Lately, I've been taking advantage of the free time that this pandemic has left me to nourish my ideas in a certain way through certain documentaries that have left me with my mouth open, especially because of the deep and interesting way that they usually explore some of the most complicated and vicious topics that exist, in fact, a couple of days ago I was able to see a special work of investigation that treated the topic of the addictions in a fascinating way, giving us a fascinating walk through the causes and complications that usually generate the most corrosive addictions.

As a result of my impressed with the subject of addictions, I decided to write this little excerpt where I would like to highlight some of the coolest ideas that are still lodged in my head, ideas that many will surely find simple or repetitive but that I personally find very interesting for those who do not fully understand all the background of addictions.

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Addiction.

Dependence, addiction, abuse or whatever work you decided to call it; is basically the need for a person to take psychotropic or any addictive substances/thing with a very high degree of abuse and dependence so that gradually it becomes the center of the person's life, making that it finally ends up changing his life in favor of the use of the addiction, regardless of the effects that this brings to his life.

It should be noted that not all substances, nor all people generate in themselves the same degree of addiction as others, in fact, there are psychoactive substances that do not generate alarming degrees of addition, yes I'm talking about cannabis. However, it is also notable that if we put in a balance the number of substances that generate addictions is greater but hey! a small dose of addiction is not bad, right?

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Lets continue...

The addiction at the nervous level is mainly influenced by its relationship with dopamine, when some substance or situation causes our dopamine levels to be altered it generates an electric shock that makes us feel "better". Of course, that " better" is different for each person, that is, each person has a nervous reaction according to the way they want to feel, yes, addictions usually take over people because they give them what they secretly want, happiness, excitement, satisfaction, courage, love, etc.

But wait dopamine it is not the only key factor.

Well, the usual way of the addictions to interfere resides in the different ways substances ingested by a person provoke a direct or indirect increase of the levels of dopamine above the normal ones; what creates a pleasant stimulus and it is that pleasant sensation that makes people gradually experience processes of awareness and tolerance; which will cause the consumer to need higher doses to achieve the same pleasant effect. However, another of the factors that influence this addiction process is the involvement of the limbic system given the path previously described as mesolimbic.

It should be noted that the fact of consuming psychotropic substances without control, causes a decrease in basal levels of dopamine and an imbalance in the levels of its receptors at the level of the central nervous system, two of the factors by which consumption becomes chronic.

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In other words.

In conclusion, addictions are usually caused by different factors but the way these addictions spread through the body are the same, chemical factors that cause changes in our limbic system that consequently activate a small suitche that finally triggers a shot in the dopamine of our body to execute a false simulation that gives us what we yearn for, that fascinating sensation that we all have wanted to feel at some time.

It causes me some fear to know that certain types of substances can generate such important responses in our body, especially because they are always unexpected, and do not come to me telling "whoever consumes a substance is because he/she knows what he/she is going to feel" because the truth is that in most cases these clean discharges of dopamine generate very changeable impulses.