Substance Abuse

One of the most compelling models of drug addiction in academia is the Incentive Sensitization Hypothesis of drug addiction. According to this model, people who become addicted to drugs process the rewarding affects of drug use differently from most other people. In their brain, drug use leads to an abnormally high level of incentive salience which essentially tells them that their main priority for what should motivate them is the rewarding effects of their drug of abuse. They perceive the drug as being far more necessary and motivating than it actually should be. And this causes a loss of behavioral control that inhibits the rest of the population from constantly seeking out the rewarding effects of a drug. 

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Abnormally high incentive salience is the perception that leads to the behavior. If someone has been struggling with cocaine addiction for the past several years, their condition could be described by:

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P: Hypersensitive Incentive Motivation for Cocaine Associated Stimuli

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Which then could produce the behavior or problematic cocaine use which could be described as:

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4.2( )18 compulsive cocaine use and seeking resulting in financial loss, health consequences, and a disregard for higher priorities upon self reflection.

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So, for those diagnosed with substance abuse disorders, the problem is not that they have chosen to live as a junky because of a lack of values, nor is the problem described by a diseased brain that controls their behavior. The problem is that they perceive the anticipated reward of drug use as being far more important than it actually should be and that knowing this is not enough to inhibit the perception. Their brain tricks them into believing that their life depends on using. Any one of us would use drugs compulsively if we were faced with these perceptions.

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