1.What causes a drug to become addicting? can you prevent it?

• An addiction is a substance abuse treatment center professionals understand that drug addiction is a biological, physiological process. It is a progressive, fatal disease. In order for the disease to be arrested, intervention at a substance abuse treatment center specializing in addiction care may be required.

2. How do drugs get distributed so easily throughout the body?

• After a drug is absorbed into the bloodstream, it rapidly circulates through the body. The average circulation time of blood is 1 minute. As the blood recirculates, the drug moves from the  bloodstream into the body's tissues.

3.What is the most common addicting drug?

• Marijuana (cannabis) is the most commonly used illicit substance. This drug impairs short-term memory and learning, the ability to focus, and coordination. It also increases heart rate, can harm the lungs, and may increase the risk of psychosis in vulnerable people. Research suggests that when regular marijuana use begins in the teen years, addiction is more likely: 1 in 6 users, compared to 1 in 9 among adults. In addition, recent research suggests that heavy cannabis use that starts in the teen years is associated with declines in IQ scores in adulthood.

                                                                                              4.How do drugs affect your body?

• Almost all abused drugs directly or indirectly target the brain's "feels good" system by flooding the circuit with dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter (a chemical that helps the brain run and complete day to day processes)  located in regions of the brain that regulate movement, emotion, cognition, motivation, and feelings of pleasure. When drugs enter the brain, they can actually change how the brain performs its jobs.   These changes are what lead to compulsive drug use. 

5.Which drugs are the most addicting?

• Many factors determine whether you’ll become addicted to a drug: the most important factor is if one of your parents was addicted to drugs or even used drugs during the nine months of pregnancy because those chemicals could have transferred to the fetus thus giving it an exponential chance of the kid having a substance addiction or necessity from birth. The other factors are social history, the drugs your friends take, how much money you make. But the chemical makeup of drugs guarantee that certain drugs are more addictive than others. The hardest ones to kick like heroin, actually train your brain to crave them. A team of researchers led by professor David Nutt of London's Imperial College recently set out to determine which drugs were most harmful based on their addictive properties (the resulting article suggested that alcohol and tobacco are more harmful than cannabis and ecstasy, and led to Nutt getting sacked as the UK’s top drug adviser). Dutch scientists replicated the London study and devised a “dependency rating” that measured how likely someone is to get addicted of the biggest drugs out there.

 Cited Sources:

1. http://www.thetreatmentcenter.com/lp/drug-and-alcohol-addiction-info
2. http://teens.drugabuse.gov/facts-detail/how-does-someone-become-addicted-to-drugs
3. http://medicineabuseproject.org/stories/nobody-knew-how-bad-johns-addiction-was-until-it-was-too-late
4. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/genes/
5. http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/understanding-drug-abuse-addiction
6. http://teens.drugabuse.gov/