What is Addiction?

I could identify with everything said. One of the points that really hit home with me was "For example, if a heroin addict always injects the drug in a certain room, he or she will forever associate that room with being high, even years later." Not as often today, but for a LONG time I would walk by our kitchen island, pause and wait like I was supposed to be doing something there. I did this a few times a day sometimes. The reason, the kitchen island was always where I kept my medicine bottles with OC or Lorcet. I had developed such a deep habit of going to the kitchen island to ‘get high’ that some of the after effects still linger today.

Thanks for the info Hat. I really, really like reading stuff like that and understanding just a little bit more of why I did/do the things I do. Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to addiction.

For more than a decade, Texas A&M psychologist Antonio Cepeda-Benito has studied how learning facilitates the development of tolerance, and he says the environment in which a drug is consumed plays a large role in the drug’s effects.
"If the same amount of a drug is administered in one context and later in another different and distinct context, then the effects of the drug are different," Cepeda-Benito says. "The drug has a much greater effect in a novel context rather than in a context that is associated with the administered drug."

Cepeda-Benito, who has studied morphine and nicotine’s effects, terms this phenomenon "learned tolerance," and says gradual desensitization to a drug can be developed not only by repeated use of the drug, but also through a learning process that involves recognizing the environment.

In other words, a person consuming a drug in a setting where he or she usually consumes the drug or even expects to consume it will be less likely to feel the full effects of the drug, he says. However, if that same person takes the same amount of the drug in a setting where he or she doesn’t normally take the drug, then the person is likely to feel a greater effect from the drug.

He says a familiar context can mean any familiar environment and/or actions, as well as timing. He also notes that the longer the interval between episodes, the greater the chance is of developing a learned tolerance.
Cepeda-Benito says this could possibly explain some drug overdoses in which the person didn’t take a greater amount of the drug, but instead, took the drug in an unfamiliar setting, making the term "overdose" a misnomer.
"These are physiological changes mediated by psychological aspects," he says.

Much like a butcher working in a meat freezer who isn’t affected by the cold while at work but can feel cold at home, Cepeda-Benito says, the body, over time, begins to prepare itself, through learning, for the environment it is used to consuming the drugs in, resulting in a lessening of the drug’s effects.

"This is important because we know that tolerance is a symptom of drug dependence, and when you become tolerant to a drug, then you need to take more of the drug to get the effect you want," Cepeda-Benito says. "The more of the drug you take, the more physiologically dependent you become."