Question: Why some people get addicted to drugs while others don’t

Sonia Rodriguez answered on 11 Jul 2020: last edited 11 Jul 2020 11:34 am

That’s a great question! The short answer is that we don’t know all the reasons yet.
Drugs stimulate the brain to release dopamine, that is the “wanting” hormone. The higher the amounts of dopamine in our brain, the more we want that substance. Differences in the addictive effects of drugs may be related to how the “wanting system” works in different people: how much dopamine is produced and how strongly the brain of each person reacts to this hormone. Scientists have identified some changes in the DNA that can explain part of these differences. However, it’s something very complex and not everything can be explain by genetics. It seems that having addicted parents or some mental illnesses can make you more prone to addiction. I invite you to ask this question in the SummerZone, where Chiara Prodani can explain you her experiments in mice. She discovered that a poor diet during pregnancy can make the baby mice more sensitive to cocaine addiction when they grow.