The Brain: The Story of You

by David Eagleman

Every year the US spends $20 billion on the War on Drugs; globally, the total is over $100 billion. But the investment hasn’t worked. Since the war began, drug use has expanded. Why hasn’t the expenditure succeeded? The difficulty with drug supply is that it’s like a water balloon: if you push it down in one place, it comes up somewhere else. Instead of attacking supply, the better strategy is to address demand. And drug demand is in the brain of the addict. Some people argue that drug addiction is about poverty and peer pressure. Those do play a role, but at the core of the issue is the biology of the brain. In laboratory experiments, rats will self-administer drugs, continually hitting the delivery lever at the expense of food and drink. The rats aren’t doing that because of finances or social coercion. They’re doing it because the drugs tap into fundamental reward circuitry in their brains. The drugs effectively tell the brain that this decision is better than all the other things it could be doing.