Why environmental cues make drug addiction extra hard to beat

Besides triggering the brain's emotional and stimulus-response systems, environmental cues activate areas where memories are processed, according to this study. Prompting these memory processing systems makes it extra difficult to counter addiction because the classic stimulus-response mechanisms are reinforced by the memory effects of environmental drug cues. While this double effect makes it hard to treat drug abuse, this finding may offer a way to use cues to improve cognitive behavioural therapy.

from Health & Medicine News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2IU0V51