Various regions within the US and other countries are in the midst of a severe opioid epidemic with a high increase in its usage rate, treatment needs, and death rates as a result of the epidemic. Several clinical studies have been conducted regarding the short-term results across a long period (Recovery Research Institute, 2021) . There are a few studies that have been completed that have looked at the course of opioid use disorders across decades. The addiction to opioids tends to have a chronic course that lasts for several years. There is a need to conduct studies that are highlighting the outcomes of the long-term treatment as well as the recovery rates for the disorder. Such studies are essential since they would help in informing how systems, providers, and policymakers are supposed to address the current major health problem more effectively to aid in the enhancement of remission and recovery rates.
Furthermore, even though an individual patient is often the appropriate treatment focus for opioid abuse disorders, it is also important for the clinicians to have an understanding of the neurobiology of dependence and addiction. That helps in providing them with insights into the behavior and problems of the patients. It, therefore, help them define realistic expectations in addition to clarifying the rationales for methods of treatments and goals (Recovery Research Institute, 2021) . Besides, the patients who have been informed about their brain origins of addiction may also gain from understanding that their condition is having a biological basis. Therefore, it does not mean that they are bad individuals from society. The brain abnormalities that are a result of server use of heroin, oxycodone, and other drugs that are derived from morphine are the main causes of opioid dependence and addiction. The abnormalities that result from independence may be resolved after detoxification within several weeks after one stops using opioids. However, the abnormalities that result in addiction are more complex, wide-ranging, and also last for a long period. They may involve an interaction of the effects of the environment such as stress, the social context of the initial usage of opiate, and psychological conditions. Such abnormalities may result in craving that may also lead to relapse years or months after the person left depending on the opioid.
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Key research is necessary to examine the way opioid is affecting the process of the brain in the production of drug liking, tolerance, addiction, and dependence. Since such processes together with anything that takes place within the human brain are highly complex, the study needs to explain them in a manner that may be understood by the patients. Besides, the treatment implications of the disorder.
The following will be the research question:
How does opioid use disorder affect the brain process to produce drug liking, addiction, dependence, and tolerances?
Various environmental and individual factors are influencing whether an individual experiment9ng with opioid drugs may continue the intake of the drug long enough to become addicted or dependent. For those who continue, it is the ability of the opioid drug for providing an intense feeling of pleasure that is the main reason behind their continuity to use the drug. Whenever oxycodone, heroin, or any opiate moves through the blood to the brain, the chemicals are getting attached to the mu-opioid receptors, the specialized proteins within the surface of the brain cells (Emery & Eitan, 2019) . That linkage between the chemicals and the receptors is triggering the same biochemical brain process that is rewarding individuals with pleasure feelings whenever they are engaged in activities that are promoting the basic functions of life such as eating and sex. Opioids are therapeutically prescribed for pain-relieving. However, when the drug activates these reward processes within the absence of severe pain, one may find themselves in repeated usage of the drug just for pleasure.
Other contexts within the study are opioid tolerance, withdrawal, and dependence. Clinicians take opioid withdrawal as among the strongest factors that drive te dependency on opioid and the addictive behavior of an individual towards the drug. The treatment of an individual’s withdrawal symptoms depends on their brain’s adjustment to the opioids (Kosten & Baxter, 2019) . The re-occurrence exposure of the high dosage of opioids changes the brain functions such that it functions either less or more normal when the drugs are abnormally present and also whenever the drugs are not present. The two main essential results of that change are tolerance of opioid and drug dependence. Tolerance is the need of taking a higher dosage of drugs for the achievement of the same impact as the drug. On the other hand, drug dependence is the withdrawal symptoms susceptibility. The withdrawal symptoms can only take place in individuals who have develop tolerance.
Proposed Experiment
According to Dr. Bruce Alexander, “the American psychologist,” addiction is not just the usage of drugs. In his studies, an individual or an animal is an active ingredient within the interaction with any drug. Therefore, to be able to beat the opioid and several other drug epidemics that people have, it is better to follow his lead. Therefore, it would be important to follow his experiment of 1970 that came to be called the "Rat Park." Before Alexander's experiment, some researchers had proved that when some rats were lonely placed within a cage without any other rats, and they are given two water bottles (Sederer, 2019) . One of these bottles contains heroin while the other only contains water. The rats would always drink from the bottle with heroin until the rats become overdosed and eventually die.
However, Alexander wondered if the experiment was all about drugs or it was related to the setting in which the rats were. In the experiment, both female and male rats will be raised from weaning in isolation or within a larger colony. At the age of sixty-five days, half the number of the rats in each of the environments will be moved to the other. However, at the age of eighty days, the rats will be allowed a continuous access to water as well as to a sequence of seven other solutions. Among the solutions, three of them are sweet or bitter control solutions. The other four solutions will be having different morphine hydrochloride concentrations in a ten percent sucrose solution. It will be noted that the rats that will be housed in the colony during testing will drink less of the morphine hydrochloride solute than the rats that are isolated. The rats dwelling in a colony and are previously housed in isolation will tend to drink more of the morphine hydrochloride solution than the rats that have been housed in the colony since weaning. However, this effect will reach a statistical significance only when the concentration of the morphine hydrochloride solution is at the lowest level. These data will be related to the hypothesis that the rats that are within a colony avoid morphine solution since it is interfering with the complex, behavior of a specific species.
Therefore, the proposed experiment will be putting the rats in a “rat park” in which the rats will no longer be alone. They will be among others and will also be free to roam and play, as well as to socialize and have sex. Besides, they will also be given equal access to the same two types of drug-laced bottles. It will be noted that when the rats are inhabiting the rat parks, they will likely prefer plain water without drugs. They will do so intermittently and will not overdose. That means a social community beats the power of the drug. The main issue with the powerful “ubiquitous psychoactive drugs” is the fact that they are often very effective. They are always changing the way people feel, think, and behave immediately and powerfully. Or else, they transport an individual away from being lonely and isolated. That is the reason many people use them. Besides, that is the reason the campaigns that are driven against such drugs are always ineffective. Consequently, drug-taking, legal and illicit has been the most dominant dilemmas in society today.
Today, the rates of deaths as a result of overdose from drugs such as opioids in the US are on the rise. Therefore, the prescribing clinician needs need to help the patients stay alive till they get to an effective, individually shaped recovery program. The approach that one can effectively do that the experiment teaches is that human beings, not just rats, should be part of the community and should also encourage to relate and experience the support of other individuals. That is based on the basic psychological truth as exists. Currently, the opioid epidemic is tracing its roots to the effort of the doctors to change what had been considered as their under-prescribing of pain medications (Sederer, 2021) . Pain has become one of the vital signs. The doctors have been expected by the regulatory agencies to do the administration of the patients' self-report of pain which needed a response whenever the scores were high as they were often.
References
Emery, M., & Eitan, S. (2019). Members of the same pharmacological family are not alike: Different opioids, different consequences, hope for the opioid crisis?. Progress In Neuro-Psychopharmacology And Biological Psychiatry , 92 , 428-449. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2019.02.010
Kosten, T., & Baxter, L. (2019). Review article: Effective management of opioid withdrawal symptoms: A gateway to opioid dependence treatment. The American Journal On Addictions , 28 (2), 55-62. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajad.12862
Recovery Research Institute. (2021). 28 Long-term Studies on Outcomes for Opioid Use Disorder Patients - Recovery Research Institute . Recovery Research Institute. Retrieved 12 April 2021, from https://www.recoveryanswers.org/research-post/28-longitudinal-studies-on-outcomes-for-opioid-use-disorder-patients/.
Sederer, L. (2019). What Does “Rat Park” Teach Us About Addiction? . Psychiatric Times. Retrieved 12 April 2021, from https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/what-does-rat-park-teach-us-about-addiction.
Sederer, L. (2021). The Medical Irony of the Deadly Opioid Epidemic . Psychiatric Times. Retrieved 12 April 2021, from https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/medical-irony-deadly-opioid-epidemic.
