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.