Drug Addiction Theory

The use of all forms of addictive drugs in American society has led to a massive production of theoretical literature on its causes and roots. The causation theories run the gamut between the purely social to the totally biological. Most researchers are content to remain somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. Addiction always has physical consequences, but the causes of addiction are many. Nonbiological causes and effects may play a bigger part in maintaining an addiction and self-legitimizing it than the physical effects of the drugs themselves.

Physical Dependency

• The most basic and popular model of drug addiction is physical dependency. Very simply, the nature of one's body chemistry changes substantially once exposure to a drug is regularly repeated. Going forward, without the input of the drug, the body revolts, showing withdrawal symptoms including severe depression, extreme physical discomfort and, possibly, death. While this is a definition of dependency from a physical point of view (not the only one), it does not answer why such risky behaviors are engaged in to begin with.

Positive Reinforcement

• This approach also stresses the physical elements above. However, it approaches dependency as a means of both receiving pleasure and avoiding pain. Drugs increase the production of natural pleasure chemicals, such as dopamine, in the brain. The positive-reinforcement theory is closely related to the purely physical dependency idea in that once a drug is regularly introduced into the system, it then hampers the normal production of these same natural chemicals. In other words, regular drug use will retard the brain's ability to produce its own pleasurable chemicals, and hence, the brain is dependent on the outside stimuli to produce the same effects.

Endorphin Deficiency Theory

• This approach is also a physical approach, one that theorizes that certain people are born with such problems as defective pituitary glands, which, in a more healthy individual, would produce endorphins. The natural pleasure centers of the brain, such as the septum pellucidum, are not as well developed as in others or are defective in some way. In other words, these people cannot achieve a "natural high" like some others can due to a biological deficiency, and therefore, turn to drugs to compensate. This is closely related to the "disease" model of drug addiction, where drug addiction is theorized as compensation for a biological deficiency rather than as some form of deviant behavior.

Genetics

• Genetics remains a highly controversial view of drug addiction. Several studies that can be found at peele.net/lib/moa3.html, for instance, suggest that those with alcoholic parents are between three to four times more likely to become addicts themselves. Some of this same work that writers such as Peele have cited suggests that ethnicity might be a possible contributing cause to addictive behavior. Others would retort that it is exposure to the chemical, rather than the (general) genetic makeup of the person, that is the real cause of the dependent behavior.

Social Causes

• The social-causes theory rejects, to a great extent, the physiological-causes theory of addiction that is dominant in the literature. According to the social-causes theory, it is the environment that legitimizes the risky behavior that eventually triggers the physical response, and certain forms of socialization are more significant than biological responses to both creating addictions and legitimizing them. Low self-esteem, for example, might lead to deep and profound alienation, which may be compensated for by drugs. Social alienation leads to deviant behavior, and deviant behavior is often typified by a flaunting of convention in the taking of risky drugs. But at the same time, group socialization is another social cause, one where not alienation, but being integrated into a drug culture, creates and legitimizes addiction. Addiction becomes, then, a mark of belonging.