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Nora Volkow defines dopamine as "a chemical substance that serves to send messages between two cells in the brain called neurotransmitters" (chemicals that are released in the brain that allow movement to pass from one nerve cell to another nerve cell). These dopamine have various functions in our body, for example, movement. Without dopamine you cannot move at all and this is known as Parkinson Disease. One example of movement is when we are hungry, dopamine motivates the brain to go and find food triggering movement to go and eat. Dopamine is the motivation and energy for us to do things.
"Drugs, whether its illegal or legal, increase dopamine in our brain". Depending on the level of dopamine increase is how the addiction occurs. If the drug increases dopamine at a high level then the brain reacts to the signal giving you that "high" because of the enforcing power and learns that quickly, so the next time that same drug is taken, the brain, having learnt the drugs effect starts to desire that drug. Dopamine just reacts to the drug, and we conditioned to it which is an important way "for nature that humans as well as animals will perform behaviour that are indispensible for survival. So it shouldn't surprise us that eating or sexual behaviours are linked with the increase of dopamine....For example, when you feel hungry and your are exposed to food, that will increase dopamine much more than if you just finished eating. So as you eat the ability to eat food to increase dopamine goes down and slowly disappears. Because it disappears you are not longer motivated to eat the food."
DRUG ADDICTION
Nora Volkow defines addiction as "a condition where upon the person, with repeated administration of drugs no longer can control his/her ability to decide when they take or they don't take the drug. There is fundamentally as stage where the induvidual has lost control has intense drive to compulsively take that drug."
"50% of vulnerability of a person to become addicted is genetically dependant." However, there are various other vulnerabilities other than genetics. For example, "If a person becomes exposed to drugs very young and early in the adolescent, they are much more likely to get addicted than if you get exposed to the same drugs when you're an adult and this has to do with the fact that the adolescent brain is much more nueroplastic (adapt to experience), than the adult brain." So the problem with this is that an adolescent can get addicted really fast to drug because of the high level of adaptation process in our brain to learn things quickly. However, the problem is that it will take a long time to wear off even as the adolescent becomes an adult, because the body is already used to the experience of the drug.
If a person takes a snort of cocaine, it increases dopamine, and then snorts again, the dopamine increases again and so on. The problem that leads to addiction is because of the constant increase of dopamine as there isn't a decrease that leads to satisfaction like the example above with hunger and consumption of food. So the dopamine increases the motivation and triggers the energy for you to crave for that drug. Depending on how strong the drug is and how long the "high" lasts it becomes harder for the dopamine to decrease. This triggers the "adaptations, the plastic changes in our brain, for those individuals who are vulnerable, to addiction.
References:
"Brain Science Glossary." Brain Games, Brain Fitness & Brain Training - Fitbrains.com. Web. 01 Jan. 2010. .
"Editor's Choice of Top 10 Videos of 2009 |." Big Think. Web. 02 Jan. 2010. .
"Neurotransmitters - causes, effects, drug, people, used, brain, personality, mood, Definition, Description, Mechanism of impulse transmission." Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders. Web. 02 Jan. 2010
Here is an other video about the Worlds Most Dangerous Drug and how Dopamine plays a major role
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