Origins of Addictive Behavior. A nature heritage or a neuropsychiatric nurtured reality?
Autor: Luis Alberto Coelho Rebelo Maia | Publicado:  19/05/2011 | Psicologia , Articulos | |
Origins of Addictive Behavior: a nature heritage or a neuropsychiatric nurtured reality .1

Origins of Addictive Behavior: a nature heritage or a neuropsychiatric nurtured reality?

Luis Alberto Coelho Rebelo Maia. Professor Auxiliar do Departamento de Psicologia e Educação da UBI. Doutorado em Neuropsicologia Clínica pela UBI e Universidad de Salamanca – Departamento de Psicobiología, Psicología Básica y Metodología de las ciências del comportamiento / Instituto de Neurociências de Castilla y León.

Abstract

In this paper we present a revision on the origins of Addictive Behavior and related neural basis. Although there are abundant specific bibliography and professions focusing on addictions treatment, the reasons why people started with addictive behaviors and consequently maintain are still not well understood. This article explores the construction, meaning, and impact of addiction in historical and psychological perspective. The challenge to the usual concept of addictions causes has significant implications for medical practice and for treatment programs. Furthermore, with this article we present the phenomena of Multifactorial Polygenic Heritage as a possible theory for the explanation of addictive behavior, being consequently important for its prevention and treatment. The roles of social, cultural, and population differences, as they may relate to addictive behaviors, are explored.

Keywords: Addiction; Vulnerability; History of Drugs, Neuropsychiatry of Drugs

Orígenes del comportamiento adictivo: ¿un patrimonio de la naturaleza o una realidad neuropsiquiátrica adquirida?

Resumen

En este documento presentamos una revisión sobre los orígenes del comportamiento adictivo y sus bases neurales. Aunque hay abundante bibliografía específica y profesiones centrándose en el tratamiento de adicciones, todavía no se entienden bien las razones por lo que las personas comenzaron con comportamientos adictivos y los mantienen. Este artículo explora la construcción, significado e impacto de la adicción en una perspectiva histórica y psicológica. El desafío para el concepto habitual de causas de adicciones tiene importantes repercusiones para la práctica médica y para los programas de tratamiento. Por otra parte, con este artículo presentamos los fenómenos del patrimonio poligénico multifactorial como una teoría posible para la explicación del comportamiento adictivo, con consecuencias importantes para su prevención y tratamiento. Las funciones sociales, culturales y las diferencias de población, en lo que se puede referir a comportamientos adictivos son explorados.

Palabras-clave: Adicción; Vulnerabilidad; Historia de las Drogas; Neuropsiquiatría de las Drogas.


Origens do comportamento aditivo: Herança natural ou Uma realidade neuropsiquiátrica adquirida?

Resumo

Neste artigo apresentamos uma revisão sobre as origens do comportamento aditivo e as suas bases neurais. Embora haja abundante bibliografia específica, bem como profissões no campo, enfocando o tratamento de dependências e os motivos que levam as pessoas a iniciarem os seus comportamentos de adição e, consequentemente, mantê-los, estes ainda não são bem compreendidos. Este artigo explora a construção, significado e impacto da dependência numa perspectiva histórica e psicológica. O desafio ao conceito usual de causas de dependências tem implicações significativas para a prática médica e para programas de tratamento. Além disso, neste artigo apresentamos os fenómenos da Herança Poligénica Multifatorial como uma possível teoria para a explicação do comportamento de dependência, sendo consequentemente importante para a sua prevenção e tratamento. São ainda explorados os papéis sociais, culturais e as diferenças de população, bem como eles podem incidir sobre os comportamentos de dependência.

Palavras – chave: Adição, Vulnerabilidade; História das drogas; Neuropsiquiatria das Drogas

INTRODUCTION

The term “addiction” was initially used by medical and moral authorities as a medical condition to characterize what was till that time denominated of “habitual drunkenness”, used in the late 18th century(1-2). The term addiction did not exist before that date and rapidly evolved for the field of actual illegal drugs, which at that time only drugs were used in majority on the field of medicine, like the opiate morphine, in the case of Veterans of America Civil War (1861-1865). The terminology “Addiction” has been currently used as a general term to cover up a subject with a number of other expressions that has been used: particularly “alcoholism”; and well before, “inebriety,” in the extended records of talking with reference to alcohol; and “dependence,” in contemporary nosologies (3).

The most widespread psychoactive drug used by mankind, since ancient and biblical times is alcohol, and a simple glance in the Old Testament demonstrate the importance in psychological effects, and even in terms of genetic influence, as well as moral, environmental and so forth(4-5). Alcohol and opiate substances were the first psychoactive substances used with this purpose already around 5,000 year b.C (6). The deleterious consequences of alcohol abuse or misuse were well recognized in the prehistoric age, and it took mankind a long time to make any real progress in providing help to those individuals who are affected(4). The production of alcohol is the oldest of all intentional psychoactive drugs production. In the same way, the historical searches indicate that fermentation of some fruit or honey is the first remote origin of the first psychoactive agent. Archaeological discoveries reveal that pieces to production and consumption already existed 8.000 b.C and that, at least, in 5.000 b.C. they were used to store honey; it is deduced that honey were fermented and diluted in water (mead or hydromel) and has been the first wine for human consumption(7).

Still in biblical terms, alcohol utilization has been well described in quote several passages from bible and has been related alcohol use with inhalational anesthesia, hypnosis and amnesia, chronobiology, amongst other subjects(8). From the Bible Book of Proverbs (p. 123) they quote the Proverb 20: “Wine makes men foolish and strong drink makes men come to blows”, as well as the Book of Genesis, 19, “And that night they made their father take much wine... and the older daughter went into his bed; and he had no knowledge of when she went in or when she went away and so the two daughters of Lot were with child by their father”.

Parting from these passages, some authors made several extrapolations. They state that probably some grapes were left in some place, like a hole in a rock, about 6,000 years ago (8). Progressively, “they deteriorated and became a viscous mass, under the action of the sun and invisible creatures (yeasts), which quenched the thirst of some primitive hungry man… alcohol’s stimulating-depressing effect had just been discovered”. In its review, the authors suggest that Ethanol was the first substance intentionally used in order to make surgery possible. As example of that, they state that ethanol was the only anesthetic drug (in form of wine) used by barber-surgeons from the Napoleonic army, that invaded Russian in 19th Century. This therapeutic utilization was interrupted because the non-significant therapeutic index and problems in intentionally awaking patients, and culminated with the interruption of these procedures in the early 20th Century.

In terms of curiosity, these inebriating and amnesic effects served as the basis for the first written known description of an incest relation between Lot (Abraham’s nephew) and his two daughters (altogether they have left from Sodome) (8). From these relation got alive the origins of Moabite and Amanite tribes. According to the authors this lascivious effect of alcohol to facilitate rape was replaced by the benzodiazepine flunitrazepam (Rohipnol), legally banned in several countries (although they have been first developed as benzodiazepine drug used as a hypnotic and in anesthesia), because its capacity to cause semiconciousness and memory blackouts (several unwanted sexual encounters were reported by victims of sexual assault under the influence of this drug)(8). As another example of anesthetic effect of alcohol they quote the Book of Marc 15, “And they gave him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it”, were the refuse from Jesus was considered has a refuse of the anesthetic effect of alcohol, preferring to suffer the pain of crucifixion from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Golgotha hill.

Pulque is, probably, the oldest fermented drink in pre-Hispanic Mexico(9). The culture of the Maguey (a variation of Pulque) is almost as old as the origins of agriculture in America. There are testimonies that inform on the culture of the maguey in the zone of Tehuacán towards year 6 500 b.C. Its utilization was strictly reserved to ritual purposes and only by tribal leaders or sorcerers, being its utilization by ordinary people severely repressed. In equal way “the earliest confirmed evidence for wine dates back to 5.000 b.C. This evidence is in the form of tartrate deposits on a pot from the Zagros Mountains of Iran. It is questionable whether wine could predate this discovery by more than a thousand years as it, perhaps, required the advances in pottery which took place at this time. Before this discovery, the oldest confirmed evidence for grapes within human settlements was in pips from wild vines dating from c 4500 BCE”(10). Some claim that there is evidence for cultivated grapes dating back to c 8000 BCE, in the so called Noah Hypothesis, although there is no evidence to relate founds of this period to cultivated varieties and also, the evidences found are so few as to make this date doubtful(10). Like the historian Edward Gibbon, affirm that wine search was one of the reasons that had taken the Barbarians to invade the Europe (11). Also, Grapevine is the most cited plant in the Bible and the first miracle of Jesus was to convert water into wine in the weddings of Canaan; also The Mediterranean armies, since the antiquity, had always drunk wine; The Justinian Code prescribed posca, sour wine and water, as part of the ration of the soldiers; The drunkenness of Alexander, the Great, and of its father, Filipe, became famous and proverbial; Passed two millennia, and the Napoleonic armies continued to receive wine; one hundred million liters had been more than bought for the French soldiers; In World War II the military ration of the Frenchmen arrived up to one liter daily; But in the year of 1917, the French army bought 120 million liters (11).


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