A new study has discovered that drinking booze makes a person more prone to developing a cocaine addiction.
Scientists found that when we drink alcohol over a long period of time it causes the breakdown of two proteins in the body that act as a blocker in the brains ‘reward circuit’. This can then lead to the person craving harder substances like coke. If like me, you had no clue what the brains 'reward circuit' actually is, allow me to explain - It's a group of structures that release dopamine, which is linked to pleasure, and these are activated by things like drugs, which is why drugs make us so darn happy.
The research was carried out on rats and the study split the rats into two groups. One group was given alcohol and the other was given water.Study author Dr Edmund Griffin, assistant professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, said:
We found that the animals in the alcohol priming group had enhanced behavioural responses.We looked not only at how much cocaine they used but also will they continue to use a drug, even if they have a negative consequence - like a foot shock.
The study showed that the rats who had the booze were more persistent in seeking out the coke, pressing a button to release the drug 58 times during the experiment. Compared to the rats without alcohol exposure who only pressed the button 18 times. Wowzers. Those are some cocain loving rats!