> in the drug treatment world it’s basically known that drug abuse is almost always a reaction to some kind of psychological trauma or disorder,
This is not true in the professional world. People engage in drug use for many reasons, including pure recreation.
Trauma can precede relapses or bouts of drug abuse, but it's not a universal explanation.
There are a lot of pop-culture ideas that explain everything away as trauma. These are popular on podcasts, Reddit, and other social media websites. There are also types of therapists who learned to treat trauma and then try to apply that to everything. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". These therapists will try to reframe everything as trauma because it's what they know how to teach.
They often reverse engineer a traumatic backstory as an explanation even when one doesn't exist. You can find podcasters and therapists who will even claim that being born imparts permanent trauma that explains things long into adulthood. There's no evidence behind this claim, but it's convenient for therapists who need to find a traumatic backstory before they can address something because everyone was born at some point.
> The idea of dopamine as your brain’s signal that you’re safe fits about as neatly with that as can be.
That idea is completely wrong, though.
The study is talking about dopamine signaling in one specific location of the brain.
Dopamine is used in other locations in the brain to encode aversive stimuli, among other things.
Dopamine (and other neurotransmitters) don't just do one single thing in the brain. They have diverse effects all over.
Also, many of the drugs that people associated with dopamine actually have much broader effects, such as on norepinephrine (stimulants) and serotonin (cocaine).
There are dopamine agonist drugs that go in and very precisely target different dopamine receptors in the brain, activating them directly. Many people are surprised to learn that a common side effect of these drugs is an irresistible urge to sleep when first taking them, for example.
This is not true in the professional world. People engage in drug use for many reasons, including pure recreation.
Trauma can precede relapses or bouts of drug abuse, but it's not a universal explanation.
There are a lot of pop-culture ideas that explain everything away as trauma. These are popular on podcasts, Reddit, and other social media websites. There are also types of therapists who learned to treat trauma and then try to apply that to everything. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". These therapists will try to reframe everything as trauma because it's what they know how to teach.
They often reverse engineer a traumatic backstory as an explanation even when one doesn't exist. You can find podcasters and therapists who will even claim that being born imparts permanent trauma that explains things long into adulthood. There's no evidence behind this claim, but it's convenient for therapists who need to find a traumatic backstory before they can address something because everyone was born at some point.
> The idea of dopamine as your brain’s signal that you’re safe fits about as neatly with that as can be.
That idea is completely wrong, though.
The study is talking about dopamine signaling in one specific location of the brain.
Dopamine is used in other locations in the brain to encode aversive stimuli, among other things.
Dopamine (and other neurotransmitters) don't just do one single thing in the brain. They have diverse effects all over.
Also, many of the drugs that people associated with dopamine actually have much broader effects, such as on norepinephrine (stimulants) and serotonin (cocaine).
There are dopamine agonist drugs that go in and very precisely target different dopamine receptors in the brain, activating them directly. Many people are surprised to learn that a common side effect of these drugs is an irresistible urge to sleep when first taking them, for example.