How do drugs, especially alcohol, affect your brain so that you do and think things that you would never do when you’re not under the influence
In: 0
First we need to look at your nervous system. You have neurotransmitters which are known to play a role in feelings and behavior. Think of neurotransmitters as messengers. They carry messages along your nervous system through a network of neurons. Neurons have three parts – cell body, axon, and axon terminal.
Cell body maintains function of the nerve cell.
The axon carries electrical messages along to the terminal.
The axon terminal is where the electrical message is changed to a chemical message using neurotransmitters to communicate with the next group of nerve cells, muscle cells or organs.
Neurotransmitters are released from the axon terminal, cross a space called the synaptic cleft, and lands on and binds to a specific receptor on the neighboring target cell, which triggers a change in the target cell.
When you take a drug, it can block the target cell from accepting neurotransmitters, which floods the synaptic cleft with those neurotransmitters. They could also block the neurotransmitters from being released.
Hope this helps
Latest Answers