Alcohol and Drugs Rewire Your Brain and Change How Your Genes Work

New understanding of the neurobiological and genetic basis for addiction

By Karla Kaun, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Brown University

Alcohol and other drugs can overpower the reward pathways of the brain. Simona Dumitru/Moment via Getty Images

Many people are wired to seek and respond to rewards. Your brain interprets food as rewarding when you are hungry and water as rewarding when you are thirsty. But addictive substances like alcohol and drugs of abuse can overwhelm the natural reward pathways in your brain, resulting in intolerable cravings and reduced impulse control.

A popular misconception is that addiction is a result of low willpower. But an explosion of knowledge and technology in the field of molecular genetics has changed our basic understanding of addiction drastically over the past decade. The general consensus among scientists and healthcare professionals is that there is a strong neurobiological and genetic basis for addiction.

As a behavioral neurogeneticist leading a team investigating the molecular mechanisms of addiction, I combine neuroscience with genetics to understand how alcohol and drugs influence the brain. In the past decade, I have seen changes in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of addiction, largely due to a better understanding of how genes are dynamically…