“Alcohol abuse costs almost $220 billion to the U.S. economy every year. That’s a shocking number. We need a better treatment right now.” Tiruveedhula is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The exact causes of alcoholism are not well understood, but the researchers explain that the urge to drink is related to the brain’s pleasure centers. Scientists have found that alcohol triggers the brain to release dopamine, the same neurochemical whose levels increase in response to pleasurable behavior like eating, sex or listening to music.
Some drugs currently available to treat alcoholism are aimed at dopamine. “They dampen out the dopamine system a little bit, so you don’t get so happy when you have an alcoholic beverage,” says James Cook, Ph.D...
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