A life of drug abuse and understanding

My father is a person that´s have been through a tough life. That´s why, we could say that for masking his own pain (a sort of
PTSD), because he´s had not proper psychological counselling to help him at the time, he when down the road of drugs and
alcohol. That is why, I decided to talk about how drug abuse affects the nervous system and how that has impacted his everyday
life and relationships.

Drug abuse, as well as other types of habits (chunks), began as isolated actions. We will develop the concept of chunk, later.

The responsible to choose if we take or do something is the basal ganglia, the action selector center of the CNS (central nervous
system). A structure of the forebrain, with his core structures, striatum, and pallidum, located in the Telencephalon. Even if the
main point of this structure is to help you with action selection and to inhibited the competing mouvements for a clean motor
result (with the help of his core structures and two type pathways : direct and indirect pathway) It´s also filled the function of
a learning machine, that´s allows you to know what´s the effect of the action that it selected ? That type of knowledge is called
operational learning and it´s helped the basal ganglia to acknowledge if the outcome of that action is more likely to happen
again or not.

So, how does the operating learning system works? First of all, the sensory information (stimuli) reaches the cerebral cortex
from the spinal cord. Once this information arrives to the cerebral cortex, the stimuli leads to an action through the basal
ganglia. If that action is « reward » positively, it´s likely to happen again. It´s like you put a « special line » between the stimulus
and the action that gave you a positive effect. Actions that produce positive results are reinforced. In this situation, a
reinforcement takes the appearance of a craving. It´s like "That makes me feel good, so I want more." The basal ganglia will
remember how this made you feel and that would facilitate the transmission of the message, next time. The delay between the
action and the outcome will be shorter. And it´s would do the complete opposite when the outcome is negative. An optimal
operation of this circuit in both scenarios depends very much in a neurotransmitter: dopamine. Contrary to what we think: "This
neurotransmitter takes care of the reward system”. Dopamine in this context, will be responsible for cravings. Craving is such
a more evolutionary and advantageous state of mind and, are gonna facilitate actions that have good outcomes. This circuit is
very necessary, I will say even essential for some actions of the everyday life like « I'm hungry, I eat something”. That action
by positive outcome and repetition (habit) becomes more and more automatic behavior a.k.a habit. They get triggered and
outcome-independent and can lead to dependence like in the case of drug abuse. An outcome-independent trigger is a stimulus
that doesn´t matter if it´s makes you feel good or bad, you continue to do it.

I remember when my father would sit at the table crying, until one day, a friend offered him a glass of wine and a cigarette ...
That was where it all started and from there, it only went downhill. It was very hard for me to see someone who I loved so
badly, to vanish before my eyes. I remember as a child, I hated him for breaking up our family. I was truly angry and did not
understand why he did what he did or behaved as he behaved.

Thanks to this course, I´ve a better understanding of why he can´t stop his drug abuse situation. It´s, also, allowed me to form
a more understanding perception about it and recognizing that´s it not entirely his fault, it´s a neurological issue too. People
becomes addicted to drugs because intense messages of cravings are rapidly released by the nervous system into the brain, and
it´s a unconscious behavior such as habits. This is a neuropsychological phenomenon that he can´t break after all these years
of heavy consumption of this type of product, and I get it. Even if he tries his hard and knows that he´s damaging his life and
relationships as he goes down this pathway that´s he chose for dealing with his pain and grief. So, I thank this course and
Professor Peggy Mason for giving me the tools to understand and nurture my knowledge on the subject, as well as in many
other topics, and awaken my sense of curiosity beyond belief. To remind me why I chose to follow this career path in
neuropsychology, not only out of self-interest, but also to help people like my dad and give the necessary support, understanding
and light to the families of those affected by the disease.