Addiction and the Human Brain

£29.00

How drug addiction affects the human brain.

SKU: 1044
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Producer: Human Relations Media, USA
Year Produced: 2006
Running time: 25 minutes
Trailer:  Watch on Youtube
PDF:  Teaching Notes

Description

This programme combines factual information and interviews with recovering teenage addicts, counsellors and brain experts to help viewers understand the effects of drugs on the brain:

  • how the brain responds to drugs and why the brains of teenagers make them more vulnerable to the effects of drugs;
  • developing tolerance: how drug use actually changes the brain, leading to a reduction in the response to the drug after prolonged use and the need to take higher doses to get the same effect;
  • dependence and addiction: how continued voluntary drug use can eventually become involuntary and compulsive, as the brain becomes accustomed to the drug and can’t function without it;
  • treatment and recovery: how recovering addicts have to overcome the power of cravings, resist triggers that cause cravings, and change their behaviour in order to quit successfully;

It also looks at why preventing addiction is better than treating it.