Drug use and addiction is an issue that continues to persist in our society. In recent years the heroin epidemic in particular has seen mass news coverage. According to the CDC, “Heroin use more than doubled among young adults ages 18-25 in the past decade” (CDC). However, when trying to treat those with drug addictions and other various psychiatric diseases, we run into some issues. Therapy and medicinal treatments do not have the same effects on everybody and may be ineffective to many patients. This presents a need for more well developed therapy options for those who do struggle with psychiatric diseases. One way to create these more effective treatment options is by researching the biomarkers for particular diseases to both diagnose and treat more efficiently.
This need for a more individualized approach to therapy and treatment methods was shown in Brian Sweis’ research on mice and their decision making habits. In his paper “Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict”, Sweis discusses the restaurant row tasks where mice had to make economic decisions on where they wanted to eat and they had limited time. This experiment portrayed the mice’s ability to choose between four options and to make the economically favorable decisions. However, the mice were then exposed to cocaine or morphine followed by a period of abstinence. Interestingly enough, the cocaine abstinent mice would think about making a costly decision, and then make a bad economic decision. Morphine mice on the other hand would make a decision and rather than quitting when a restaurant is not worth it, they would stay. These results show that the mechanism of decision making is not the same in mice who were previously addicted to two different drugs. Since the drugs changed the mice in two very different ways, why should two people addicted to two different drugs be treated the same way?
A wider variety of therapeutic options for addicts and people in recovery is something that researchers have recognized and are working towards. For instance in the article “Rat Models of Opioid Use and Addiction Explore Risk of Abuse”, Chris Evans from the University of California, Los Angeles stated that “More effective preventions and treatments are desperately needed for managing the opioid overdose. . .” (sfn). One researcher who wants to apply their studies to new therapeutic methods is Karen Ersche who researches the chemical processes behind drug addiction in the brain. In her recent study, “Carrots and sticks fail to change behavior in cocaine addiction”, it was shown that individuals addicted to cocaine had quite different responses to stimuli than other, non-addict, participants did. For instance Ersche stated that “cocaine-addicted individuals would receive electric shocks unless they pressed a lever, but many didn’t bother” (neuronline). The participants showed no motivation to avoid this electric shock. Through her continued research on the topic of cocaine, she hopes to take all this new information into account to create more effective therapy options for addicts.
The continuation of research regarding specific psychiatric diseases, such as various forms of drug addiction, is critical to the development of more effective therapeutic options. This is due to the variation in effects that certain drugs can have, such as in Sweis’ research where morphine and cocaine had quite different effects on the mice’s ability to make favorable decisions. Other researchers have also made an effort towards further developing therapeutic methods for addicts, such as Karen Ersche who has been studying the neurochemical changes that can come with addiction to drugs such as cocaine. In order for therapy to be a more effective option for drug addicts, it is important that we continue to study how individual drugs affect the brain rather than treating all addictions similarly.
Works Cited
Ersche, K. D., Gillan, C. M., Jones, P. S., Williams, G. B., Ward, L. H., Luijten, M., . . . Robbins, T. W. (2016, June 17). Carrots and sticks fail to change behavior in cocaine addiction. Retrieved February 28, 2019, from http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6292/1468
Rat Models of Opioid Use and Addiction Explore Risk of Abuse. (2018, November 06). Retrieved February 28, 2019, from https://www.sfn.org/Publications/Latest-News/2018/11/06/Rat-Models-of-Opioid-Use-and-Addiction-Explore-Risk-of-Abuse
Sweis, B. M., Redish, A. D., & Thomas, M. J. (2018, June 28). Prolonged abstinence from cocaine or morphine disrupts separable valuations during decision conflict. Retrieved February 28, 2019, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04967-2
Today's Heroin Epidemic, VitalSigns, CDC. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2019, from https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/heroin/index.html
Understanding the Scientific Mechanisms of Drug Addiction. Retrieved February 28, 2019, from https://neuronline.sfn.org/Articles/Scientific-Research/2018/Understanding-the-Scientific-Mechanisms-of-Drug-Addiction
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