Trauma May Make Drugs and Alcohol Feel More Pleasurable (E71)

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Gill discusses how trauma increases the risk of developing an addiction. She reviews an interesting study from 2021 that looked at how trauma impacts the amount of pleasure a person will feel from drugs. You’ll learn how childhood trauma changes the way animals and humans experience pain, another reason why we can never become take it or leave it drinkers or drug users, and why science thinks trauma makes us more vulnerable to addiction.

What to listen to next:
E67: How Alcohol Impacts Cortisol and Causes Cravings
E11: Why Alcohol Feels Good (Endorphins and Opioid Receptors)

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Sources

1. Oswald LM, Wand GS, Kuwabara H, Wong DF, Zhu S, Brasic JR. History of childhood adversity is positively associated with ventral striatal dopamine responses to amphetamine. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2014; 231(12): 2417- 2433.

2. Zhang J, Abdallah CG, Chen Y, et al. Behavioral deficits, abnormal corticosterone, and reduced prefrontal metabolites of adolescent rats subject to early life stress. Neurosci Lett. 2013; 545: 132- 137.

3. Molly Carlyle, Rupert Broomby, Graham Simpson, Rachel Hannon, Leah Fawaz, O Merve Mollaahmetoglu, Jade Drain, Mohammod Mostazir, Celia J. A. Morgan. A randomised, double‐blind study investigating the relationship between early childhood trauma and the rewarding effects of morphine. Addiction Biology, 2021

4. University of Exeter. "Childhood trauma can make people like morphine more." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 June 2021.

5. Belda X, Armario A. Dopamine D1 and D2 dopamine receptors regulate immobilization stress-induced activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2009 Oct;206(3):355-65. 

6. Mitchell JM, O’Neil JP, Janabi M, Marks SM, Jagust WJ, Fields HL. Alcohol Consumption Induces Endogenous Opioid Release in the Human Orbitofrontal Cortex and Nucleus Accumbens. Science Translational Medicine. 2012;4(116). 

Cite this episode

Tietz, G. Episode 71: Trauma May Make Drugs and Alcohol Feel More Pleasurable. Sober Powered. 2021.

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