What Causes Addiction? Diverse Approaches to Counteract Addiction

Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Health - Public Health, grade: 1, Egerton University, language: English, abstract: Drug addiction appears to have become an enormous challenge to the global public healthcare systems. It has also raised ethical issues among the global population, especially regarding the menace of drug smuggling and abuse that has led to the increase of the prevalence rates of addiction to various drugs. One of the most challenging drug abuse related issue is the dual-diagnosis, also known as co-occurring disorder. This condition presents immense challenges to psychotherapists because its management requires multidimensional approaches to address the symptoms of the involved addictions. As a result, this issue has raised concern among psychologists and other professionals such as neuroscientists leading to extensive research on the causes of addiction. Therefore, the ambiguous question in the minds of most professionals is; “what causes addiction, and what is the best approach to counteract it?” This question is what this paper will answer by presenting a persuasive argument on the effect of dopamine in cocaine addiction.