Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters.

@article{Leshner1997AddictionIA,
  title={Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters.},
  author={Alan Leshner},
  journal={Science},
  year={1997},
  volume={278 5335},
  pages={
          45-7
        }
}
  • A. Leshner
  • Published 3 October 1997
  • Psychology, Medicine
  • Science
Scientific advances over the past 20 years have shown that drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease that results from the prolonged effects of drugs on the brain. As with many other brain diseases, addiction has embedded behavioral and social-context aspects that are important parts of the disorder itself. Therefore, the most effective treatment approaches will include biological, behavioral, and social-context components. Recognizing addiction as a chronic, relapsing brain disorder… 
View on PubMed
buffalo.edu
1,431 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
64
Background Citations
581
Methods Citations
19
Results Citations
12

1,431 Citations

New approaches in the treatment of alcohol dependence

“Addiction is a brain disease” was the title of an editorial in the renowned journal “Science” 15 years ago. The author argued that recognising addiction as a disorder of the brain can impact society…

Ethical Implications of advances in neuroscience research on the addictions

There is strong research evidence that many addictive phenomena have a neurobiological basis, including the fact that psychoactive drugs act on brain neurotransmitters; evidence of a genetic contribution to vulnerability to addiction; the neural mechanisms of tolerance and withdrawal.

Understanding the disease of addiction.

  • D. Detar
  • Psychology, Medicine
    Primary care
  • 2011

Is Addiction Really a Chronic Relapsing Disorder?

  • J. MacKillop
  • Medicine, Psychology
    Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research
  • 2019
The most widely used definitions of drug addiction are of the condition having a chronic course that is typically characterized by relapse and alcohol use disorder as a chronic relapsing brain disease.

Addictive disorders such as brain diseases: Analysis of the evidence and practical implications

In the last decades, neuroscientific research has supported the fact that addictions are diseases of the brain such as epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease. The punitive approach to manage addictions has…

Drug Addiction: Neuroimaging

Drug addiction research: moving toward the 21st century.

  • A. Leshner
  • Biology, Psychology
    Drug and alcohol dependence
  • 1998

Drug addiction: the neurobiology of behaviour gone awry

Recent studies have shown that repeated drug use leads to long-lasting changes in the brain that undermine voluntary control, and new knowledge of how environmental, genetic and developmental factors contribute to addiction should bring about changes in the authors' approach to the prevention and treatment of addiction.

Is Sugar a Gateway Drug

This article examines the research that indicates sugar can act as a gateway drug, increasing the subsequent risk of becoming addicted to drugs of abuse.

Prevailing Conceptions of Drug Abuse and Addiction

This chapter focuses on two contrasting ideas about understanding drug abuse and addiction, and examines how a public health approach to addiction and drug abuse can be usefully tied to etiological and epidemiologic findings to enhance prevention and treatment.
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 29 REFERENCES

Drug Addiction: The Yin and Yang of Hedonic Homeostasis

Molecular mechanisms of drug reinforcement and addiction.

Drug reinforcement is a form of behavioral plasticity in which behavioral changes occur in response to acute exposure to a reinforcing drug, and the addicted state are both characterized by an increase in drug-seeking behavior.

The neural basis of drug craving: An incentive-sensitization theory of addiction

Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook

This book discusses the determinants and perpetuators of substance abuse, medical aspects of immunodeficiency virus infections and its treatment in injecting drug users, and management of the psychosocial sequelae of Hiv infection among drug users effects of narcotics on immune function.

Activation of memory circuits during cue-elicited cocaine craving.

  • S. GrantE. London A. Margolin
  • Psychology, Biology
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
  • 1996
Correlations of metabolic increases in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe, and cerebellum with self-reports of craving suggest that a distributed neural network, which integrates emotional and cognitive aspects of memory, links environmental cues with cocaine craving.

Drugs of abuse: anatomy, pharmacology and function of reward pathways.

  • G. Koob
  • Biology, Psychology
    Trends in pharmacological sciences
  • 1992

Effects of chronic cocaine abuse on postsynaptic dopamine receptors.

It is concluded that postsynaptic dopamine receptor availability decreases with chronic cocaine abuse but may recover after a drug-free interval.

Biochemical actions of chronic ethanol exposure in the mesolimbic dopamine system

It is shown that chronic ethanol treatment increased levels of tyrosine hydroxylase and glial fibrillary acidic protein immunoreactivity, and decreases levels of neurofilament protein immunOREactivity, in the VTA.

Integrating systemic cue exposure with standard treatment in recovering drug dependent patients.

Corticotropin releasing factor, stress and behavior

The results suggest that endogenous CRF systems in the brain may have a role in mediating behavioral responses to stressors, and may be particularly important in situations where an organism must mobilize not only the pituitary adrenal system, but also the central nervous system in response to environmental challenge.