Addicted to dopamine

How do you stop people taking cocaine? Illegality keeps it at bay a bit. It stops it being quite so freely available, but it makes it sexy, too. I wonder how much its illegal status really affects people’s decision whether to take it or not. If the perils inherent aren’t a deterrent, the risk of punishment is hardly likely to sway the balance. People might be encouraged to start smoking, drinking, snorting and ultimately injecting their eyeballs by others, but other people’s efforts and assertions don’t enter the picture when it comes to stopping. In our vices, we hear no other voices.

Obviously cocaine is a con, a bad long-term investment. It makes the brain produce dopamine, which makes you feel good, then after a while the brain doesn’t produce as much dopamine as it did, so when you’re not taking coke you’re not getting as much dopamine as you were before you got involved so you have to keep servicing the dopamine debt.