Drugs and Brain - Season 1 Episode 1 Opiates and Tranquilisers: From Pleasure to Addiction
10.0048 minutes
The human body manufactures its own painkillers to ensure survival when injured. This program shows how opium and its derivatives, heroin and morphine, hijack that natural pain-numbing ability. Illustrating the brain's ability to alter its own chemistry when attacked by drugs, the program depicts the process by which brain receptors become desensitized and thus addicted. Tranquilizers - and the potentially lifelong physical dependency and psychological problems they can cause - are also studied.