the years preceding adolescence
the years preceding adolescence
The brain’s reward center, matures rapidly during the years preceding adolescence. During this period, children begin to discriminate more carefully between less and more meaningful rewards, a capacity that underlies goal driven behaviors and internal motivation. As much as kids are easily rewarded, even using abstract tokens, as they get to their adolescence, they become more selective in terms of the goals they think are worth pursuing. This phenomenon gets to its peak when children get to their adolescence, at which time presentation of small and meaningless reward will result into deactivation of the brain’s reward center (Reid, Wild, & Bozarth, 2020). This means that, adolescents are developmentally conditioned to look for high stimulating behavior so as to acquire a large neurologic reward, this trait is recognizable in the risk taking behaviors that are often associated with people in this stage of life. Unlike the rewards that happen naturally, psychoactive substances trigger signaling in the reward center through the direct receptor binding (Bain & Kornetsky, 2020). Although this is unhealthy, substance use fills a developmental drive for stimulation in this particular area of the brain effectively. As one would predict, the peak ages of substance use initiation occurs during adolescence and early childhood.
At the end of the behavioral control hardware, the prefrontal cortex, that is responsible for executive functions which are crucial to decision making, this are functions such as self-monitoring, impulse control and error correction and thus this serves as a behavioral brake system, it does not mature to its full potential until the middle of the third decade of living. As a result of this, adolescents are unable and unskilled to conduct these functions and deterred by risk than the adults. In addition to this, immaturity of the prefrontal cortex during this developmental stage appear to leave the brain’s reward center more vulnerable and prone to developing the changes which might result into a neurologic disorder of addiction (Knopf, 2017).
Relatively fewer exposures result in substance use disorder symptoms among teenagers compared to adults, and also the risk of developing a substance use disorder (SUD) is in a way related with age of initiation. For example, children who are initiated into drinking alcohol before the age of 14 years are 5 times more likely to develop an addiction as compared to those that started drinking from the age of 19.this pattern is similar to one seen with both marijuana and the misuse of prescription opioid medication (Satterley & Anitescu, 2015). Indeed, delayed substance use initiation into adulthood is associated with a reduced risk of one ever developing an SUD. This is one of the reasons and importance for the government early interventions and prevention strategies that are designed to delay initiation as well as a reduced use in this group.
Psychologic vulnerability to substance use is aggravated by environmental factors, these include the availability, promotion and modeling of substance use behaviors (Bain & Kornetsky, 2020). Through science it has been said that teenagers are particularly sensitive to the influence of cultural messaging. The three most used substances by the adolescents are marijuana, alcohol and tobacco. The three choices are driven by either the availability and also cultural acceptability, this includes the perceived harm they bring. In the late 1990s, availability of prescription pain medications served as a perfect invitation to start using opioids for recreational purposes by teenagers as well as developing its addiction. The combination of the promotion of opioid medication to be safe with easy access through diverted prescription (McDONOUGH, 2016). They can be found in family medicine cabinet. Unlike heroin in the 1970s, which was induced by injection, opioid pills could be swallowed or snorted after being crushed into a powder, this further lowering the bars of invitation.
