gotta love those boffins at Harvard.... flat earthers take note....
http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain.htm
In the 1930s, when researchers first began to investigate what caused addictive behavior, they believed that people who developed addictions were somehow morally flawed or lacking in willpower.
Overcoming addiction, they thought, involved punishing miscreants or, alternately, encouraging them to muster the will to break a habit.
The scientific consensus has changed since then.
Today we recognize addiction as a chronic disease that changes both brain structure and function.
Just as cardiovascular disease damages the heart and diabetes impairs the pancreas, addiction hijacks the brain.
This happens as the brain goes through a series of changes, beginning with recognition of pleasure and ending with a drive toward compulsive behavior.
Over time, the brain adapts in a way that actually makes the sought-after substance or activity less pleasurable.
In nature, rewards usually come only with time and effort.
Addictive drugs and behaviors provide a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters.
Our brains do not have an easy way to withstand the onslaught.
Addictive drugs, for example, can release two to 10 times the amount of dopamine that natural rewards do, and they do it more quickly and more reliably.
In a person who becomes addicted, brain receptors become overwhelmed.
The brain responds by producing less dopamine or eliminating dopamine receptors—an adaptation similar to turning the volume down on a loudspeaker when noise becomes too loud.
As a result of these adaptations, dopamine has less impact on the brain’s reward center.
People who develop an addiction typically find that, in time, the desired substance no longer gives them as much pleasure.
They have to take more of it to obtain the same dopamine “high” because their brains have adapted—an effect known as tolerance.
Compulsion takes over
At this point, compulsion takes over.
The pleasure associated with an addictive drug or behavior subsides—and yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to recreate it (the wanting) persists.
It’s as though the normal machinery of motivation is no longer functioning.
The learning process mentioned earlier also comes into play.
The hippocampus and the amygdala store information about environmental cues associated with the desired substance, so that it can be located again.
These memories help create a conditioned response—intense craving—whenever the person encounters those environmental cues.
Cravings contribute not only to addiction but to relapse after a hard-won sobriety.
A person addicted to heroin may be in danger of relapse when he sees a hypodermic needle, for example, while another person might start to drink again after seeing a bottle of whiskey.
Conditioned learning helps explain why people who develop an addiction risk relapse even after years of abstinence.
atheism is a non prophet organization
