Opposed Processes and Drug Addiction - Psychology of Learning - Paper | PSYC 2044, Papers of Psychology

Download Opposed Processes and Drug Addiction - Psychology of Learning - Paper | PSYC 2044 and more Papers Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Opposed Processes and Drug Addiction The opponent process theory is a psychological model that attempts to detail the way emotions interact with each other. The theory is very useful as an explanation to any number of things, such as why people skydive. It is also a good explanation on drug addiction, both in becoming addicted and on the escalation of the amount of drugs needed for an addict to reach the same ‘high’ he was at before. The opponent process theory states that certain emotions are linked to each other in opponent pairs. When one of these emotions is in a state of arousal, such as fear, a paired emotion, like excitement, is suppressed. When the initial state of arousal ends, the opposed process will become aroused before the emotional state returns itself to a baseline (Solomon, 1980). Thus, it is possible through a repeated, controlled stimulation, such as a massive drop on a roller coaster, to force the first state of fear arousal in order to experience its opposed reaction of excitement. In addition, Solomon (1980) showed that repetition of stimuli that cause medium or high arousal in the subject will reduce the primary emotional response and increase the opposed response. Thus, as people become more habituated to roller coasters or skydiving, the initial fear response becomes diminished and the pleasure gained from these activities is heightened. Drug addiction, however, works in exactly the opposite way. A drug is taken to experience pleasure as the primary stimulus, with an unwanted opposing stimulus of withdraw. This is especially true with drugs such as heroin and other opiates, which directly stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, leading to very extreme states of arousal followed by a catastrophic opposing reaction of withdraw symptoms, notably the physical symptoms of pain, chills, and fever, and an intense psychological sensation of craving (Koob and Le Moal, 2008). These are obviously aversive stimuli, and the way to immediately end them is to take the drug again. This chain of pleasure-withdraw-pleasure gives immediate rewards to those who take the drug as soon as the withdraw stage starts. However, this leads to strong dependence on the drug of choice as the brain begins to adjust to the constant state of arousal by using the as a substitute for naturally occurring substances, such as dopamine (Kelley and Berridge, 2002). The final result is strong tolerance of the drug, requiring doses previously used to create high arousal states in order to stay at baseline, and much higher doses for that previous level of arousal (Kelly and Berridge, 2002). In cocaine users this behavior often results in overdose when the user, used to receiving impure cocaine with some additive that dilutes the effects of the drug, takes a pure dose of cocaine believed to be in line with their current tolerance level. Most of these opponent-processes do not require any additional conditioning to cause addiction, because they act immediately on reward centers of the brain (Kelly and Berridge, 2002). This makes it much easier to become addicted to a substance, because multiple trials are not needed for the addict to correlate taking the drug with the reward of pleasure. Furthermore, because the opposed stimulus is aversive, there no internal motivation to stop using the drug. There are actually two factors of motivation moving against quitting, however. The first is the positive arousal that comes from taking the drug. The second factor is the pain that comes from any attempt to quit. Possibly one of the greatest factors in drug addiction is aforementioned increase in the opposed response as habituation and tolerance to the primary stimulus grows. The longer a person takes a drug, and the more tolerant they become towards its effects, the