For example, if you regularly take opioids to manage pain, you risk acquiring a tolerance to them and maybe becoming physically reliant on them. This does not suggest that you have an addiction. Even when opioids are provided correctly and under the guidance of a physician, only a small percentage of people develop an addiction to them.
The Effect on Your Mental Health: Your brain is programmed to crave comparable events that result in a favourable emotional state. To motivate you to carry out these behaviours again and again.
The reward system in your brain is the target of drugs that can lead to addiction. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, is released in massive quantities into your brain. This produces an experience that can only be described as absolute joy. You keep taking the medicine in an attempt to reproduce the high.
Your brain will ultimately acclimate to the elevated dopamine levels. As a result, you may need to take more of the medication to have the same desired effect. Other things that used to give you joy, such as food and spending time with family, may no longer do so.