Research has long found that one extremely popular drug can lead to further substance use — and experts are now saying that that this popular item might be acting as a “gateway drug.”
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), more than 84% of all Americans have consumed alcohol at some point in their life. Researchers say that while many of them drink without too much incident, alcohol use can still alter the brain’s behavior centers, and drinkers may become more susceptible to drug abuse.
“Studies indicate that alcohol alters brain chemistry in ways that increase susceptibility to drug addiction,” Chris Tuell, a clinical psychotherapist and a chemical and behavioral addiction specialist at the Lindner Center told Fox News in an interview published Sunday, March 2.
Additionally, Dr. George Koob, director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) said back in 2015 that the brain changes with addiction and “it takes a good deal of work to get it back to its normal state.”
“The more drugs or alcohol you’ve taken, the more disruptive it is to the brain,” Koob argued.
One such study from the NIAAA in 2013 supports this idea, as researchers argued at the time that compulsive alcohol use can quickly progress to alcohol dependence.
According to the NIAAA, mice were given alcohol on a regular basis, and researchers studied how the chronic alcohol exposure lead to “brain adaptations that shift behavior control away from an area of the brain involved in complex decision-making and toward a region associated with habit formation.”
Dr. Kenneth Spielvogel, senior medical officer at Carrara Treatment in California, also told Fox News that while cannabis is often dubbed the “classic gateway drug,” alcohol’s prevalence in society is a part of what makes it so dangerous and potentially addiction-causing.
“Any substance that impairs judgment is potentially a gateway drug, in my opinion — however, alcohol is the king of this,” Spielvogel told the outlet, adding that it it can lead to cocaine, heroin and the use of other “harder drugs,”
“It maintains a firm grip on a large portion of the adult population,” he continued. “I personally have seen the ravages of this — hungover victims turn to meth, cocaine and other drugs for the ‘pick me up’ they feel they need.”
Despite the research that points to alcohol acting as a “gateway drug,” researchers from organizations like the National Institute of Healthalso argue that alcoholism — or alcohol use disorder, as medical professionals call the disease — also has plenty of environmental causes, such as drinking at a young age, genetics or mental health conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from childhood trauma.
“Just because people who use harder drugs often drink alcohol first does not necessarily mean alcohol caused their drug use,” Tuell noted to Fox News.
Amongst all the research on what actually causes drug and alcohol abuse, experts agree on one thing — fighting addiction is extremely difficult, and those in need should always seek out the resources available to them.
“There are few drugs where the sudden stoppage of their use can be deadly — alcohol is one of these,” Spielvogel added to Fox. “I cannot stress this enough; it is very important that if someone has a use disorder, they seek professional help for their detox and recovery, whether it’s a private treatment facility or going to a medical professional.”
The U.S. government program Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA) offers a national helpline that provides free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders. Those in need can call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visitFindTreatment.gov.
