Alcohol is a gateway drug and can influence someone’s likelihood of becoming addicted to cocaine, a study claims.
Researchers were analyzing the behavior of ‘gateway drugs’ and how they can impact the body’s response to other substances.
They evaluated rats who were given alcohol ten days prior to having cocaine, and those that were exposed were more vulnerable to showing addictive behavior.
The rats that had alcohol were three times more likely to be addicted to cocaine, and experts warn that this gateway drug can influence the brain in how it responds to other substances.
Rats were studied on if their response towards cocaine changed depending on alcohol use. Researcher found that rats who consumed alcohol before the cocaine were more likely to exhibit addictive qualities towards the substance
Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center in New York City evaluated cocaine-seeking behavior in rats that consumed alcohol and those that didn’t.
Dr. Edmund Griffin Jr., an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the university, and his team administered the alcohol to some of the rats ten days before they were given the cocaine.
While addiction to cocaine has previously been linked to other substances such as alcohol, nicotine and marijuana, it has remained unclear how environmental risks drive this addictive behavior differently in people.
The brain has a reward’s pathway called the mesolimbic dopamine system.
It is stimulated by many different environmental factors including sex, food, alcohol and drugs.
During normal processes, dopamine will be released from a neuron and bind to specialized proteins.
But if someone uses cocaine, the drug will block the area in the brain that released the dopamine and cause a build-up of the neurotransmitter.
This is when the drug user experiences the release of euphoria when they first take cocaine.
Only about 21 percent of cocaine users become inclined to repetitively abuse the drug, which researchers from the study said suggests that both environmental and genetic risk factors are contributors.
They wanted to see how alcohol exposure in rats can impact compulsive-behavior response in the brain.
The rats that were exposed to alcohol before using cocaine pressed a lever 58 times to signal they wanted more of the drug.
Alternatively, rats that were not exposed to alcohol before using the drug only pressed the lever 18 times to signal they wanted more of the drug.
Approximately 913,000 Americans met the criteria for dependence on cocaine in 2014, according to National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
Researchers said this information on how rats respond to cocaine use can help when treating people who are addicted to cocaine.