BAB-E-REHMAT EDUCATIONAL TRUST’S

St. Mary’s Arts, Science &

Commerce Sr. College
Permanently Affiliated to University of Mumbai
Fakir Shah Baba Hill Road, Khadi Machine, Kausa Mumbra, Thane – 400612. (MS)
A PROJECT REPORT ENTITLED

“EFFECT OF DRUG ADDICTION”

SUBMITTED BY

Class: FYBSC

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

Prof. Masoombi Shaikh
FOUNDATION COURSE
SEMESTER I
YEAR 2023 – 24
From,

F.Y.B.SC

ROLL NO 22

To,
Prof. Masoombi Shaikh
St. Mary’s Arts, Science & Commerce Sr. College Kausa Mumbra, Dist. Thane
400612
Sub: Application for FC Project on EFFECT OF DRUG ADDICTION
Dear Madam,

As per the part of foundation course syllabus student of St. Mary’s Arts, Science &
Commerce Sr. College, we are required to do a group project. So regarding to this, we
kindly request you to permit one of our group of 5 students from F.Y.BSC . We want
approval to do work for related topic on EFFECT OF DRUG ADDICTION under
your concern and guidance.

We want your instruction it should be highly appreciated by us.

Teacher’s Sign
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express our special thanks of gratitude to our teacher

Prof. Masoombi Shaikh who gave us the golden opportunity to do this

wonderful project on the topic EFFECT OF DRUG ADDICTION

which also helped us in doing lot of research and we come to know about

so many things we are really thankful to them.

Second we would also like to thank our parents and friends who helped

us a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time frame.

 INDEX

S.R PAGE
PARTICULARS REMARKS
NO NO

1 INTRODUCTION 5-6

HISTORY 7-8

2 SYMPTOMS 9

3 DEFINITIONS 10

4 CAUSES 11-13

5 RISK FACTORS 14-16

6 CASE STUDY OF DRUG ADDICT 17-19

9 CONCLUSIONS 20
INTRODUCTION

Drug addiction, also called substance use disorder, is a disease that affects a person's
brain and behavior and leads to an inability to control the use of a legal or illegal drug
or medicine. Substances such as alcohol, marijuana and nicotine also are considered
drugs. When you're addicted, you may continue using the drug despite the harm it
causes.

Drug addiction can start with experimental use of a recreational drug in social
situations, and, for some people, the drug use becomes more frequent. For others,
particularly with opioids, drug addiction begins when they take prescribed medicines
or receive them from others who have prescriptions.

The risk of addiction and how fast you become addicted varies by drug. Some drugs,
such as opioid painkillers, have a higher risk and cause addiction more quickly than
others.

As time passes, you may need larger doses of the drug to get high. Soon you may
need the drug just to feel good. As your drug use increases, you may find that it's
increasingly difficult to go without the drug. Attempts to stop drug use may cause
intense cravings and make you feel physically ill. These are called withdrawal
symptoms.
Help from your health care provider, family, friends, support groups or an organized
treatment program can help you overcome your drug addiction and stay drug-free.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense
urge to use a drug or engage in a behaviour that produces natural reward, despite
substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use often alters
brain function in ways that perpetuate craving, and weakens (but does not completely
negate) self-control.

This phenomenon – drugs reshaping brain function – has led to an understanding of

addiction as a brain disorder with a complex variety of psychosocial as well as
neurobiological (and thus involuntary)[a] factors that are implicated in addiction's
development.

Classic signs of addiction include compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli,

preoccupation with substances or behavior, and continued use despite negative
consequences. Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically
characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward), coupled with delayed
deleterious effects (long-term costs).

Examples of drug (or more generally, substance) addictions include alcoholism,

marijuana addiction, amphetamine addiction, cocaine addiction, nicotine addiction,
opioid addiction, and eating or food addiction.

Behavioral addictions may include gambling addiction, shopping addiction, stalking,

internet addiction, social media addiction, obsessive–compulsive disorder, video game
addiction and sexual addiction. The DSM-5 and ICD-10 only recognize gambling
addictions as behavioral addictions, but the ICD-11 also recognizes gaming
addictions.
HISTORY
According to the client he started stealing for about 18 years ago. At the start he just
use to steal the things that were client’s needs, as according to him he belongs to a
lower middle class family and his parents cannot fulfill his expenditures.

With time stealing become more like a habit of the client than the need and he
habitually started stealing as according to him he was so much use to of it, and was
unable to get rid of his stealing habit. According to client his home atmosphere was
very distant, and was not communicative.

Other than his parents were very neglecting, and no attention was provided to the
children, so the client started to make friendships outside home, soon he made a group
of friends and to make adjustment in it he started following their rituals. Client really
started enjoying their company. He uses to go to snooker club and internet café with
his friends and spend hours there.

According to the client he seeks pleasure and excitement in everything that he does
with his friends. He had realized that his company is not good and appreciated by
society, but he don’t want to leave then as he was getting all the emotional and social
support from them, and don’t wanted to lose the support and break the circle at any
cost.

Client’s friends were already involved in several unethical acts that were stealing,
trafficking goods, and In order to please his friends, he did whatever was asked to him
to do. He started smoking cigarette in 2003 under the influence of his company, as
once client’s father scolded him when he came to know about his bad company, client
got very dishearten, and to gain some emotional support he went to his friends, who
offered him cigarette, and client accepted it.
With time as his tolerance developed with smoking, he moved a step forward and
stopped smoking as for him it was not the source of relief, and pleasure for him. In
2005, he started taking Hash, he use to take it in friend’s gathering, as he was already
vulnerable of it. Client reported that he used hash for about 3- 4 years. In this time, the
client.

established a relationship with a girl. According to the client, that was the best time of
his life when he got emotionally attached with a girl to whom he decided that he will
marry in the future, but unfortunately the relationship lasted for 4 years, and they had
a break-up. Now it’s been 3 years of client’s breakup but he is unable to forget her,
and also is unable to move forward in life. After the break up in 2012, he stopped
taking hash and started taking heroine that provided him more relief than hash, as he
reported.

He took heroine for 2 years than shifted to chemical addiction in 2014, in which he
use to inject anti- depressive and anti- histamine, medicines in his body, that made his
condition worst. Keeping in view client’s day by day progressing problem he was
taken to Fountain House by his father, where he may not get access to any kind of
drug. In the starting time of client in Fountain House, he reported the symptoms of
experience drowsiness, restlessness, muscle tension, somatic pains, laziness, nausea,
fever, and have severe carving for drug but currently the client seems energetic,
motivated, and a little craving of drug is reported by him.
SYMPTOMS

Drug addiction symptoms or behaviors include, among others:

 Feeling that you have to use the drug regularly — daily or even several times a
day

 Having intense urges for the drug that block out any other thoughts

 Over time, needing more of the drug to get the same effect

 Taking larger amounts of the drug over a longer period of time than you
intended

 Making certain that you maintain a supply of the drug

 Spending money on the drug, even though you can't afford it

 Not meeting obligations and work responsibilities, or cutting back on social or

recreational activities because of drug use

 Continuing to use the drug, even though you know it's causing problems in
your life or causing you physical or psychological harm

 Doing things to get the drug that you normally wouldn't do, such as stealing

 Driving or doing other risky activities when you're under the influence of the
drug

 Spending a good deal of time getting the drug, using the drug or recovering
from the effects of the drug

 Failing in your attempts to stop using the drug

 Experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you attempt to stop taking the drug
DEFINITIONS
 "Addiction" and "addictive behaviour" are polysemes denoting a category of
mental disorders, of neuropsychological symptoms, or of merely
maladaptive/harmful habits and lifestyles. A common use of "addiction" in
medicine is for neuropsychological symptoms denoting pervasive/excessive
and intense urges to engage in a category of behavioral compulsions or
impulses towards sensory rewards (e.g. alcohol, betel quid, drugs, sex,
gambling, video gaming).

 Addictive disorders or addiction disorders are mental disorders involving high

intensities of addictions (as neuropsychological symptoms) that induce
functional disabilities (i.e. limit subjects’ social/family and occupational
activities); the two categories of such disorders are substance-use addictions
and behavioral addictions.

 However, there is no agreement on the exact definition of addiction in

medicine. Indeed, Volkow et al. (2016) report that the DSM-5 defines
addictions as the most severe degree of the addictive disorders, due to
pervasive/excessive substance-use or behavioural compulsions/impulses. It is
a definition that many scientific papers and reports use.
CAUSES
 Personality theories
 Personality theories of addiction are psychological models that associate
personality traits or modes of thinking (i.e., affective states) with an
individual's proclivity for developing an addiction. Data analysis demonstrates
that psychological profiles of drug users and non-users have significant
differences and the psychological predisposition to using different drugs may
be different. Models of addiction risk that have been proposed in psychology
literature include:

 Neuropsychology
 The transtheoretical model of change (TTM) can point to how someone may
be conceptualizing their addiction and the thoughts around it, including not
being aware of their addiction.
 Cognitive control and stimulus control, which is associated with operant and
classical conditioning, represent opposite processes (i.e., internal vs external
or environmental, respectively) that compete over the control of an
individual's elicited behaviors. Cognitive control, and particularly inhibitory
 control over behavior, is impaired in both addiction and attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.

 Stimulus control of behavior

 In operant conditioning, behavior is influenced by outside stimulus, such as a
drug. The operant conditioning theory of learning is useful in understanding
why the mood-altering or stimulating consequences of drug use can reinforce
continued use (an example of positive reinforcement) and why the addicted
person seeks to avoid withdrawal through continued use (an example of
negative reinforcement). Stimulus control is using the absence of the stimulus
or presence of a reward to influence the resulting behavior.

 Cognitive control of behavior

 Cognitive control is the intentional selection of thoughts, behaviors, and
emotions, based on our environment. It has been shown that drugs alter the
way our brains function, and its structure. Cognitive functions such as
learning, memory, and impulse control, are affected by drugs. These effects
promote drug use, as well as hinder the ability to abstain from it. The increase
in dopamine release is prominent in drug use, specifically in the ventral
striatum and the nucleus accumbens. Dopamine is responsible for producing
pleasurable feelings, as well driving us to perform important life activities.
 Cognitive control of behavior
 Cognitive control is the intentional selection of thoughts, behaviors, and
emotions, based on our environment. It has been shown that drugs alter the
way our brains function, and its structure. Cognitive functions such as
learning, memory, and impulse control, are affected by drugs. These effects
promote drug use, as well as hinder the ability to abstain from it.

 The increase in dopamine release is prominent in drug use, specifically in the

ventral striatum and the nucleus accumbens. Dopamine is responsible for
producing pleasurable feelings, as well driving us to perform important life
activities. Addictive drugs cause a significant increase in this reward system,
causing a large increase in dopamine signaling as well as increase in reward-
seeking behavior, in turn motivating drug use.

 This promotes the development of a maladaptive drug to stimulus relationship.

Early drug use leads to these maladaptive associations, later affecting
cognitive processes used for coping, which are needed to successfully abstain
from them.
RISK FACTORS
A number of genetic and environmental risk factors exist for developing an addiction.
Genetic and environmental risk factors each account for roughly half of an
individual's risk for developing an addiction; the contribution from epigenetic risk
factors to the total risk is unknown.

Even in individuals with a relatively low genetic risk, exposure to sufficiently high
doses of an addictive drug for a long period of time (e.g., weeks–months) can result in
an addiction. Adverse childhood events are associated with negative health outcomes,
such as substance use disorder. Childhood abuse or exposure to violent crime is
related to developing a mood or anxiety disorder, as well as a substance dependence
risk.
Genetic factors

Genetic factors, along with socio-environmental (e.g., psychosocial) factors, have

been established as significant contributors to addiction vulnerability. Studies done on
350 hospitalized drug-dependent patients showed that over half met the criteria for
alcohol abuse, with a role of familial factors being prevalent. Genetic factors account
for 40–60% of the risk factors for alcoholism. Similar rates of heritability for other
types of drug addiction have been indicated, specifically in genes that encode the
Alpha5 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor.

Environmental Factors

Environmental risk factors for addiction are the experiences of an individual during
their lifetime that interact with the individual's genetic composition to increase or
decrease his or her vulnerability to addiction. For example, after the nationwide
outbreak of COVID-19, more people quit (vs. started) smoking; and smokers, on
average, reduced the quantity of cigarettes they consumed. More generally, a number
of different environmental factors have been implicated as risk factors for addiction,
including various psychosocial stressors.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and studies cite lack of parental
supervision, the prevalence of peer substance use, substance availability, and poverty
as risk factors for substance use among children and adolescents. The brain disease
model of addiction posits that an individual's exposure to an addictive drug is the
most significant environmental risk factor for addiction. Many researchers, including
neuroscientists, indicate that the brain disease model presents a misleading,
incomplete, and potentially detrimental explanation of addiction.

Social Control Theory

According to Travis Hirschi's social control theory, adolescents with stronger

attachments to family, religious, academic, and other social institutions are less likely
to engage in delinquent and maladaptive behavior such as drug and alcohol use
leading to addiction.

• Age

• Adolescence represents a period of increased vulnerability for developing an

addiction. In adolescence, the incentive-rewards systems in the brain mature
well before the cognitive control center. This consequentially grants the
incentive-rewards systems a disproportionate amount of power in the
behavioral decision-making process. Therefore, adolescents are increasingly
likely to act on their impulses and engage in risky, potentially addicting
behavior before considering the consequences. Not only are adolescents more
likely to initiate and maintain drug use, but once addicted they are more
resistant to treatment and more liable to relapse.

• Comorbid disorders

• Individuals with comorbid (i.e., co-occurring) mental health disorders such as

depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or post-
traumatic stress disorder are more likely to develop substance use disorders.
The NIDA cites early aggressive behavior as a risk factor for substance use.
The National Bureau of Economic Research found that there is a "definite
connection between mental illness and the use of addictive substances" and a
majority of mental health patients participate in the use of these substances:
38% alcohol, 44% cocaine, and 40% cigarettes.

• Epigenetic
 • Epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes that do not involve
alterations in the DNA sequence. Illicit drug use has been found to cause
epigenetic changes in DNA methylation, as well as chromatin remodeling. The
epigenetic state of chromatin may pose as a risk for the development of
substance addictions. It has been found that emotional stressors, as well as
social adversities may lead to an initial epigenetic response, which causes an
alteration to the reward-signalling pathways. This change may predispose one
to experience a positive response to drug use.

• Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance

• Epigenetic genes and their products (e.g., proteins) are the key components
through which environmental influences can affect the genes of an individual:
they serve as the mechanism responsible for transgenerational epigenetic
inheritance, a phenomenon in which environmental influences on the genes of
a parent can affect the associated traits and behavioral phenotypes of their
offspring (e.g., behavioral responses to environmental stimuli).

CASE STUDY OF DRUG ADDICTION

 W.R is a 30 years old man. Client was referred by psychiatrist, from Drug
Rehabilitation Center, Fountain House Lahore, Pakistan for psychological
assessment and management of the problem of client. The client was presented
with the complaints of stealing habit, drug addiction, poor problem solving,
poor abstract reasoning, and poor communication skills.

 Assessment was done on both the informal and formal levels. For informal
assessment, clinical interview was conducted; mental status examination was
done, and subjective rating of symptoms was taken, and life event chart was
used, and for the purpose of formal assessment Drug Abuse Screening Test
was used, the score of it suggests that the client have severe level of problem.
 Client’s premorbid personality was social, active, energetic, outgoing, and
nature was loving and caring. His company was not good, he said that most of
the friends that he made to support him were selfish, who only extract their
own benefit from him. Other friends were involved in theft, trafficking, and
addiction, who motivated him to involve in those acts too.

 Client reported that in his whole life he had never fought with anyone, and not
even used harsh tone or abusive words. He use to help everyone, he thought is
in trouble, even many time he stole just to help his friend or any other person.
Client likes to play video games, reading books, spends time with others, and
is fond of eating. Client reported that he is a knowledgeable person, he gain
knowledge, implement it, and use to convey his knowledge to others,
especially the people who are illiterate.

 For the last one months, client’s activities includes saying prayer at least 3
times a day, recite Quran in morning, walk around the floor, exercise, and
reading books. Clint also reported a present guilt feeling about all the bad
things that he had done or does, especially on the kind of relationship he had
with his girlfriend. Client has undergone his finger surgery, as his finger was
burned completely.
 It is a face to face encounter in which clinician asks questions of clients’
problems, their responses and reactions. Clinician collects the detailed
information about the person’s problem, feelings, life styles, relationships and
other personal history (Comer, 2004).

 Clinical interview was conducted with the client to get detailed information
about his family, personal and the history of psychiatric problem. The client
had proper insight about his problem, and he was motivated to seek treatment.
During the complete interview session the client was very complaint, and was
attentive.

 MSE is done with patient at first presentation to the clinical psychologist to

assess about his/her verbal & nonverbal symptoms of illness. It provides basis
for psychiatric diagnosis and clinical assessment (Goldman, 1988). The client
was wearing Pant Shirt. He was neat and tidy heighted man of average weight.
His appearance was consistent with his reported age. He was a well-mannered
person. His personal hygiene was good. His gait was active and energetic.

 He had some scars on his arm; his finger had swelling, and had a burn mark.
The client was much compliant, and was maintaining a good eye contact. He
seems to be much cooperative, attentive, interested in session. He was vigilant
and alert, and was actively listening. His orientation was good as he responded
accurately when asked about the place, season, year, date, month, time and
city. His rate of speech was normal, and tone was soft.

 The quality of speech was emotional. Client’s mood was appropriate with his
affect; he was in good mood and was energetic. His thought process was
logical, goal directed, appropriate, and was relevant with the situation. His
thought content involves the messages to self about the “right” and “wrong”.
He had a proper insight about his problem and was motivated to seek
treatment. His judgment was good and appropriate.

 Client’s attention and concentration was proper as he performed correctly in

digit span, spelling backward, and calculations. His memory, intellect and
 vocabulary were good. He was able to recall the event from in past easily. His
information and vocabulary was proper as he correctly stated the name of
president of Pakistan, prime minister and the capital city. He was good in
abstractions too as he clearly stated the difference between two objects, and
commonly used proverbs.

CONCLUSIONS

Drug use and addiction cause a lot of disease and disability in the world. Recent
advances in neuroscience may help improve policies to reduce the harm that the use
of tobacco, alcohol, and other psychoactive drugs impose on society.

Effective action should take into account the following:

• Since the effects of drugs on health vary greatly depending on the type of drug
and on the way it is used, the public health response to drug use should be
proportional to the health-related harm it causes.

• Use of psychoactive substances is to be expected because of their pleasurable

effects as well as social influences. The greater the frequency and amount of
drug used, the higher the risk of becoming dependent.
• Effective public health policies and programmes that address not only drug
dependence but also other forms of harmful drug use could lead to a
significant reduction in the overall health burden of drug use.

• The risk of becoming dependent on drugs is determined by a combination of

biological, genetic, psychological, social, cultural, and environmental factors.
Currently, it is impossible to predict who will become drug dependent.

• Drug dependence is a medical disorder, not a lack of willpower or strength of

character.

• Drug dependence and mental illnesses often affect the same individuals.
Therefore, it would be useful to integrate research, assessments, and
treatments for both types of disorders.