Treasure Your Life 珍愛生命：What Addiction Is? 「成癮」的特質與目前相關研究進展

近期，奧斯卡影帝、飢餓遊戲製作者，菲利普西莫霍夫曼（Philip Seymour Hoffman）的驟世帶給世人們無限的慨然與追思，然而，卻也重新讓人們省思關於毒品的問題。人人都知道毒品的萬惡窮極，也知道一旦沾上了便會是一場永無止境的夢靨，無奈的是，它仍舊存在於你我生長的世界。

暫且不追究原因為何，毒品上癮的特質該如何判定？「容易上癮」是否也可能是一項特質，並也表現於其他成癮狀況如「酗酒」、「菸槍」等等？目前醫學研究上，除了針對戒癮做的關於大腦機制與心理的實驗外，也試圖研發相關疫苗。以下為一篇摘自《The New York Times》的文章，並在每段落附上中文翻譯～

Recently, the sudden death of the Oscar Best Actor winner, Philip Seymour Hoffman, has left the world in hush, what's more, sparkling the reflection on drugs problem. This article is partly quoted from 《The New York Times 》. To find further about this article, the link is placed at the bottom. 

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It Is a Disease and Needs to Be Treated as Such

by David Sack. (a psychiatrist, is chief executive of Elements Behavioral Health.)

Addiction has three main characteristics（特質） that cause it to be considered a disease. First, it has a lifelong course characterized by frequent relapses（常常復發）, cross addiction（交叉成癮，同時對兩種以上物質上癮） and a common set of behavioral changes（行為改變）. Second, like other chronic medical disorders（慢性病患者）, genetics plays an important role is determining who is at risk to become addicted. Finally, there are effective medications that treat drug addiction by blocking the rewarding effects（獎賞效應） of drugs and decreasing drug cravings. Let’s examine each of these.

毒品成癮的症狀該從何判斷？當以下這三種成癮特質都符合時，就幾乎可以認定是「生病」了：常復發、交叉成癮、且行為產生某些改變。再者， 如同其他慢性病患者一樣，基因都扮演關鍵角色，容易成癮似乎有些時候跟遺傳脫離不了關係。另外，對於毒品成癮與戒斷的治療方式，目前已有阻卻獎賞效應（一種大腦機制）的療法。

＊關於大腦獎賞機制有段解釋：「Robert Burton說，人類的大腦有一個酬賞回饋機制，當我們做對事的時候，這個酬賞回饋機制就會釋放度巴明，使得我們得到快感。當然，這種「對的事」全憑自我感覺。而這個快感則會驅動我們繼續去作對的事。這是生物學機制下必然的結果。生物的生存仰賴這種酬賞回饋機制。」

...Data shows that anyone who has been addicted to drugs has many times the risk of becoming addicted to alcohol, and similarly, anyone who has been dependent on alcohol has a much higher risk of becoming addicted to another drug. One interpretation（詮釋） of these observations is that once a person has become addicted to drugs, the changes that occur in the brain-reward centers leave them vulnerable（易受傷的、易受...影響的） to succumbing to（屈服於） a second addiction.

研究數據指出，若曾有或正染上毒癮的患者，比其他人對酒精成癮的風險來得高，反之亦然。對於此現象的其中一個詮釋就是一旦患者染上毒癮，某些程度上會改變大腦的獎賞機制，因此更容易對別種藥物上癮。


...Over the last 25 years several medications have received F.D.A. approval to treat addictions. In most cases these medications work by blocking the rewarding effects（抑制、阻卻獎賞效應） of addictive drugs or by decreasing drug cravings（降低隊毒品的渴求） and other protracted（拖延的） withdrawal symptoms（戒斷症狀） that occur after the drug abuse has stopped. Most recently, research efforts have focused on developing vaccines（疫苗） to fight addiction. The vaccine that has moved closest to clinical approval is for the treatment of cocaine（古柯鹼） addiction...

過去25年來，醫學上不斷地在研究如何治療毒癮，多數案例中都是用阻卻大腦獎賞效應的方式成功地戒毒、降低毒癮需求、或漸漸壓制住不斷反反覆覆出現的毒品戒斷症狀。近年來，研究開始將重心放到一個新的領域：研發對抗毒癮的疫苗，其中，古柯鹼成癮為目前最有可能進行臨床實驗研究的項目。



英文文章來源 Resource of the Article:://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/02/10/what-is-
addiction/addiction-is-a-disease-and-needs-to-be-treated-as-such
（解釋來源：http://shymau.pixnet.net/blog/post/45764740-）