The Origins of Drug Addiction

            What can lead someone to become addicted to drugs? Many factors play a part in the process of becoming addicted to many different things, in this case, drugs and substance abuse. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the term of being addicted as devoting or surrender oneself to something habitually or obsessively. Ever since 2012, 23.9 million Americans (12 years old or older) have used illegal drugs or abused a type of psychotherapeutic medication such as pain relievers, steroids, or tranquilizers. Most Americans will start using drugs when they're teenagers2. It is normally assumed that drug abuse is initiated because of peer pressure or to just be sociable; people also do tend to believe that drug-users can quit their habit if they're willing to change their behavior. Although the person's initial reasons for using drugs may be to be sociable, over time the changes in the user's brain can lead to lack of self-control and ability to make rational decisions, all resulting in the obsessive substance abuse3. However quitting is not that simple. .
             Being addicted to drugs is considered to be a disease that causes obsessive drug seeking and use, despite the harmful penalties to the drug and those around the users. Drug abuse also leads to a change in the user's brain's structure and certain area's function3. To fully understand the true meaning of drug abuse, one must really understand what a drug is-drugs are chemicals that gain access into the brain's communication system and upset the way one's nerve cells normally direct, collect, and process information3. Drugs are able to take over one's brain using two different methods: they can either over stimulate the synaptic gap between nerves or can imitate the brain's chemical messengers and send their own. Heroin and marijuana, for example, can disrupt a synaptic process by closing down the pumps accessing the synaptic gap and leaving the heroin's chemicals linger in the gap, creating a sense of a high4.