Causes of Drug Addiction

Causes




Comparison of the perceived harm for various psychoactive drugs from a poll among medical psychiatrists specialized in addiction treatment.
Drugs known to cause addiction include illegal drugs as well as prescription or over-the-counter drugs, according to the definition of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
Stimulants:
Amphetamine and Methamphetamine
Cocaine
Nicotine
Sedatives and Hypnotics:
Alcohol
Barbiturates
Benzodiazepines, particularly flunitrazepam, triazolam, temazepam, and nimetazepam
Methaqualone and the related quinazolinone sedative-hypnotics
Opiate and Opioid analgesics
Morphine and Codeine, the two naturally-occurring opiate analgesics
Semi-synthetic opiates, such as Heroin (Diacetylmorphine), Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, and Hydromorphone
Fully synthetic opioids, such as Fentanyl and its analogs, Meperidine/Pethidine, and Methadone
Addictive drugs also include a large number of substrates that are currently considered to have no medical value and are not available over the counter or by prescription.
An article in The Lancet compared the harm and addiction of 20 drugs, using a scale from 0 to 3 for physical addiction, psychological addiction, and pleasure to create a mean score for addiction. Caffeine was not included in the study. The results can be seen in the chart above.

Addictive potency
The addictive potency of drugs varies from substance to substance, and from individual to individual. Dose, frequency and time are critical factors for developing a drug addiction. The larger the dose, the more often and the longer that this habit of going the greater the risk that consumption becomes an addiction. The time required for developing drug addiction differs greatly between different substances, from a couple of weeks at the intensive use of heroin to 5-10 years of alcohol abuse if the person is middle-aged (shorter time for teenagers) are typical values with many individual exceptions.
Drugs such as codeine or alcohol, for instance, typically require many more exposures to addict their users than drugs such as heroin or cocaine.[citation needed] Likewise, a person who is psychologically or genetically predisposed to addiction is much more likely to suffer from it.
Although dependency on hallucinogens like LSD ("acid") and psilocybin (key hallucinogen in "magic mushrooms") is listed as Substance-Related Disorder in the DSM-IV, most psychologists do not classify them as addictive drugs.