Understanding Addiction Research

Drug abuse is known as a disorder and is the habit of taking addictive or illegal drugs. When doing too many drugs, it causes the brain to change and causes drug addiction which creates a feeling of need and dependency on drug use. Although others would like to believe that the drug user should just change their behavior, they don't realize that even with the will to do so, it is quite difficult. Since one time is usually all it takes to get you hooked on a drug, the amount of people doing them have started to rise. During the year of 2013, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime got a total estimate of 246 million people worldwide that were found to be using drugs(“2015 World Drug Report…”). In the same year, the National Institute on

According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, brain images studies have shown changes in areas of the brain that effect judgment, memory, decision making, and behavior control(“Understanding Addiction”). It is believed that due to these changes, it is able to explain the rash behavior of those with an addiction. There are many factors that appear when discussing the susceptibility each person has to addiction. Some of the common risk factors are whether or not they had aggressive behavior during their childhood, had little parental supervision, or were living at poverty level. A person's genetics is another risk inducer and as stated by the National Institute on Drug Abuse it counts for about 40 to 60% of how affected the person is able to get by addiction(“Drug Abuse and Addiction”). Drug addiction is seen as a disease and like most diseases, there are many types of treatment for

This can be done in various ways such as getting parents to be more alert of their teen, getting them into activities of their interests, or have discussions on peer pressure with them but one method that has seemed to work so far has been drug abuse prevention programs. A study found by the National Institute on Drug Abuse was able to discover that it has been scientifically proven to show positive results and has been able to lessen the use of illicit drugs in youth(“Preventing Drug Abuse…”). There are three different types of programs which are universal, selective, and indicated. In the universal program it speaks about protection and risk factors to children in a place like a school or community while in a selective program it focuses on children who are at high risk and those in the indicated program are those who are already using drugs. One research done by the American Psychological Association found a five year study of a total of 48 funded community substance abuse prevention programs that stated a drop of 10% in drug use near the end of the program and a 22% drop a couple months afterwards(“Researchers examine success…”). As they went along with these programs, they recorded that the boys had a more positive reaction to interaction with their peers while the girls responded better to behavioral life