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Addiction and Drug Tolerance

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Jim has taken heroin for the past 5 years. One day, Jim and Jack go out and both use large quantities of heroin. Although both did the same amount of drugs, Jack dies from an overdose. Discuss how drug tolerance and conditioning may factor into this outcome. 100 words

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Solution Summary

The addiction and drug tolerances are given. The amount of drugs to be taken for Jack to overdose is determined. How drug tolerances and conditioning may factor into this outcome is discussed.

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Most drugs physiologically act on certain receptors, typically for neurotransmitters. The thing is, these receptors govern the sensitivity of our organ systems (central nervous and otherwise) to the drug. The more receptors there are the more sensitive we are to a certain amount of the drug. One can imagine that if you put 50 units of drug into a system, and there are 100 receptors, then the full dosage of the drug will elicit an effect. If one were to have only 10 receptors, there would be an excess of the drug that simply cannot elicit an effect because all the receptors would be taken ...

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