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Spntity Is Rhowing your health and wellbeing are being cared for sense and simplicity ·Back to Article Click to Print Thursday, Jul. os, soo7 TIME How We Get Addicted By MICHAI.D. LEMONICK N PARTNERSHIP WITH CN I was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike one evening last February when I knocked over a bottle of water. I grabbed for it, swerved inadvertently-and a few seconds later found myself blinking into the flashlight beam of a state trooper. "How much have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he demanded. Before I could help myself, I blurted out an answer that was surely a new one to him. "I haven't hada indignantly, "since 1981. drink," I said y true and very pertinent to the trip I was making. By the time I reached my late 20s, I'd poured down as much alcohol as normal people consume in a lifetime and plenty of drugs-mostly pot-as . I was, by any reasonable measure, an active alcoholie. Fortunately, with a lot of help, I was able to stop. And now I was on my way to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass, to have my brain scanned in a functional magnetic-resonance imager (fMRI). The idea after more than a quarter-century on the wagon. was to see what the inside of my head looked like Back when I stopped drinking, such an experiment would have been unimaginable. At the time, the medical establishment had come to accept the idea that alcobolism was a disease rather than a moral failing; the American Medical Association (AMA) had said so in 1950. But while it had all the hallmarks of other diseases, including specifie symptoms and a predictable course, leading to disability or even death, alcoholism was different. Its physical basis was a complete mystery-and since nobody forced alcoholics to drink, it was still seen, no matter what the AMA said, as somehow voluntary. Treatment consisted mostly of talk therapy, maybe some vitamins and usually a strong recommendation to join Alcoholics Anonymous Although it's a totally nonprofessional organization, founded in 1935 by an ex-drunk and an active drinker AA has managed to get milions of people off the bottle, using group support and a program of accumulated folk wisdom. While AA is astonishingly effective for some people, it doesn't work for everyone; studies suggest it succeeds about 20% of the time, and other forms of treatment, including various types of behavioral therapy, do no 7/15/2007

Answer 1

9. Addiction effects almost all the systems of the brain. It even effects the learning ability of the brain. To recovery of the learning ability is a difficult process in individuals who are in de addiction programmes, as this is one of the delayed recovery areas of the brain. It is estimated that the recovery of the learning ability may take a minimum of 90 days and it can even take two years. Hence, most of the time therapy in the intial day to individuals in de addiction fail as therapy requires learning and the learning is adversely impacted by the addiction.

10. Insula is a part of cerebral cortex of the brain which play an important role is self-perception, awareness and cognition. It has profound role in human emotions. Damage to this part may cause an emotional-less state in the individual. Insula is the part of the brain that evokes craving in the addicts. The fMRI scan reveal that this part of the brain is the fiirst to light up first on the sensation of the drug or alcohol in addicts, causing the urge for the substance or alcohol in them. Hence, methods to check the insula's activity would help the individuals in de addiction.