Effects of Psychoactive Drugs on the Brain

An addiction is considered as a chronic disease that can be difficulty to overcome. The use of psychoactive drugs can have long-term effects that produce addiction, that is, the persistence in the need to consume the drug, even after periods of abstinence. Addictions to psychoactive drugs can produce negative effects on the addict, his family, and the community. Concerning addictions to psychoactive drugs, there are approaches that focus on individual responsibility, while others give more importance to the social environment, or the addict’s genetic. The psychoactive drugs infiltrate the brain’s communication system, disrupting the sending, receiving, and standard processing of information between nerve cells. Various regions of the brain are related to the development of addictions. Psychoactive drugs alter the function of the reward center through modifications of the action of neurotransmitters, in particular by increasing the action of dopamine. Complex gene systems may determine addictions at different loci on chromosome 8. Psychoactive drugs also have epigenetic effects on genes related to addictions. Some of the epigenetic modifications can be inherited. This situation increases the probability of addiction in the offspring of an addict. The long-term effects are produced by epigenetic changes in the brain, due to the expression of genes related to addictions. Those effects could be inherited.