Pharma 24: Addiction - When Reward Becomes Capture

Clinical Deep Dives · Feb 2, 2026 · 1m

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This episode reframes addiction as a disorder of learning and salience, not morality or willpower. Drugs of misuse hijack reward pathways, over-assign importance to cues, and remodel circuits that govern impulse, stress, and memory. We trace how repeated exposure converts voluntary use into compulsion, why abstinence alone is fragile, and how pharmacolo…