Drugs of abuse can change our mood by altering our natural brain chemistry.  Each person has a unique biological response to every drug they take. (Scientists call this biological individuality). In other words, the same drug can and probably makes two different people experience two different feelings.  This is because the same drug taken in the same dose can affect different people in different ways.

Although some drugs are more addictive than others, drug abuse and addiction do not “live in” the mood altering substance. Abuse and addiction result from a complex interaction between the drug and the brain chemistry of the person taking the drug.

Addiction results from a complex interaction
 between the drug and the brain chemistry 
of the person taking the drug.

Some people are biologically predisposed to have powerful and pleasant responses to one or more drugs, others are not.  Those who have powerful and pleasant responses to mind altering drugs are more likely to use them more frequently.

These powerful and pleasant feelings occur because the drug of abuse causes a rapid release of pleasure chemicals in the brain.  This surge of pleasure chemicals creates intense pleasure, which is called euphoria.

When you take a substance and feel euphoric, you are drunk or stoned. The high levels of pleasure chemicals make you feel exceptionally good, very powerful, capable, and essentially fearless. As a result, there is a good reason to want to use more. This euphoric feeling is so good that most people want to feel it repeatedly, and as often as possible.

Most people experiment with different kinds of alcoholic beverages and different kinds of drugs.  They find that some drugs make them feel better than others.  In other words, they find a drug of choice.  They find one specific drug that they prefer to use because it causes a rapid, powerful, and pleasurable mood altering response.  Some people have one drug of choice, and some have many.

The brains of some people will not produce a deluge of pleasure chemicals in their brain no matter what drug they use.  As a result, they never find a drug of choice.  Their brains resist the mood altering effects of most drugs.  When they use them, they experience one of two things: either nothing much happens or they start to feel bad.  Because these people usually find using alcohol or drugs to be a neutral or unpleasant experience, they do not look forward to using alcohol or other drugs and when they do use,  they use very little because they either don’t feel good or they quickly start to feel bad.  If they use at all, they do so infrequently and tend to use very small quantities to avoid the unpleasant effects.  For obvious reasons, people who are biologically unable to develop a drug of choice are at low risk for abuse and addiction.

The opposite is also true. For people who experience an intense release of pleasure chemicals when they use a drug, they want to keep using it and as a result are at a high risk of using the drug regularly, heavily.  They are also at higher risk of abusing the drug and getting addicted.  In the next Gorski Blog I’ll explain the difference between an addictive brain response and a normal brain response.

Here is the critical point that I want you to remember.  I want you to burn this idea deeply into your consciousness: Mind-altering drugs directly affect our brains and can cause brain damage. They make us feel better by disrupting the normal functioning of our brain, but we always pay a price.

Mind-altering drugs can cause brain damage. 
They make us feel better by disrupting the normal functioning of our brain. 
But we always pay a price.

Any time we take alcohol or other drugs into our bodies, we are tampering with the chemical balance of our brains.  The brain is the most important and a complex organ in the body.  Disrupting the way it works by using alcohol and other drugs can be dangerous.

Using alcohol or other drugs is like putting your brain in a bucket and pouring a combination of anesthetics and acid over it.  While the acid is damaging the brain, the anesthetic is blocking out the pain.  As a result, we feel fine, at least until the drug wears off. Once the drug wears off, we have difficulty functioning normally. The brain dysfunction associated with the use of alcohol and drugs can make it difficult to think clearly, numb and distort our feelings and emotions.

This will make our behavior difficult to control.  This condition is in its early stages and is called Post Acute Withdrawal; (PAW).  In its later stages, it can develop into permanent brain dysfunction.

Here is another thing to consider.  Some people have brains that are sensitive to and easily damaged by alcohol and other drugs.  If you are one of these unfortunate people, using drugs will do a lot of damage to your brain in a very short period of time. As a result, you will have to pay a higher price in the future for the good feelings you are getting today.

Some people have brains that are sensitive to 
and easily damaged by alcohol and other drugs.

If you are using alcohol or other drugs to handle your problems or to make you feel better, it is important to keep one thing in mind:  Life does not give free rides. There is always a price to pay.  We can pay now by stopping our use of alcohol any other drugs or we can pay later by having to deal with the pain and dysfunction of addiction.

The problem is that not everyone responds the same way to any drug.  The effect of all drug use, even medicines that don’t make us high, is a directly result of both the drug we take, and how our own unique brain chemistry responds to that drug.  Since each of our brains our different, no one will experience the exact same effect from the same drug.  In the next Gorski Blog, we will look at how this individual response to a drug can cause us to really like and crave some drugs,  feel little or no effect by others, and not like the effect of still other drugs.