Habituation

Drugs CAN'T cause addiction. They can cause habituation if you take them long enough. Emptying receptors, filling them, growing new receptors, pruning old ones - Is how your body manages pain. Addiction is caused by empty receptors. Habituation is caused by full receptors. They operate on different time scales.

Habituation depends on a long term "overabundance signal". New receptors start growing if you are euphoric or at least very happy for on the order of days. "Contented" is the neutral signal. "Addiction" (desire for pain relief) is caused by something emptying receptors. The time constant for that is milliseconds (severe injury) to hours (PTSD caused leak). This is an extremely condensed explanation of what is going on. Besides administered drugs you have to consider natural endorphin production and the lifetime of a receptor. And other things.










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