PSYC62H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Thalamus, Nicotine, Drug Enforcement Administration
Chapter 5: Drugs of Abuse
Regulatory Agencies and Drug Classification
• Can characterize drugs by their legal status
• Laws limit availability of drugs deemed to have significant risk of abuse
• Harrison Narcotics Act
o Restricted sale of narcotics (primarily opioid drugs) to medical uses
o Law enforcement officials interpreted these medical uses to exclude treating
withdrawal symptoms in opioid dependence
• Controlled Substances Act
o First described drugs of abuse as controlled substances
o Classification system of controlled substances schedules
▪ Ranking drugs by abuse potential and proven medical use
• U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
o Uses 5 schedules to categorize drugs of abuse
▪ Lower #s = greater abuse potential than higher schedule #s
• Harm
o Physical harm
o Addiction
o Societal harm
• Physical harm
o Damage to body
• Addiction
o Inability to stop taking a drug
• Societal harm
o Ranges from harm to family and other social relationships to costs associated with
health care and law enforcement
Clinical Definitions and the Diagnosis of Drug Addiction
• Early clinical definitions of addiction focused on development of :
o Tolerance
o Physical dependence
o Craving
• Craving: strong urge to use a drug
• Tolerance : adaptation to a drug that requires user to take escalating doses to achieve
desired drug effects
• Dependence: person needs drug to function normally and when removal of the drug causes
withdrawal symptoms
• Relapse: return to chronic drug use state that meets the clinical features of a substance use
disorder
• DSM refers to addiction as a substance use disorder : cluster of cognitive, behavioural, and
physiological symptoms indicating that the indv continues using the substance despite
significant substance-related problems
o Recognizes that drug use may continue despite the user’s knowledge of
physical/psychological harm to oneself and toll the drug takes on valuable social
relationships and occupational activities
• Remission
o Early remission: indv meeting none of the criteria for a substance use disorder for a
period of few months to less than a year
o Sustained remission: meeting none of those criteria for a year or longer
o Maintenance therapy: indv doesn’t meet criteria for a substance use disorder while
indv is participating in a treatment program
o Controlled environment: living in an environment where drugs aren’t available
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Theoretical Models and the Features of Drug Addiction
• Attempt to characterize and explain compulsive drug use
→ Disease Model of Drug Addiction
• Disease model characterizes drug addiction as a disease
• Determine how drugs of abuse may interrupt, cease, or disrupt functions in the body
• Those who advocate this model affirm that the substance serves as the cause of disease
that leads to long-lasting changes to biological processes
→ Associative Learning Principles Used in Addiction Models
• Associative learning: organism learns associations b/w stimuli or b/w behaviours and stimuli
o Much of it comes from operant/classical conditioning
• Reinforcement: resulting consequence from a response increases the frequency of future
responses
o Negative reinforcement: removal of a stimulus
o Positive reinforcement: addition of a stimulus
• Extinction: decline in responding as result of failing to achieve reinforcers
• Conditioned stimulus: presenting stimuli in the presence of a stimulus involved in an
associative learning process
• Discriminative stimulus: stimulus that when present, signals availability of reinforcement
• Unconditioned stimulus: stimulus that elicits a reflexive response (unconditioned response)
o Ex: food = unconditioned stimuli; salivation = unconditioned response
• Neutral stimuli can become a conditioned stimulus when paired with unconditioned stimulus
enough
• Latent inhibition: resistant or slower conditioning process that occurs from using a familiar
stimulus as neutral stimulus in associative learning process
• Incentive salience: attribution of salient motivational value to otherwise neutral stimuli
o Can occur through associations of neutral stimuli with rewarding stimuli
• Goal-directed behaviour: when organism engages in learned behaviours in order to
achieve a desired goal
o Conditioned association b/w response and outcomes govern goal-directed behaviour
→ Drive Theory of Drug Addiction
• Drug-addicted indvs developed a drive to achieve a drug’s positive reinforcing effects
• Motivation to seek drug’s effects
• Withdrawal effects from a drug serve to strengthen an indv’s motivation to obtain and use
the drug
→ Opponent-Process Theory of Drug Addiction
• Effects of a drug are automatically counteracted by opposing actions in the body
• Counteracting actions may serve to attain homeostasis or return brain to normal functioning
• Sum of drug’s effects and its opposing processes defines an indv’s subjective experience
o If drug’s effects outweigh those from opposing processes, then an indv will
experience drug’s effects
o If effects generated from opposing processes significantly outweigh drug effects,
then an indv will experience withdrawal effects
• Considers that addictive drug use occurs partly to remove or prevent withdrawal symptoms
→ negative reinforcement
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Inability to stop taking a drug: societal harm, ranges from harm to family and other social relationships to costs associated with health care and law enforcement. Theoretical models and the features of drug addiction: attempt to characterize and explain compulsive drug use. If drug"s effects outweigh those from opposing processes, then an indv will experience drug"s effects. If effects generated from opposing processes significantly outweigh drug effects, then an indv will experience withdrawal effects: considers that addictive drug use occurs partly to remove or prevent withdrawal symptoms. Incentivized stimuli may serve as reminders of former drug use: when encountered implicitly engage motivational states for drug use. Intracranial self-stimulation: organism"s responses activate a brain electrode, assumption that responding continues bc the electrode produces reinforcing effects. Drug abuse and changes to learning and memory systems: chronic administration of an abused drug leads to changes in brain systems especially involved in learning and memory.
