The Stress/Drug Abuse Connection

Faced with stress in their lives, some people turn to addictive substances, such as alcohol, nicotine, or illicit drugs like cocaine. Researchers at the UW Center for Drug Addiction Research are working to better understand the relationship between stress and drug use by conducting a four-year study as part of a multi-site, federally funded project.

Researchers have found that a stress-response hormone, dynorphin, seems to activate receptors in the brain that amplify the craving response to cocaine. Work with mice has also shown that exposure to social stress can lead to an enhanced craving for cocaine.

Scientists at the UW center are researching those hormonal responses and how they enhance drug cravings. They hope that understanding those responses could allow them to disrupt the hormonal mechanism and reduce the drug craving.

The study will be funded by a four-year, $1.35 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), one of the National Institutes of Health. The grant is part of a $7.6 million grant package to 10 institutions studying the links between stress and drug use.

Dr. Charles Chavkin, the Allan and Phyllis Treuer professor of pharmacology, leads the UW study. Chavkin's group is examining the neural and hormonal responses in lab mice exposed to stressful experiences, and the effect such responses have on brain mechanisms responsible for drug cravings.

They want to identify neurohormonal interactions in the brain, define the neurons in the brain that increase the drug craving response after exposure to stress, and sort out the neural circuits that mediate the enhanced craving.

The researchers hope that by determining what causes those drug cravings in mice, they may learn how to alter that process and eventually develop ways to reduce relapses in people recovering from drug addiction.