Our brains are 'wired' for addiction

Addicts are frowned upon in our society, whether it be drug users, alcoholics or something else, but recent research shows that it's actually not their fault!


Your brain is the information centre of your body. It controls what you do and many things affect your thought process, eg. people around you, your knowledge etc.

Addiction is one of the most common health problems around the world. From heroin addicts to alcoholics to chocoholics, you are bound to have something which floats your boat. (Or in the case of an addict, make it fly)

Testing


Researchers over a Cambridge did a study on a 2 groups of people, 1 were pairs of siblings where one was an addict, the other a non-addict. The other group acted as a control and had unrelated people.

The 2 groups of people were set a task to stop a particular action.

The group of siblings took significantly longer than the control group, including the non-addicts. 

This suggest that self control is hereditary, passed down from genes. This explains why both siblings took longer.


What about the brain changes?


The group of siblings had a larger grey area of the brain of the part which is strongly related to addiction.

However


It all becomes more complicated when you throw in other factors such as other disorder eg. ADHD.

In the case of ADHD, stimuli the person receives is A LOT harder to be ignored, and therefore succumbs to the craving.

This still needs a lot more research, but just because your brain is wired for addiction doesn't mean you have to follow it. Drug addiction is a dark path, and one 'go' may spiral your life out of direction.

This image shows the aftermath of a woman doing meth for 4 years.

It's not cool, just don't do it!