On Sept. 27, students and faculty gathered to listen to Norman Wetterau, president of the New York Society of Addiction Medicine (NYSAM), discuss drug addiction as a brain disease.
“There are many new approaches and treatments,” Wetterau said, regarding the modern battle to conquer drug addiction. “Substance use disorders are pediatric, which are usually preventable.”
Wetterau began his lecture with a succinct description of the brain’s functions. He said, “When you do things in pleasure mode, it reinforces things again and again,” supporting the notion that addiction is in fact a “brain disease.”
The pleasure center, however, is necessary for survival.
“If we didn’t react to pleasure we wouldn’t eat or study for the exam,” he said. “It’s productive … The frontal lobe is the inhibition center. Hopefully it says, ‘Don’t do this.’”
Yet the frontal lobe is not fully developed until the early 20s.
“That’s why it’s not really relevant to 16 year olds,” Wetterau said. Since their brains are still maturing, adolescents and young adults can’t always make intelligent decisions.
Wetterau also touched on important points about why people become addicted in the first place. Despite the fact that adolescents are vulnerable to engaging in risky acts, it is also a combination of genetics, social setting, previous addictions and other unknown factors.
Tobacco is the No. 1 cause of death in the United States and toxic agents are No. 5. Addiction isn’t always the issue, either. “You don’t have to be addicted to OD,” Wetterau said.
There are 39,000 deaths each year due to overdose. The array of abuse cases ranges from alcohol binge drinking to cocaine-induced heart attacks.
“It’s a public health issue,” he said. “You can’t just focus on addiction, you also have to focus on abuse.”
According to 2009 statistics, 58 percent of binge drinkers drink when upset, 39 percent drink alone and 30 percent drink when bored. There are many treatments available, but that is only the initial step in the process of being cured. Treatments include medications to break addiction, learning new ways to deal with stress and getting involved to find new ways to have fun.
“The presentation was good for us college students to know how to prevent overdose and addiction now at such a transformative point in our lives,” freshman James Mead said.