What are your thoughts about the experience of having an addiction? (rather than the effects on those around the person with the addiction)
Do you think that ultimately, all addictions are similar in nature? Whether they be substance use (alcohol/drugs), tobacco, food, sex, shopping, gambling, and others?
I've had some minor addictions and the main reason I got over them was because I simply didn't like being dependent on something else. It was the main motivator. The experience itself was eye-opening to me. I sort of just realized that the highs just weren't worth the lows.
Do you think that ultimately, all addictions are similar in nature? Whether they be substance use (alcohol/drugs), tobacco, food, sex, shopping, gambling, and others?
I think that there's a separate category for everything that has withdrawal symptoms (The body will essentially produce opposite effects of the substance during withdrawal) and this can be much more difficult to overcome than other addictions. Medical professionals call it a physiological dependence. The other type of addictions are the ones that produce dependence based simply on the pleasurable effects. Really anything that causes a person significant distress or substantially impairs that person's life.
However the two types can work together and drug dependence can be influenced by more than a drug's chemical effects, including genetic predisposition, personality traits, religious belies, peer influence, and cultural norms. I really think that each addiction has generally the same traits but there are differences to each one that set them apart. Just like there's enough difference to tell each human apart but they're just enough the same that we can tell them apart from monkeys.
Studies with the brain show that the 95 percent of the same areas of the brain light up during an orgasm as using heroin.
Essentialy, it just has to do with chemical release in the body. All addictions are related to what kind, and how much chemicals it makes your brain release into your body. So I think all addictions are very simmilar, and work in simmilar ways but are still somewhat different depending on the substance
That chemicals scares me... The idea of even slighty messing with it just screams "bad" to me.
I have never really had a true addiction to anything, and plan to keep it that way. The closest thing to it is when I get in very regular routtiens (I need routiens to function), and if they are thrown off slightly I can get very flustered.
As far as something like a drug addction, it won't ever happen to me. I have olny done drugs that carry no risk of addiction (a chemical addiction, not psycological), and will olny do drugs that have no risk of addiction or physical harm, which limits things alot.
When people are getting over strong physiological addictions they usually have people to help them through it. Whether it's family, friends or trained professionals. No matter how much they beg and plead, these people will not let them anywhere near their abused substance.
The drugs that increase dopamine activity in the brain are amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana and heroin. Heroin mainly just binds to and stimulates receptors which are normally activated by endorphins (the body's natural painkiller)...it's my favourite drug (not that I've done it, just the most interesting to me)
I have only done drugs that carry no risk of addiction (a chemical addiction, not psycological)
There's actually no diagnostic term called psychologically dependent. These kinds of cravings are physical because they're rooted in patterns of brain activity.
sorry that I'm just giving facts, this is my favourite part of psych...
I have olny done drugs that carry no risk of addiction (a chemical addiction, not psycological), and will olny do drugs that have no risk of addiction or physical harm, which limits things alot.
Indigo, I'm just curious about something. When you say that you'd only use drugs that you know don't carry a risk of chemical addiction, I can't help but wonder about drugs that are mixed and you might think you're getting one drug but you're actually getting a bit of another. Unless you make it yourself/get it from someone whom you trust in that sense? I don't know. I don't know if it can be done with every drug or just some? It sounds risky. I've never used drugs so I don't have very much of a perspective on this, it's just something I've read.
Indigo, I'm just curious about something. When you say that you'd only use drugs that you know don't carry a risk of chemical addiction, I can't help but wonder about drugs that are mixed and you might think you're getting one drug but you're actually getting a bit of another. Unless you make it yourself/get it from someone whom you trust in that sense? I don't know. I don't know if it can be done with every drug or just some? It sounds risky. I've never used drugs so I don't have very much of a perspective on this, it's just something I've read.
As we find a pattern in nature. Addiction is falling for your inner impulses whether it is food, dependent personality, air, sex, you name it
However IndigoSensor I would like to know what you consider to be chemically addictive because it is still debated on certain drugs. For instance MDMA (exstacy) is said to not be addictive. Yet it affects the dopaminergic systems and often contain meth, amphetamine, which are HIGLY addictive. So how would you explain this, why isnt the pill addictive when it contains determinants of addiction?
And by addictive you mean physically not psychologically or ?
As we find a pattern in nature. Addiction is falling for your inner impulses whether it is food, dependent personality, air, sex, you name it
However IndigoSensor I would like to know what you consider to be chemically addictive because it is still debated on certain drugs. For instance MDMA (exstacy) is said to not be addictive. Yet it affects the dopaminergic systems and often contain meth, amphetamine, which are HIGLY addictive. So how would you explain this, why isnt the pill addictive when it contains determinants of addiction?
And by addictive you mean physically not psychologically or ?
It's certainly an interesting topic. My feeling is that if you've got an addictive personality, or are genetically predisposed to addictive behavior (if several of your close relatives suffer from addiction), it might be wise to consider the potential for addiction to substances widely proclaimed to be non-addictive.
Marijuana is a great example. It affects people differently, and I have absolutely known regular smokers who exhibited all the signs of addiction while adamantly denying that was the case. Yet they smoked throughout the day - every day - including first thing in the morning, before going to work or school. Before going into uncomfortable situations. And required greater quantities to achieve an optimal level of high as time went on.
I find it of particular concern that unless you're growing your own (which is still illegal in most parts of the world) the risk of ingesting high levels of toxins employed in the large scale production of marijuana is very real, and either not contemplated or ignored (because so many believe that it's "natural" and therefore not harmful).
PORTERVILLE, Calif. -- National forests and parks -- long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels -- have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said.
The grow sites have taken hold from the West Coast's Cascade Mountains, as well as on federal lands in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Seven hundred grow sites were discovered on U.S. Forest Service land in California alone in 2007 and 2008 -- and authorities say the 1,800-square-mile Sequoia National Forest is the hardest hit.
Weed and bug sprays, some long banned in the U.S., have been smuggled to the marijuana farms. Plant growth hormones have been dumped into streams, and the water has then been diverted for miles in PVC pipes.
Rat poison has been sprinkled over the landscape to keep animals away from tender plants. And many sites are strewn with the carcasses of deer and bears poached by workers during the five- month growing season that is now ending.
"What's going on on public lands is a crisis at every level," said Forest Service agent Ron Pugh. "These are America's most precious resources, and they are being devastated by an unprecedented commercial enterprise conducted by armed foreign nationals. It is a huge mess."
The first documented marijuana cartels were discovered in Sequoia National Park in 1998. Then, officials say, tighter border controls after Sept. 11, 2001, forced industrial-scale growers to move their operations into the United States.
Millions of dollars are spent every year to find and uproot marijuana-growing operations on state and federal lands, but federal officials say no money is budgeted to clean up the environmental mess left behind after helicopters carry off the plants. They are encouraged that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who last year secured funding for eradication, has inquired about the pollution problems.
In the meantime, the only cleanup is done by volunteers. On Tuesday, the nonprofit High Sierra Trail Crew, founded to improve access to public lands, plans to take 30 people deep into the Sequoia National Forest to carry out miles of drip irrigation pipe, tons of human garbage, volatile propane canisters, and bags and bottles of herbicides and pesticides.
"If the people of California knew what was going on out there, they'd be up in arms about this," said Shane Krogen, the nonprofit's executive director. "Helicopters full of dope are like body counts in the Vietnam War. What does it really mean?"
Last year, law enforcement agents uprooted nearly 5 million plants in California, nearly a half million in Kentucky and 276,000 in Washington state as the development of hybrid plants has expanded the range of climates marijuana can tolerate.
"People light up a joint, and they have no idea the amount of environmental damage associated with it," said Cicely Muldoon, deputy regional director of the Pacific West Region of the National Park Service.
As of Sept. 2, more than 2.2 million plants had been uprooted statewide. The largest single bust in the nation this year netted 482,000 plants in the remote Sierra of Tulare County, the forest service said.
Some popular parks also have suffered damage. In 2007, rangers found more than 20,000 plants in Yosemite National Park and 43,000 plants in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park, where 159 grow sites have been discovered over the past 10 years.
Agent Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Game estimated that 1.5 pounds of fertilizers and pesticides is used for every 11.5 plants.
"I've seen the pesticide residue on the plants," Foy said. "You ain't just smoking pot, bud. You're smoking some heavy-duty pesticides from Mexico."
Scott Wanek, the western regional chief ranger for the National Park Service, said he believes the eradication efforts have touched only a small portion of the marijuana farms and that the environmental impact is much greater than anyone knows.
"Think about Sequoia," Wanek said. "The impact goes well beyond the acreage planted. They create huge networks of trail systems, and the chemicals that get into watersheds are potentially very far- reaching -- all the way to drinking water for the downstream communities. We are trying to study that now."
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Marijuana may not be a life-threatening drug, but is it an addictive one?
There is little evidence in animal models for tolerance and withdrawal, the classic determinants of addiction. For at least four decades, million of Americans have used marijuana without clear evidence of a withdrawal syndrome. Most recreational marijuana users find that too much pot in one day makes them lethargic and uncomfortable. Self-proclaimed marijuana addicts, on the other hand, report that pot energizes them, calms them down when they are nervous, or otherwise allows them to function normally. They feel lethargic and uncomfortable without it. Heavy marijuana users claim that tolerance does build. And when they withdraw from use, they report strong cravings.
Marijuana is the odd drug out. To the early researchers, it did not look like it should be addictive. Nevertheless, for some people, it is. Recently, a group of Italian researchers succeeded in demonstrating that THC releases dopamine along the reward pathway, like all other drugs of abuse. Some of the mystery of cannabis had been resolved by the end of the 1990s, after researchers had demonstrated that marijuana definitely increased dopamine activity in the ventral tegmental area. Some of the effects of pot are produced the old-fashioned way after all--through alterations along the limbic reward pathway.
By the year 2000, more than 100,000 Americans a year were seeking treatment for marijuana dependency, by some estimates.
A report prepared for Australia’s National Task Force on Cannabis put the matter straightforwardly:
There is good experimental evidence that chronic heavy cannabis users can develop tolerance to its subjective and cardiovascular effects, and there is suggestive evidence that some users may experience a withdrawal syndrome on the abrupt cessation of cannabis use. There is clinical and epidemiological evidence that some heavy cannabis users experience problems in controlling their cannabis use, and continue to use the drug despite experiencing adverse personal consequences of use. There is limited evidence in favour of a cannabis dependence syndrome analogous to the alcohol dependence syndrome. If the estimates of the community prevalence of drug dependence provided by the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study are correct, then cannabis dependence is the most common form of dependence on illicit drugs.
While everyone was busy arguing over whether marijuana produced a classic withdrawal profile, a minority of users, commonly estimated at 10 per cent, found themselves unable to control their use of pot. Addiction to marijuana had been submerged in the welter of polyaddictions common to active addicts. The withdrawal rigors of, say, alcohol or heroin would drown out the subtler, more psychological manifestations of marijuana withdrawal.
What has emerged is a profile of marijuana withdrawal, where none existed before. The syndrome is marked by irritability, restlessness, generalized anxiety, hostility, depression, difficulty sleeping, excessive sweating, loose stools, loss of appetite, and a general “blah” feeling. Many patients complain of feeling like they have a low-grade flu, and they describe a psychological state of existential uncertainty–“inner unrest,” as one researcher calls it.
The most common marijuana withdrawal symptom is low-grade anxiety. Anxiety of this sort has a firm biochemical substrate, produced by withdrawal, craving, and detoxification from almost all drugs of abuse. It is not the kind of anxiety that can be deflected by forcibly thinking “happy thoughts,” or staying busy all the time. A peptide known as corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) is linked to this kind of anxiety.
Neurologists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, noting that anxiety is the universal keynote symptom of drug and alcohol withdrawal, started looking at the release of CRF in the amygdala. After documenting elevated CRF levels in rat brains during alcohol, heroin, and cocaine withdrawal, the researchers injected synthetic THC into 50 rats once a day for two weeks. (For better or worse, this is how many of the animal models simulate heavy, long-term pot use in humans). Then they gave the rats a THC agonist that bound to the THC receptors without activating them. The result: The rats exhibited withdrawal symptoms such as compulsive grooming and teeth chattering–the kinds of stress behaviors rats engage in when they are kicking the habit. In the end, when the scientists measured CRF levels in the amygdalas of the animals, they found three times as much CRF, compared to animal control groups.
While subtler and more drawn out, the process of kicking marijuana can now be demonstrated as a neurochemical fact. It appears that marijuana increases dopamine and serotonin levels through the intermediary activation of opiate and GABA receptors. Drugs like naloxone, which block heroin, might have a role to play in marijuana detoxification.
In the end, what surprised many observers was simply that the idea of treatment for marijuana dependence seemed to appeal to such a large number of people. The Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto has reported that even brief interventions, in the form of support group sessions, can be useful for addicted pot smokers.
hmm in the familly of psilocybin? Can you be nice an explain because I just read a little on it and don't really understand the point.
It sais that there are no widthdrawal symptoms.
I have an addiction. I won't go into the details of it because it is kind of personal even for this forum. It's taken me the better part of 2 years to get it under control.
It has to be taken in small steps and you fail so many times along the way. But when you make progress you really do feel a sense of accomplishment even though the craving never really goes away completely.
As far as the nature, addictions are all psychological, but some have the added difficulty of also being chemical dependencies. And then there can be genetic and neurological predispositions to certain addictions that people often have even before they are born that can compound an addiction once it is formed. And finally, there can be sociological factors, such as how a person was raised and what peers they associate with, that can perpetuate an addiction.
In other words, a person with a purely psychological addiction to something such as the internet is in an entirely different boat than someone who has an addiction to alcohol, who has a family history of alcoholics, was raised by alcoholic parents and who hangs out with friends who regularly drink.
hmm in the familly of psilocybin? Can you be nice an explain because I just read a little on it and don't really understand the point.
It sais that there are no widthdrawal symptoms.
Psilocin is the compound formed when the pro-drug psilocybin is dephosphorylated in the body. Psilocin is the actual active chemical where as psilocybin is just the chemical injested.
It is non-toxic (i.e. impossible to overdose), it has no withdraw symtoms like you said. Leaves no hangover. It olny effects the serotonin pathway by mimicing it, which is the safest route. It is one of the safest drugs there are. The risk that runs with it is lasting effects (which in the majority of cases), are positive (as in good, not in the psycological sense. However that is possible).
I just had to chime in: Zencat, the picture you posted has some of the *nastiest* weed I've ever seen.
As far as heroin and orgasms; even without seeing a study, I'd believe it. Painkillers feel so good. So much that they're one of the only things I haven't sworn off. I'm not an addict, though; no steady supply. I also have plenty of self-control when I need it, so that helps.
Do you think that ultimately, all addictions are similar in nature? Whether they be substance use (alcohol/drugs), tobacco, food, sex, shopping, gambling, and others?
I do. My dad is a recovered alcoholic, used to be very addicted to gambling, is trying to quit smoking, and even gets addicted to things like solitaire on the computer, his favourite TV show, even AFL (he gets cranky when footy season is over). There are varying effects depending on the addiction, but ultimately they are all similar in nature. The addict is enslaved to a habit, obsessed, preoccupied and dependent on something to the detriment of their lives, and those around them.
I think they’re similar in the sense that impulsive action is involved but addictions involving mind altering chemicals will have a different effect on the individual.
