A psychiatrist caring for adults with chronic mental health challenges, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha delivers psychiatric treatment to patients at Gateway Homes, a provider in Chesterfield, Virginia. Over his career, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha has conducted numerous lectures and seminars on mental health topics, including a lecture on addiction before an audience of legal professionals in Charlottesville, Virginia. When people lose control of their behaviors, feelings, and thoughts regarding their craving for a substance, for example a drug, and this craving takes command of their lives, we say that they’ve become addicted to that substance. The decision to take drugs may be due to the drug’s ability to make the user euphoric, to reduce stress, or to enhance performance. Why does a person feel compelled to use a drug even if they understand that the drug is doing harm to them and even if they wish to stop, as is often the case? The answer may center on the way a drug interacts with chemical processes in the brain. Drug use can cause the brain to become flooded with dopamine, a chemical that gives rise to euphoria. With repeated drug use, however, the brain becomes acclimated to dopamine, and people no longer feel as euphoric when they take the usual amount of the drug. Moreover, when the brain releases dopamine during everyday, non-drug related occasions for pleasure, users may find that they do not feel as good as they expect to due to the brain's acclimation to the chemical. To get the pleasure they desire, users end up consuming more and more of the drug to release effective quantities of dopamine in the brain. This in turn leads to addiction.
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AuthorSince 2006, Dr. Sridhar Yaratha has worked for Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, as a forensic psychiatrist and attending physician for the men’s long-term forensic unit. Archives
January 2020
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