December 2016

Until recently in our evolutionary history,  addictive agents have been ingested in foods.  Many are secondary plant metabolites that  evolved because they discourage ingestion by  animals1. The hungers that arise from bodily  needs are non-directive; they merely encourage  us to put things in our mouth. The more acute  the hunger, the greater the range of substances  we will ingest2. We learn to return to the yellow  banana, the purple fig, the pink peach. We also  learn to chew the tobacco leaf and drink the  nectar of fermented fruits and grains. Because  of the need for the nutrients in plants containing  addictive substances, many species  have learned to accept mildly intoxicating  amounts of these compounds. 0

Another heap of approaches to the unhealthy consumption of alcohol can be related to understanding it as pure impulsiveness. We can recall our previous remarks about the compulsiveness of the alcohol consumption. We just add that both impulsiveness and compulsiveness are most literal translations of alcoholics’ experience that can be an unexplainable process to them

Considerable recent research suggests yet another, quite orthogonal mechanism for tolerance. The concept is simple: When an animal has become accustomed to receiving a drug in a certain situation and is again presented with that same situation, it anticipates the drug administration and makes compensatory responses that serve to reduce the impact of the impending presence of the drug. Given this mobilization of the body's homeostatic processes before the actual drug presentation, the drug is effectively compromised, and the result is less total drug effect or increased drug tolerance.

Redish, A. D., Steve Jensen, and Adam Johnson. 2008. A unified framework for addiction: vulnerabilities in the decision process. The article gives a summary of some theoretical approaches explaining the essence of the addiction. The authors describe seven major types of such theories.
(1) Оpponent processes. This approach is, first of all, related to the studies of the National Institute on Drug Abuse under the supervision of Nora Volkow and George Koob. It’s main point is that the impact of alcohol and other drugs on the reward center changes its functioning, which results the replacing homeostasis, the natural harmony of neurobiological processes in the body with allostasis, the adaptation of neurotransmitter system to drug administration followed by the regulation of the process by this system. In particular, these mechanisms are used to explain the withdrawal syndrome that happens after an abrupt withdrawal from alcohol consumption