dopamine: a brain chemical involved in sensations of reward and pleasure
Basically a drug. Finding any real info without going to addiction is almost impossible. Addictions help bring out the nature of the beast like a casual drinker and an alcoholic. Search for the casual drinker and you get how to mix the drinks, little about the effects of the alcohol. Search for in depth addiction to alcohol and you get facts about how the drug effects the brain.
Most articles have become too biased toward the HO so these are left out.
But here are the ones that has no bias. If you find any that I miss then forget the site.
http://www.ucsf.edu/cnba/Learning/aboutadd.htm
Anyone who has ever experienced a surge of elation during a round of applause, an explosion of sexual desire or the sheer pleasure of a thirst quenched on a boiling hot day has felt the brain’s own chemicals.
Flowing down ancient pathways deep inside the human brain, these chemicals are the body’s innate and essential rewards for life-sustaining behaviors. Sometimes, though, the brain is tricked by foreign self-administered drugs such as heroin, cocaine, amphetamine or alcohol.
When that happens the measured dose of these feel-good chemicals becomes a flood, disrupting the brain’s carefully calibrated communication system and usurping the brain’s natural system of positive rewards.
Over time, the reward system becomes a slave to drugs of abuse and, in altering itself to meet their unnatural demands, the source of their addictive sway. Indeed, at almost every level from metabolic activity to the response to environmental cues, the addicted brain is distinctly different from the non-addicted one.
Article worth reading about addiction, unbiased!!!!!
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,12543,219671,00.html
Some more unbiased info written semi simple, The topic of "What is the role of dopamine in reward?" should explain to you if you have no understanding of the drug!
http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year3/psy337DrugAddiction/theorydrugaddiction.htm
Simple meaning
Main Entry: do·pa·mine
Pronunciation: 'dO-p&-"mEn
Function: noun
Etymology: dopa + amine
Date: 1959
: a monoamine C8H11NO2 that is a decarboxylated form of dopa and that occurs especially as a neurotransmitter in the brain
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/article/0,12543,219666,00.html
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's bible of mental health, no one is actually "addicted" to anything. People who overuse drugs and alcohol have "substance-related disorders," and the only so-called behavioral addiction in the book is "pathological gambling." The word "addiction" never appears.
Never trust the American Psychiatric Association.