<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 5:45 PM, Kelly Anderson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kellycoinguy@gmail.com" target="_blank">kellycoinguy@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="">On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 5:21 PM, Keith Henson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:hkeithhenson@gmail.com" target="_blank">hkeithhenson@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">I don't think people are going to get very far with understanding<br>
addiction until they understand why human (some at least) can be<br>
addicted at all.<br>
<br>
You folks are sick of hearing about it from me, anyone have an<br>
evolutionary pathway to this curious trait.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div>To addiction? Why did addiction evolve? This seems ultimately simple to me (sorry for jumping in here nearly a year late, but the thread never got here and I thought I had something to add when it came up out of random chance.)</div><div><br></div><div>THE most important evolutionary drive is the drive to reproduce. Without reproduction, genes are never passed on. Evolutionary game over.</div><div><br></div><div>Reproduction in most all multi-cellular animals is through sexual reproduction. So anything that would drive animals to have sex would be an evolutionary driving force. So what is it that sex does? It produces endorphins, which are accepted by the pleasure centers of the brain as "job well done". Any animal that reproduces successfully has to WANT to have sex (at least in season - for seasonally reproductive animals) very much and go through whatever evolution has required it to do to get sex. The reward is the release of brain chemicals that you WANT again and again. </div><div><br></div><div>So, what do drugs do? They stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain that are stimulated by sex. They hijack the pathways that evolved for our most important evolutionary function and they do it well. So it's no wonder that we become addicted to anything that gives the same reward as sex does. It makes a ton of sense from an evolutionary viewpoint.</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div><div>-Kelly</div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">I have not seen any data on this in a long time: did they ever figure why rats would stimulate their reward centers to the exclusion of food, water, female in heat, and until they passed out from weakness?</div></div></font></span></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:'comic sans ms',sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">bill w</div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div><br></div></font></span></div></div></div>
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