Why People Start Using Drugs (and Why They Sometimes Don't Stop)

Many believe that people just use drugs to get high. It turns out that there are several reasons why people start to use drugs.

The first reason obviously is to experience intense pleasure: people want to feel that rush so they start to experiment with drugs to experience it. But there are other reasons as well. Many people start to use drugs because they want to feel better; they want to get rid of negative feelings – what we call negative affect – things like depression, anxiety, agitation, and anger. They use drugs to ameliorate those feelings.

People also use drugs to enhance performance – we read about athletes, bicyclists, and baseball players who use drugs not to get high but to get a jump on the next guy, to do a little bit better, and get there a little bit sooner.

Finally, a lot of people start taking drugs because they’re curious. They want to know what the commotion is all about. This might be a seventh grader or eighth grader who learns that their friends are getting high on pot. They wonder what it feels like and why their friends are all so giddy about it when they come to school stoned. In fact, curiosity is a big reason people start to take drugs.

It turns out the reasons people continue to take drugs are different than the reasons that they started in the first place.

So why do people continue to use drugs? Pleasure becomes less important. The reason for that is the high people get from a drug is never as intense as the first time they tried it, and when people chronically use a drug, the pleasure from it becomes less and less as the body builds tolerance.

A major reason that people continue to use drugs is to alleviate negative affect. Let's look at someone who started taking drugs to relieve depression and anxiety. Now their lives are beginning unravel; the more involved with drugs they become the more disruptive it is to their work, their relationships, and to their real feelings. They start to have rebound anxiety and insomnia so that the negative effects compound themselves. As people take drugs the need to escape these feelings becomes more and more intense.

The other thing that happens to people when they habitually take drugs is they develop a craving for it. They miss it. They become preoccupied with it. Craving is a very unpleasant feeling; it drives a person from morning until night and as a result of the craving they are drawn to take more drugs. This is an example of negative reinforcement.

Withdrawal symptoms are another negative reinforcement. As the body builds tolerance to the drug, brain chemistry is changed; if they stop using the drug abruptly they experience withdrawal syndrome. Withdrawal syndrome is caused by the fact that if you take a drug chronically your brain tries to compensate for it; it tries to overcome the effects of the drug. For example, if the drug is sedating like alcohol your brain tries to adjust by making it more aroused in the face of alcohol. Therefore, if you stop drinking suddenly your brain is too aroused and you get withdrawal symptoms such as agitation, anxiety, tremulousness, and seizures. At this point, you continue to take the drug primarily to avoid the withdrawal symptoms that occur if they stop them.