Tag Archives: drug

Brain is Smoking Tobacco.

“Let’s smoke, I am stressed out” may be what you have said, but you had smoked two packs for the past 15 hours.  This might describe a life of some university students. Through education and experience, you have learned that the substance abuse certainly leads to bad endings in every way. Low GPA is not only the result that would stir every student on a personal level, but also it is a destructive disorder that ruins your health, your social life, and your brain function.

Drug addiction is a chronic disorder that involves the compulsive drug-seeking and -taking behaviors. Now, you are determined to quit because it is 2017 now, and all your friends are stopping. Soon all your friends have quit, but your addiction even worsens because drug withdrawal strengthens your dependence. You wonder why because you have used same methods.

Addiction has many variables: personal and biological elements. Various reasons such as pleasure, stress, peer pressure , or curiosity may have started this behavior. It might be a matter of morale or willpower. Later, an addiction becomes a mental problem because an addiction hard-wires our brain to yearn and take more and more. Addiction involves modifying our brain chemistry. Brain is a center of our consciousness and it is composed of interconnected network of neuronal cells. The cells process and relay signals so we can respond to the environmental stimuli. A reward system in brain chiefly incorporates the release of the neurotransmitter (NT) called dopamine.

TED talk by Nora, Volkow, talk on effect of addiction on brain

Dopamine is a messenger chemical that infuses motivation and directs a set of behaviors towards a rewarding experience. The cells would carry a motivation signal as electrical signal by receptor-NT relationship. One cell receives NT by its specific receptor and carries an electrical signal to other cell, releasing a NT. Nicotine, bona-fide  psychoactive agent, reinforces the reward system leading to addiction. A sustained tobacco use desensitizes the effect of chemical in the brain, hence weakening the a self- regulation. Mental disorder has a deep link with the genetics, not only with the environment. Since biology is dictated by the DNA, there would be some credibility to study the effect of gene in smoking behavior pattern. According to 2003 review article in reputable NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), Drs. Jordi Cami and Magi Farre have pointed out that nicotine dependence is linked to one version of dopamine receptor gene, named to be TaqIA D2.

In conclusion, a chemical influences our behavior because a brain is composed of cells. We have different susceptibility to this chemical cue because we all carry different DNA, even identical twins!!

-Jiwon Kim-