HEALTH CORNER

DEBASHISH GANGOPADHYAY | Monday January 28, 2008 00:00

What role does it play in addiction? A number of specialists in the field see addiction as a response to stress or anxiety that has no avenue for solution. With this in mind, a major key to successfully dealing with and halting addiction, can be the understanding of stress and the use of appropriate tools to regulate it. With regulation, addictive response can then be stopped before it is acted on, again. So the cycle of addiction can stop. According to the viewpoint, the more a person practices these stress reduction strategies, the better they will be at maintaining non-addictive behaviour.

Stress and Addiction produce some of the same changes in brain systems, so they are intimately connected. Animal studies have shown that the brain changes associated with stressful experiences are also associated with more sensitivity to the effects of drugs abuse. For people who have addictions, stressful life experiences such as divorce, job loss and conflict are often associated with craving and relapse. In addition, people with addiction often have poor coping strategies and turn to drugs and alcohol to relieve stress. While it is impossible to remove all stress from the lives of individuals with addictions, teaching coping strategies and treating stress-related disorders is an important factor in stable recovery from addictions.

How does stress physically affect the body? When a person is subjected to stress, the body goes into a three-stage reaction in its effort to adapt. The first stage is called the 'alarm' stage, the second, the 'resistance' stage, and the third stage is the 'exhausted' stage. When stress first occurs, the body automatically secretes high levels of hormones. The biochemical change that follows is complex. The hypothalamus releases a chemical called 'corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF). This chemical goes to the pituitary gland, causing the chemical ATCH to be released into the bloodstream. The ATCH activates cortisol, in the adrenal gland, that then causes the body to produce extra blood sugar, resulting in extra energy. CRF also triggers neurotransmitters that stimulate the release of epinephrine (also known as adrenalin) and norepinephrine. The former causes extra glucose to go to the muscles, and the latter, speeds up the heartbeat. A feedback loop is built into this system, going back to the pituitary gland, which then decides how much ATCH to continue to send out.

In the second stage of the situation, the person appears to have adapted to increased stress. This stage is called resistance. In this stage, this condition may well maintain itself unless the stressful condition becomes chronic, or new stresses are added. In this case the body then goes into stage three - exhaustion. Physical disease, caused by stress, occur when stress continues for a prolonged period, because the body's natural defense system becomes overworked and weakened.

How does addiction become part of the stress cycle? Although the body can handle a certain amount of stress and adapt by becoming resistant to that stress level, there is a level at which no person can physically continue to function easily, after prolonged stress. For some people, when their adrenalin 'rush' has become uncomfortably intense, their answer becomes drug addiction, to numb or subdue the adrenal effects. For some people the psychological feeling of 'going too fast' becomes the motivating factor for beginning the drug addictive cycle. The feeling of fear, which is accompanied by adrenal increase, can lead some people into addictive behaviour, to quiet the discomfort they are feeling from intense fear. These are some of the common motivations, inspired by stress that can fuel the addictive cycle. 
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