[denimnerd42]

don't think meth or fentanyl changes his hypothesis. if you see the interviews of those in bandos in Baltimore or on the street in Kensington, they have endured trauma their entire lives. Whether it's societal induced trauma like racism, poverty, family trauma, violence, or whatever else. These people are choosing to escape their "cages" with these drugs.

[nerdponx]

And yet plenty of people without major life trauma have succumbed to addiction as well.

I have no doubt that traumatic life experiences can exacerbate addiction, make it harder to quit, and/or increase propensity to becoming addicted (maybe even increasing propensity to try hard drugs in the first place). But the notion that the addictiveness of heroin, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, etc. is purely a psychosocial phenomenon is at best a fairy tale.

[ethanbond]

Trauma + extremely high availability.

My understanding is that highly addictive substances will be consumed ≈ to their availability. Makes sense, given the social dynamics of addicts. It’s useful to find people who you can drag into your despair with you, so there’s an inherent virality alongside the high “retention rate” powered by the chemical itself.

[girvo]

> without major life trauma

Who are you to say what is and isn’t major trauma?

[niemandhier]

There are drugs that cause neural rewireing in animals after a single use e.g. cocaine. If you have a stable social group and a fulfilled life you will probably not become dependant on thc, you should still avoid crack.

[Nowado]

Everything causes neural rewiring in animals after a single use. That's what experience is. This sentence says nothing.

[niemandhier]

Ok here is a lot to unpack.

1rst. Yes single use cocain in animals causes unusual neuroplasticity, we can prove it. Citation: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.5898... Favorite quotes: "For the first time, it has been demonstrated that a single low dose of cocaine, which can cause no locomotor behavioral and brain metabolic changes, can induce structural damage." "It is essential to alert the population even against the consumption of low doses of cocaine."

Changes are much more pronounced in long term exposed animals, please work through the publications originating from the grant for "Cocaine-induced neuroplasticity: a new role for TGF beta signaling" Link: https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-DA037257-02

2nd. Memory is devilish complicated, but AFAIK the current state of knowledge is that short term memory ( which I normally would expect to be the main memory for a single incidence trial) is not due to anatomical changes in the actual neurons, but a complicated mix of neurotransmitters, spiking, vestibules etc.

So saying that every interaction leads to a measurable change in the brain matter is most probably wrong.

Please read: https://molecularbrain.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/17...

To verify that.

So summarizing: No not "Everything causes neural rewiring", and yes my sentence had quite a lot of content, but normally people stop listening when I start quoting studies in a conversation.

[Nowado]

Those are very different sentences and that difference makes them hold some content. Especially content like numerical values and limitations, making the whole thing waaaaaay less binary (which was the issue with the original one).

I went through abstracts of papers 1 and 3 ('long term exposure to cocaine induces neuroplasticity' isn't exactly controversial). The issue isn't with those papers, but in difference between them and 'cause neural rewireing'.

It's the difference you're also well aware of, because in 'summary' you put my exact quote quoting you in form of 'Everything causes neural rewiring' while on the way there you decided to argue against position that 'every interaction leads to a measurable change in the brain matter'. Those are different statements, unless there's some standard explaining that 'neural rewiring' refers to a specific level of changes that I'm simply not familiar with.

[beebeepka]

I'd argue that the entire post is just preachy gibberish.