– Why is the brain so effective in adapting to substances like MDMA and Cocaine?
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Cocaine and MDMA (and other drugs) aren’t “crazy alien substances,” to our body. The molecules themselves might not naturally be a common visitor to our bodies, however, sort of how you might be able to sometimes fit incorrect puzzle pieces together, the shape of the drug molecules are close enough to natural chemicals in our body that they fit a lot of the same “locks.”
Therefore, even though they are foreign substances, all they’re really doing is setting off normal, every day processes in our brain. Normal every day neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) are released, those chemicals do what they naturally do, and then our brain (which is always in a constant feedback loop of adjusting to feedback) adapts like it always does. Nothing abnormal.
The difference with drugs is that they often cause the brain to produce/release more of these chemicals than normal, or sometimes just mimic the neurotransmitter itself, so while our brain is technically adapting just like it always does, the drugs cause those neurotransmitters to keep releasing, which means *our brains keep adapting*. Our brain is just doing what it does, it’s just not adapted to detect when it should stop doing certain things since it never had to worry about that before.
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