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Heroin Addiction
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Addiction – The Mechanisms of Addiction
In this course, Dr Ashok Jansari (Goldsmiths, University of London) explores consequences of addiction. In the first lecture, we think about the process by which heroin generates an addiction. In the second lecture, we think about the physiological reward pathway in the brain, specifically the ventral tegmental area, the nucleus accumbens, and the front of the brain. Next, we think about some individual differences in susceptibility to addiction, looking closely at adolescence. In the fourth and final lecture, we think about some anti-drug campaign techniques which have had differing levels of success.
Heroin Addiction
In this lecture, we think about heroin as an addictive drug, focusing in particular on: (i) heroin’s mechanism of addiction being its ability to generate feelings of elation and ecstasy in the individual taking it, which is something that is craved once those effects have worn off; (ii) Nora Volkow’s study, which found that seeing heroin being taken activated the pleasure regions of the brain in addicts, much more than seeing a pleasant image of nature; (iii) Alexander and colleagues’ ‘Rat Park’ study, which split groups of morphine-addicted rats into different environments and assessed the impact of morphine availability on each; (iv) Alexander and colleagues’ findings that only rats who were placed back into the environment within which they were given morphine with other morphine-addicted rats showed a strong desire to have more morphine.
Hello. I'm Dr Ashraf Khan. Sorry.
00:00:06And I'm a senior lecturer in cognitive
00:00:09neuropsychology at Goldsmiths University of London.
00:00:11Intellectual. I'm going to be telling you about heroin
00:00:14and the impact it has through biology and through learning.
00:00:17Now, as with most behaviours, there's a, uh, biological nature side.
00:00:23And then there's the nurture side.
00:00:30The nature side is that heroin is a drug that
00:00:33because of the way that it works within the brain,
00:00:39something I'll be telling you about later.
00:00:42It results in feelings of pleasure. Um, less pain
00:00:44and feelings of well being so basically makes you feel good.
00:00:50The thing is
00:00:55that because of those feel good effect of the drug,
00:00:56it can be addictive.
00:01:01And that is one of the reasons why heroin has become a kind of a big issue in society.
00:01:03The other side of it
00:01:11is nurture
00:01:12and the learning that can happen around heroin.
00:01:14Now, the reason that this is important is that that feeling of oh, I feel really good.
00:01:17I'm happy etcetera doesn't happen in a vacuum.
00:01:24It happens in a situation, the environment.
00:01:28So that is a location, and it can happen with people around you.
00:01:33So those end up being what we call cues.
00:01:39They get linked with that feeling of happiness, ecstasy, et cetera.
00:01:43And the result is that they can trigger a feeling
00:01:51of wanting the drug to get back to that feeling.
00:01:56And that's why you get people get cravings
00:02:00if they are in the situation that they tend to be in when they take the drugs,
00:02:05such as at a party or at someone's home
00:02:09and there, with the people that they usually take the drugs with.
00:02:12What happens is that they start getting a
00:02:15physical craving because they've now kind of associated
00:02:17those external cues with that feeling that they've got.
00:02:22Now there are lots of different ways of seeing this.
00:02:27In a study that a woman called Nora Volkow did in the state,
00:02:31she had people who were addicted to certain types of heroin,
00:02:36and she showed them just a video of someone else taking heroin
00:02:42or a video of a nice scene in nature,
00:02:47someone rolling down a river or something like that.
00:02:50And what she found is that the parts of the brain
00:02:53that makes you feel good and give you pleasure were activated.
00:02:56Much more in these addicts when they saw the video of someone else taking heroin
00:03:01than when they saw that nice seen in nature.
00:03:07So what you see there is the queue of just seeing
00:03:09someone have it is giving them that craving for wanting it,
00:03:13which is making their brain act in a particular way.
00:03:18Another intriguing study that happened a few years ago
00:03:22involved what became known as the Rat Park,
00:03:25and in this study, they bred rats to get addicted to morphine,
00:03:28and morphine is related to heroin.
00:03:38They then took those rats and put them
00:03:40into one of three different types of environment.
00:03:44One set of rats was put in a sterile environment with
00:03:48no real play toys or anything like that on their own.
00:03:53Another lot will put in a really cool,
00:03:58funky play pen with wheels and different ladders that
00:04:00they could climb up to go to another,
00:04:06uh, level et cetera.
00:04:08So it's a really funky play park.
00:04:11The final set were put in a sterile environment,
00:04:13but with rats that were not addicted to morphine,
00:04:18and they made morphine available to the rats
00:04:23and each of these three different environments.
00:04:26And what they found is that the only rats that went
00:04:29for the morphine were the ones in the sterile environment,
00:04:32the ones in the rich environment where they could do lots of other things,
00:04:36and where their environment wasn't like the one where they had taken the drugs.
00:04:40They weren't interested,
00:04:46the ones that were put into back into a
00:04:47similar environment that they developed their addiction in,
00:04:49but with other rats that weren't taking the morphine,
00:04:56change their behaviour and started taking less morphine.
00:05:00So what that demonstrates is that it's not simply the biological need for it.
00:05:03There's also the aspect of the environment you're in.
00:05:09So if you're in physically the same
00:05:13environment and with physically the same people,
00:05:15you're much more likely to take the drug.
00:05:18If you're in a different environment or with different people,
00:05:20you're less likely to take the drug.
00:05:23So, um,
00:05:26this lecture has shown us that heroin can have this effect that
00:05:27the biology but the learning of the environment is also really important,
00:05:31and that is going to have an impact on
00:05:37any attempts for rehabilitation because of what we can
00:05:39try to do to change the environment of people who end up being addicted to the drugs.
00:05:43And in the next lecture,
00:05:50I'm going to tell you a bit more about what's
00:05:52happening in the brain when someone takes these drugs.
00:05:54
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jansari, A. (2022, June 09). Addiction – The Mechanisms of Addiction - Heroin Addiction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/addiction-the-mechanisms-of-addiction
MLA style
Jansari, A. "Addiction – The Mechanisms of Addiction – Heroin Addiction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 09 Jun 2022, https://massolit.io/courses/addiction-the-mechanisms-of-addiction