My new essential question is going to be somewhat in the form of this: How does a potential addict recognize they have the potential to become an addict, and how can it be prevented?

Some drugs, such as Zoloft, have worse withdrawal symptoms than side effects. Zoloft withdrawal can cause jolting electric “zaps”, dizziness, motor instability, extreme nausea, vomiting, high fever, abdominal discomfort, flu symptoms, agitation, anxiety, insomnia, aggression, nightmares, tremor, seizures, and confusion. In some persons, Zoloft withdrawal has become so painful that it lead them to commit suicide rather than face the agony any longer. -http://www.adrugrecall.com

This is problematic because when someone is trying to get off a substance or stop an obssessive activity or thought process, their body is going to react in a negative way. The pain is going to make most people not want to quit their addiction and this presents a problem. If there is way to curb the withdrawal or potentially avoid withdrawal completely, than it will make people more willing to quit. This is definately not the answer to curing addiction at all because there are also many other factors that contribute to reason of addiction and also staying clean, but I believe it will contribute to the process of understanding why people stay addicted and also the process of not going back to addiction.

Senior Exhibition 2009-10

Please complete this form electronically (you can find it as an assignment on aCCeSs) by typing the answers in after each question.  When complete, email the form to your:

• Senior Exhibition Advisor: Mrs. Sharpe
• Team Junior: Angelic
• Mrs. Boyd
• Ms. Pendleton
• Mr. Turner
• Ms. Pringle

The completed form is due no later than Tuesday, November 24.

1. Your name: Miranda Rawson

1. Exhibition title: The Quest to Find Out Why so Many People are Hooked

1. Essential Question: What are the factors that create an addictive personality?  

1. One paragraph description of your proposed product and its relevance in answering the Essential Question.

The product that I am doing is a program that is geared around the individual and their certain addiction. The program will help them get over their addiction in a different way from many step by step programs, and will incorporate many influences from different cultures and people from around the world. The program will first have a personality assessment so the program will meet the individual’s needs and personality before any action is taken place.

1. Who will you talk to as sources for your research? List at least one specific person and explain how he/she is related to your research:

Keith Sudano: Psychologist, Hypnotherapist

Randy Rawson: former addict

1. What printed and electronic resources will you use? List at least three different resources. At least one of these must be a printed resource, not an electronic one. Be specific about web sites, do NOT just list Google or DISCUS:

-         Buzzed

-         The Science of Addiction: From Neurobiology to Treatment

-         Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop?

-         Healing the Addicted Brain: The Revolutionary, Science-Based Alcoholism and Addiction Recovery Program

-         Addiction and Change: How Addictions Develop and Addicted People Recover

-         Slideshow by Dr. Carl Christensen on The Physiology of Addiction

-         Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions

-         The End of My Addiction

-         Alcoholics Anonymous: Big Book

-         www.claudiablack.com

-         Hypnotherapy and Addictions (DVD)

-         Various news sources

-          

1. Where and when will you do your site visit and how is this relevant to your topic?

I will visit some classes on addiction as well as attend a meeting put on by a program to help addicts. This is relevant to my topic because I will be able to see how a program helps people in overcoming their addiction and I will understand more about it.

It was once thought that addiction was a result of being weak-willed, that addicts could stop using drugs if they wanted to. But research has shown that is not the case. In fact , after prolonged use of an addictive substance, the “circuits” in the brain virtually become “rewired.” (Diggins)

When a chemical enters the brain, it is absorbed through a receptor site. When these drugs enter the brain, it is believed that they act like natural chemicals. When the body gets chemicals from another source, such as addictive substances or behaviors, the brain produces much less of its own and becomes dependant on that source.  As the brain gets used to this and adapts, the person’s body builds up tolerance with most likely will continually use and increase the doseage in order to keep the euphoria and good feeling coming. Interesting enough, most addicts report that they never achieve this again, thus the beginning of the cycle. 

If the substance or acitivity is stopped abruptly, it triggers a withdrawal. Symptoms of this can vary in accordance to how long the individual has been on the substance or activity but common symptoms may include anxiety, irritability, increased heart rate, shaking, chills and hot flashes, nausea, cramps and even death.

As a person goes through withdrawal, the body “begs” for more of the addictive drug in order to escape the misery of withdrawal. Understandably giving up the drug is difficult…This inability to stop using the drug is a characteristic of addiction. Although an addicted person may intellectually understand the destructive consequences of addiction, he may not be able to stop the compulsive use of the drug even after the effects of physical withdrawal have passed (Higgins).

This makes me wonder if there was a substitute that was not harmful to the individual that possibly one could use that instead in trying to get off of the addiction, but it seems like that would create a whole different problem.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Addiction-Affects-the-Brain&id=1395448

1. heroin: highly addictive opiate. brain cells can become dependent on this drug to the extent that users need it in order to function in their daily routine. while heroin users starts out with a rush of pleasure, it leaves the user in a fog for many hours after the rush. users soon find that their sole purpose in life is to have more of the drug that their body has become dependant on.
2. marijuana: the parts of the brain that control emotions, memory, and judgment are affected by marijuana.  smoking it can not only weaken short-term memory, but can block information from making it into long term memory. it has also been shown to weaken problem solving ability.
3. alcohol: alcohol is no safer than drugs. alcohol impairs judgment and leads to memory lapses. it can lead to black outs and also distorts vision, shortens coordination. in addition to the brain, it can damage every other organ in the body.
4. inhalants: glue, gasoline, hair spray, and paint thinner are sniffed and the effect of the brain is almost immediate. and while some vapors leave the body quickly, others will remain for a long time. the fatty tissues protecting the nerve cells in the brain are destroyed by inhalant vapors. This slows down or even stops neural transmissions. Effects of inhalants include diminished ability to learn, remember, and solve problems. 
5. ectasy: extended use of this amphetamine causes difficulty differentiating reality and fantasy, and causes problems concentrating. studies have found that ecstasy destroys certain cells in the brain.  while the cells may re-connect after discontinued use of the drug, they don’t re-connect normally. like most drugs, this one impairs memory and can cause paranoia, anxiety, and confusion.

 

http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/

Simple. Though broad, I want to do this. I can touch up on the physiology, psychology and the spiritual side, which I have found is major in all of the successful recovery programs that I have researched. There will be more than enough information to cover and I will be able to talk about more things than just a specific point.

Now, onto some interesting research I have found recently.

 http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23733693-exercise-fanatics-suffer-withdrawal-like-drug-addicts.do 

“Fanatical runners and cyclists are exercise “junkies” who experience the same withdrawal symptoms as heroin addicts when they try to stop, medical findings suggest.”

“Exercise, like drugs of abuse, leads to the release of neurotransmitters such as endorphins and dopamine, which are involved with a sense of reward.”

These too statements taken from the article says alot to me. It doesn’t matter the addiction; excercise, sex, love, nicotine, gambling, heroin…it is doing something to escape or replace a craving for something else. Everything that someone finds pleasure in is going to lead to the release of endorphins and dopamine and other neurotransmitters, which is a pleasuring sense of reward. When someone quits or stops using or doing what they are addicted to, they are going to have withdrawals which is the mind and body rebelling.

More research…

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10563031

“Patients were unable to distinguish between methadone and placebo treatments.”

In this study, scientists were trying to see the acute-on-chronic effects of methadone on drug craving, mood and cognitive and psychomotor functioning in patients on long-term methadone substitution treatment (Bolton). Although they were not aiming to do a test on placebo, it interests me that patients were not able to tells the difference between methadone and placebo treatments. This further convinces me that the mind over rides the body. If an addict believes they are taking another drug when in truth they are not, and this convinces the body that it truly is the drug, does that not show that they mind is all powerful?

http://www.wrf.org/alternative-therapies/power-of-mind-placebo.php

“In the 1950’s angina pectoris, recurrent pain in the chest and left arm due to decreased blood flow to the heart, was commonly treated with surgery.  Rather than doing the customary surgery, which involved tying off the mammary artery, some resourceful doctors cut patients open and then simply sewed them back up again.  The patients who received a sham surgery reported as much relief as the patients who had the full surgery.”

Another example. The patient believed that they were getting a full fledged surgery, but they were just led to believe that they were getting one. The power of the belief that they were getting a surgery to fix their heart actually healed them.

So I got this book to learn more about alcohol and drugs and its pretty cool. The book has alot of information that isn’t biased…tells how the substance goes through your body and how your body reacts to it. This book is called Buzzed by Cynthia Kuhn, PhD, Scott Swartzwelder, PhD, and Wilikie Wilson, PhD of the Duke University Medical Center. I figured that if I am doing a project on addiction, I might as well get to know alot of the substances that people are addicted to in our society. I’m currently in Part I and finished reading about caffeine and alcohol, and now I’m on the ecstasy chapter. Found a really interesting fact in the alcohol section: “Recent studies suggest that young people may respond quite differently from adults to alcohol. Although the research is still developing, it looks like alcohol may impair learning more in adolescents, but be less potent at making them sleepy…” (pg. 34). So there is a unique risk to adolescents who are addicted to alcohol, which makes sense because adolscent’s brains are not as developed. I don’t know if this has much to do with my project, but I just thought it was interesting.

Also found another interesting fact on a website that has a compliation of articles:

“According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, 32 percent of people who try tobacco become dependent, as do 23 percent of those who try heroin, 17 percent who try cocaine, 15 percent who try alcohol and 9 percent who try marijuana.” http://www.medrants.com/archives/1500 

So maybe there is something that is triggered in the brain when someone that has never used before tries a substance and they get addicted…maybe it is different for different people? Maybe it is different for people who need an escape, or believe they do, and when they try a drug it makes them relieved of their certain problems while they are high.

“Every addictive substance, according to a report this month in The New England Journal of Medicine, induces pleasant states or relieves distress.” http://www.medrants.com/archives/1500 

This statistic says to me, that a high or pleasant state is the main reason that people become addicted…but I am not going to conclude anything until I get all the information that I feel that I need.

I did find some websites that will hopefully help me in understanding really what I am trying to do. Also doing some looking in the library for books that will give me more info…just would really like to some kind of experiment but don’t know exactly what to do?

All in all, I just need to learn more about the subject I’m doing before I jump into any conclusions. So, I am now going to try and learn everything I can about the Physiological, Psychological and psychospiritual aspects of addiction. I want to find out different opinions and theories about these aspects from all types of people…Right now I am listening to a lecture on the physiology of addiction by Carl Christensen, MD PhD..very interesting….turns out that the biological children of alcoholics have more of risk to become alcoholics, even if you are raised by a different family…and future alcoholics are able to drink more than their peers.  Also talks about polysubstance abuse or cross addiction which is shown by a man in the slide had to give up one drug so he switched to another…talks also about the pleasure center (which in addicts is abnormal) in the brain, as well as how addicts have abnormal responses to visual cues of their addictions…I definately will do more research on that…

Will finish the slideshow when I get home and have time. Excited to learn more about this subject, it is so fascinating!

My senior exhibition project is on the real reason why we become addicted I am going to find if we are addicted to things because it is in our nature, we voluntarily become hooked, or is it the world we live in that influences us to become addicted. The reason why I want to do this is not only because it interests me, but because I have personal experience with addiction and how it can bring problems to relationships and families. I want to help people (as well as myself) understand why we become addicted to things and how it can be treated. Through extensive research, I will determine a conclusion and answer to this question, and this does not have to be a simple answer. When I do, I will then construct a program, with the help of my experts, customized to the certain individual that will help them get over their addiction.