3.1. Impact on physiology

reasons for persons with drug addiction (PDDs) seeking substances, effects of different substances upon symptoms, and obstacles to drug use recovery. Dependent drug abusers were noted to be three times likelier to experience psychotic symptoms than nondependent coun-

Drug addiction may contribute to enhanced vulnerability by disrupting neural substrates mediating positive reinforcement. Deficits in cognitive control have been documented in a number of clinical populations with drug addiction. Behavioral and neural profiles occur, including hallucinations, delusions, signs of distractibility, and altered patterns of neural

Drug addiction impacts physical symptoms, including emotional shifts, increased psychosis, cognitive confusion, family conflicts, financial problems, and legal difficulties. This suggests that drug addiction may initially provide relief, but longer term use exacerbates psychiatric symptoms. Individuals also noted that the advantages of quitting include improved physical symptoms, higher self-esteem, and increased social relationships. This suggests that individuals were aware of the impact of drug addiction on psychiatric symptoms and interpersonal relationships. Individuals reported that disadvantages of quitting drugs include withdrawal symptoms, relapse cycles, loss of substance-abusing friends, cravings, and pressure to abuse

PDD struggle with lifelong addictions to prescription drugs, taken to cope with life events presented physical and psychological stress. As a team, professional nurses working in hospital and community care should be sensitive to PDD and identify strategies for addressing their

2. Relieving negative emotional states such as frustration, fear, anxiety, depression, for relief from fatigue or boredom, and as a break from daily routines with altered states of con-

3. Enhancing socialization skills through self-medication for positive and negative symptoms and decreasing dysphoria associated with psychotic symptoms and negative side effects

4. Responding to peer pressure, relieving negative effects such as depression, and experimenting

5. While there is some evidence for the self-medication hypothesis, most research does not support theories that drug addiction occurs to decrease psychiatric symptoms or cope

terparts. This indicates that PDDs are at particularly high risk for psychotic relapse [6].

activation involving dopamine-rich frontostriatal brain regions [5, 7].

issues. Positive nursing outcomes improve their quality of life.

Studies pinpoint five general explanations for high rates of PDD:

1. Achieving and increasing feelings of intoxication [8, 9].

with negative side effects of medications [5, 8, 9, 12].

2. Reasons for drug addiction

sciousness [3, 10, 11].

[9].

from antipsychotic medications [8].

drugs.

50 Drug Addiction

Much evidence suggests that drug addiction negatively and directly affects underlying neuropathology of psychiatric disorders. This may enhance addiction vulnerability by disrupting neural substrates mediating positive reinforcement; increasing hallucinations, delusions, and signs of distractibility; and displaying altered patterns of neural activation involving dopamine-rich frontostriatal brain regions, injury, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis, cardiovascular, liver, and gastrointestinal diseases. In the longer term, drug addiction impairs daily life by disrupting frontostriatal reward-learning signals. Intravenous drug abuse may induce psychotic symptoms by significantly attenuating the reward prediction error signal in the limbic striatum and the incentive value signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Drug-induced behavioral changes may occur leading to lower rates of reward-related reinforcement learning (RL). The degree to which drugs disrupt encoding of incentive values in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate correlates with the degree to which drugs induce mild psychotic symptoms [3, 5, 7]. According to Bernacer et al. [10], (a) "disturbance in the ways that affected individuals evaluate stimuli and learn associations leads to mistaken evaluation of irrelevant phenomena as motivationally salient and to faulty association of unconnected ideas and events, ultimately leading to the emergence of characteristic alterations in perceptions and beliefs."
