the government in South Africa. 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. He states how drug addicts have been stigmatized and incarcerated in jails instead of being given expert medical help and being treated like any other sick person. Generally, previous research show that addiction arises from the pursuit of intoxication, celebrations, medication, annihilation, deviation or obfuscation (J, 2012). In order to cure addiction, the knowledge of the nature and effects of addictions must be educated and passed on to the patients, addicts and their families and all those affected. There have been traditional methods of curbing the deviant behavior, however since not much change has developed or has been noticed; the methods and policies have been questioned and are subject to major criticism. Therefore, as a recommendation, Niekerk insists that the policies be reviewed, researched and evaluated again, so that the final product can be one that will see through addiction to its demise.
Summary
From the first article according to Terry and Kent, they try to explain the fact that addiction is basically triggered by some of the neural system functions that have a counter effect to the consumption of drugs. They say that the drugs once they get into the system they first affect the brain and then are duplicated to the whole body. If a pleasurable effect is felt in the brain it is distributed to the whole body and the effect is magnified. This feeling is what keeps people going back to drugs. However, in the same way, lack of access to the drug will have opposite effects to the brain and the feeling is then transmitted to the whole body and this feeling is magnified. This is what then leads a person to try and access the drug again so that to avoid the feelings of withdrawals due to lack of consumption. This makes a lot of sense, since drugs act as antidepressants (Robinson T., 2003). Nestler in his article supports Kent that addiction is a psychologically associated disorder due to prolonged use of drugs or other forms of addiction. He however, suggests that experiment on animals could be the key to unlocking the mystery behind the addiction effect. He suggests that further studies should be done to animals and tests should be run so that they can get a reasonable enough clue of how addiction comes about. This according to him will lead to putting a halt to the deviant behavior destroying the society (E., 2000). In another article Dodes supports the psychological effects related to addiction and says that it is however the effects should not be taken as something impossible to cure. He adds that the effects are similar to any other disease and can be cured. He suggests that depleting the people from the substances or the drugs that lead to their addiction can help reduce the effects to an individual. Also he suggests is by changing the setting to another that does not suggest anything involving the causes can help reduce the effects, an example is rehabilitation centers. He however does not support the idea of using animals as a way to get the answers behind addiction, he calls this a misconception. The human brain is much more complex as compared to that of animal. He suggests that the researchers should focus more on getting the right solution to curing addiction instead (L., 2009).
In another article by Wise and Koob the culture of using animals for experimental purposes in relation to humans should be avoided and forgotten. It is a misunderstood scientific fact and will definitely not yield results now and in the future as well. This is because humans cannot be compared to animals in any way. They say that the addictions are as a result to the positive and negative effects that people develop toward something. These effects can be reflected positively or negatively depending on the presence of the subject in question. They however further suggest that more ways should be devised in future to help fight the addiction problem (G, 2013). Also, Grant in another article suggests that the similarities of effects among the different addiction problems are astonishing. Tolerance and other effects are all associated with addiction. In this he tries to drive the point that not only substance abuse can lead to addiction, sexual addiction, gaming addiction, gambling addiction and other forms of addiction have similar adverse effects to the individuals involves as well. The effects go as far as children falling out of studies and engaging in malicious behaviors. He suggests that more precautions and measures should be taken in respect to these types of addictions so as to help rehabilitate them from destroying their lives (Raymond NC, 2015). In another article Bodigger shows how people have become careless and are even using drugs in front of the younger generation. He shows how the youth have become deviant and useless and have turned to other ways of acquiring money in respect to satisfying their addictions. This has corrupted the society to a fatal extent. He continues to show how Central America has been greatly affected by the epidemic. Efforts to fight the drug lords have proved too expensive and futile. He suggests that countries should come in together in fighting the drug trafficking business until it is eradicated (D, 2004). Last but not least, Niekerk also supports the fight against drug trafficking and says that the governments and the people should come in together and fight the drug menace that is affecting our nations and the world at large. He uses an example on how in South Africa the drug addicted people are discriminated and even put in jails instead of getting those appropriate help like the rest of the humans. He suggests that people and governments should fight the drug menace by coming in together and save the lives of the affected. By coming up with rehabilitation methods they will be able to reduce the rate of drug use and finally and bring it to its knees. It has infected every nation and bringing it to its demise will have adverse positive effects to the future economies and generations(J, 2012).
Suggestions for future prosperity are that governments should be advised to start implementing new and more ways to fight this drug menace. By implementing more rehabilitation measures, and building rehabilitation centers everywhere, the governments will have started fighting the drug menace from its core. However, some of the addicts prove to be hard headed and may not comply to the method. In such cases, the government should use the full force of the low and force people out of the streets and put them in high security and secluded rehabilitation centers where the patients have access to everything they want so that they live in liberty like everyone else. In addition, the government should adopt better methods of rehabilitating criminals as well. Putting them in harsh conditions of jail does not make them any better, it only hardens their perception since they are treated like animals, hence resort to thinking they are different from the rest. New and better rehabilitation techniques should be adopted in order to build a steady base for the future aspirations of everyone. These and other ways of making life better should continue being implemented, and governments all over the world should come together and adopt new ways of invading drug related colonies and destroy them at any cost. If any consolation is of importance, the effect of eradicating them totally will be greater and more rewarding as compared to the loss encountered in invading the colonies.
Conclusion
References D, B. (2004). Battling addiction. The Lancet, 923-924. E., N. (2000). Nat. Genet. . pp. 277-281. G, W. R. (2013). The Development and Maintenance of Drug Addiction. Neuropsychopharmacology, pp. 254-262. J, N. (2012). Addiction. South African Medical Journal, 673. L., D. (2009). Addiction as a psychological symptom. Psychodynamic Practice, pp. 381-393. Raymond NC, G. J. (2015, March 2). Introduction to behavioral addictions. Retrieved April 17, 2015, from PubMed-NCBI: from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20560821 Robinson T., B. K. (2003). Addiction. Annu. Rev.Psychol.
