Prescription and illegal drugs are addictive, but our body's natural response to these drugs causes us to become resistant to them, causing us to need higher doses. When drugs enter our body, our body responds by trying to return itself to homeostasis, the state in which our body is most natural or most balanced. Part of the reason why the effect of drugs begins to weaken can be explained by classical conditioning and the environment in which the drugs are taken. Controlled drugs such as morphine, an opiate usually administered by a doctor, can be just as deadly as a “street” drug such as heroin, another opiate derived from morphine. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Our bodies have a natural state of balance that it tries to maintain itself in known as homeostasis. This includes body temperature, fluid balances, and chemical balances. When an unwanted chemical, such as a drug, enters the human body, it tries to counteract the drug by returning itself to homeostasis. The first few times the drug is administered, the effect can be equally strong, but as the drug is introduced more and more into the body, our mind begins to prepare for the moment the drug is taken and will try to counteract it gradually. hand administering the drug. drugs enter our body. This tolerance is due to factors such as the dosage amount and the number of times the drug has been taken, but there is also another reason why a tolerance starts to develop starting from our mind. This is where classical conditioning comes in. an unconditioned stimulus, the drug effect as a conditioned response and an environmental signal as a conditioned stimulus; Classical conditioning can explain how and why a tolerance to a drug begins to appear. In one case, a man took morphine in his bedroom for a month. As time went on, he needed higher-level prescriptions because he began to become tolerant to morphine. When he decided to take morphine in his living room, he died. Here, his bedroom was the environmental cue and conditioned stimulus. When he took morphine in an environment separate from where he normally took it, his mind did not prepare his body for the morphine he was about to take. This means that his tolerance to morphine was no longer there. Keep in mind that he was already taking higher level doses of morphine, but only died when he was in a different environment. Similarly, dogs injected with adrenaline began to show signs of bradycardia (slowing of the heart's action) to counteract the adrenaline when the dogs saw the injection site where it was normally injected. The unconditioned stimulus, the drug, and the conditioned stimulus, the ambient adrenaline, form a relationship in the brain. When the person taking the drug enters the environment in which they are used to taking the drug, the body responds by preparing to counteract the drug. Over time, the drug no longer produces the necessary effect due to the tolerance that is created, meaning that higher dosages of the drug are required to produce the desired/needed effect. Even when taking these higher dosages of drugs, the body can still handle the effects and dosage thanks to the tolerance it has built up. BUT, when the person takes the drug in an unfamiliar environment, the brain no longer receives the conditioned stimulus that it once received with the unconditioned stimulus. For this reason the mind no longer contrasts.