Theories of Addiction

• Self administration


  Non human addiction model where rats mice or monkeys are put in a Skinner box with implanted drug drips that release the drug when they press a button. Most have to eventually be regulated because they do it regardless of averse affects (like getting shocked when they press the button also) and overdose and die if they're not stopped
• Conditioned place preference (CPP)


  Giving rats an injection of a drug then placing them in a distinct room, then later giving them a control drug and putting them in another distinct room. They are put into a middle neutral room, and if they liked the drug more than homeostasis the go to the drug room
• Hedonia hypothesis


  Proposed by Roy Wise, hinges on the idea that dopamine is the pleasure neurotransmitter and we'll do anything to get it. It was incomplete because there were plenty of nonaddictive dopamine releasing drugs, and blocking dopamine receptors did nothing to prevent long-term cocaine addiction
• Incentive sensitization model


  Developed by Terry Robinson and Kent Berridge that suggests that after a certain point we stop liking the effects of a drug but start wanting them more and more, which leads to relapse after long times in substances like nicotine
• Brain disease model of addiction


  Idea that addiction is genetic and some people are more predisposed to it than others. Has led to more widely available treatment and efforts to reduce stigma, but does not explain why most addicts who get clean do it by themselves. It also has not produced a successful therapeutic strat to help with addiction