a. One thing I've learned about addiction? Addiction and Recovery It has become one of the major social problems of our day, leaving large numbers of families and communities in our country devastated and with no hope of recovery for any of the afflicted members and loved ones. Becoming a major social challenge affecting all aspects of American society, addiction rates have increased to enormous proportions within the country, as reported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Addiction has been described as a chronic brain disorder, “resulting from adaptations in the brain that lead to changes in behavior,” according to Dr. Nora Volkow, who also states that it can be treated (NIDA 2006). The fact that addiction is a brain disorder is a new detail I learned from the HBO video. As pointed out by Dr. Volkow, addiction as a brain disease makes addicts unable to control themselves in relation to the addiction problem. In conceptualizing addiction as a brain disease, Volkow illustrates this view with the fact that the brain has a “natural reward system” that facilitates the learning of “behaviors necessary for survival” (NIDA 2006). Learning that abused drugs take over this system – the brain's dopamine system – was critical to finally understanding the logic behind referring to addiction as a brain disorder. Over time, the brain becomes dependent on overused drugs. This stems from the fact that natural rewards no longer have the ability to produce “normal levels of dopamine or pleasure” (NIDA 2006). Over time, continued drug taking causes the addict to lose all control over their use and become dependent on... half of paper ......g the extent to which the addiction has affected the brain system resulting in changes and adaptations over which the addict has no control. Beyond that, I learned about the innate struggle they experience whenever they attempt to become “clean” again; a fight that almost always ends in defeat. A situation that can be defined as "disconcerting", an expression used by one of those interviewed by Dr. Volkow. Learning the involuntary nature of addiction and relapse that occurs during recovery and the immense efforts required of recovering addicts greatly changed the way I perceived the recovery process. Now I know that the intervention of others is necessary, in addition to the effort made by the affected person who wishes to recover. Indeed, it is not possible to easily recover from drug addiction and avoid relapse without the help of family, friends and society in general.