There are other facets to measuring the addictive potential of a drug, too, and there are even researchers<\/a><\/strong> who argue that no drug is always addictive.<\/p>\n Given the varied view of researchers, then, one way of ranking addictive drugs is to ask expert panels.<\/p>\n In 2007, David Nutt and his colleagues<\/a><\/strong> asked addiction experts to do exactly that \u2013 with some interesting findings.<\/p>\n Nutt et al.\u2019s experts ranked heroin as the most addictive drug, giving it a score of 3 out of a maximum score of 3.<\/p>\n Heroin is an opiate that causes the level of dopamine in the brain\u2019s reward system to increase by up to 200% in experimental animals<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n In addition to being arguably the most addictive drug, heroin is dangerous, too, because the dose that can cause death is only five times<\/a><\/strong> greater than the dose required for a high.<\/p>\n Heroin also has been rated as the second most harmful drug<\/a> <\/strong>in terms of damage to both users and to society.<\/p>\n The market for illegal opiates, including heroin, was estimated to be $68 billion worldwide in 2009<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Cocaine directly interferes with the brain\u2019s use of dopamine to convey messages from one neuron to another.<\/p>\n In essence, cocaine prevents neurons from turning the dopamine signal off<\/a><\/strong>, resulting in an abnormal activation of the brain\u2019s reward pathways.<\/p>\n In experiments on animals, cocaine caused dopamine levels to rise more than three times<\/a> <\/strong>the normal level.<\/p>\n It is estimated that between 14-20m people worldwide use cocaine and that in 2009 the cocaine market was worth about $75 billion<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Crack cocaine has been ranked by experts as being the third most damaging drug<\/a><\/strong> and powdered cocaine, which causes a milder high, as the fifth most damaging.<\/p>\n About 21% of people<\/a><\/strong> who try cocaine will become dependent on it at sometime in their life.<\/p>\n Cocaine is similar to other addictive stimulants, such as methamphetamine<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 which is becoming more of a problem as it becomes more widely available \u2013 and amphetamine.<\/p>\n Nicotine is the main addictive ingredient of tobacco.<\/p>\n When somebody smokes a cigarette, nicotine is rapidly absorbed by the lungs and delivered to the brain.<\/p>\n Nutt et al\u2019s expert panels rated nicotine (tobacco) as the third most addictive substance.<\/p>\n More than two-thirds<\/a><\/strong> of Americans who tried smoking reported becoming dependent during their life.<\/p>\n In 2002 the WHO estimated there were more than 1 billion smokers<\/a><\/strong> and it has been estimated that tobacco will kill more than 8m people annually by 2030<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Laboratory animals have the good sense not to smoke.<\/p>\n However, rats will press a button to receive nicotine directly into their bloodstream \u2013 and this causes dopamine levels in the brain\u2019s reward system to rise by about 25-40%<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Barbiturates \u2013 also known as blue bullets, gorillas, nembies, barbs and pink ladies \u2013 are a class of drugs that were initially used to treat anxiety and to induce sleep<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n They interfere with chemical signalling in the brain, the effect of which is to shut down various brain regions.<\/p>\n At low doses, barbiturates cause euphoria, but at higher doses they can be lethal because they suppress breathing.<\/p>\n Barbiturate dependence was common when the drugs were easily available by prescription, but this has declined dramatically as other drugs have replaced them.<\/p>\n This highlights the role that the context plays in addiction: if an addictive drug is not widely available, it can do little harm.<\/p>\n Nutt et al\u2019s expert panels rated barbiturates as the fourth most addictive substance.<\/p>\n Although legal in the US and UK, alcohol was scored by Nutt et al.\u2018s experts 1.9 out of a maximum of 3.<\/p>\n Alcohol has many effects on the brain, but in laboratory experiments on animals it increased dopamine levels in the brain\u2019s reward system by 40-360%<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 and the more the animals drank the more dopamine levels increased.<\/p>\n Some 22% of people<\/a><\/strong> who have taken a drink will develop dependence on alcohol at some point during their life.<\/p>\n The WHO has estimated that 2 billion<\/a><\/strong> people used alcohol in 2002 and more than 3m people died in 2012<\/a><\/strong> due to damage to the body caused by drinking. Alcohol has been ranked as the most damaging drug<\/a><\/strong> by other experts, too. This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a><\/strong>. Read the original article<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" These are the world’s 5 most addictive substances and what they do to your body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":112787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[20983,23591,17704,8316,20576],"class_list":["post-112785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-20983","tag-addictive","tag-conversation","tag-drugs","tag-most"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112899,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112785\/revisions\/112899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Heroin<\/h3>\n
2. Cocaine<\/h3>\n
3. Nicotine<\/h3>\n
4. Barbiturates (\u2018downers\u2019)<\/h3>\n
5. Alcohol<\/h3>\n
\nThis article has been amended to reflect an error in the reading of Nutt et al.\u2019s data. The author wishes to thank Erin Brodwin\/Business Insider for detecting the error.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.edu.au\/content\/54862\/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic\")
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