Houston Recovery Center Reflection

My experience being a volunteer at the Houston recovery center rally was great. I learned how a lot of people started abusing drugs at a very young age. I also learned that important people like judges, and the other speakers at the event have been sober on average for about ten years. The participants in the rally were very passionate about the issue and I look forward to continue working with the Houston Recovery Center. The social issue is still substance abuse. First, I will reiterate my social issue and go into more depth about it. Then, I will discuss biological influences on conditioning, and how it ties into substance abuse. First, Substance abuse. Our social issue deals mainly with abusing the use of alcohol. Alcohol is often confused as a stimulant because it makes a person feel “happy”, but alcohol is considered a depressant drug. Depressants are drugs that decrease the functioning of the nervous system. Alcohol is the most commonly abused depressant. Millions of people in the U.S suffer from alcoholism. Alcohol indirectly stimulates the GABA neurotransmitter, which is the brains major depressant/ inhibitory transmitter, and slows/ stops neural activity. Alcohol depresses inhibitions. It causes motor skills, and speech to be affected. Alcoholism causes black outs/ memory loss, liver disease,
Taste aversion helps with an organism’s survival. Taste aversion is when nausea is associated to a particular taste because that taste resulted in nausea. For example, there is a chemical/ drug that is used to treat substance abuse, and in the presence of alcohol makes you become violently ill. This makes alcoholics who are given the chemical/ drug learn to avoid drinking alcoholic beverages. To the alcoholic, there is an apparent link between the two stimuli. The alcoholics learn to associate alcohol and illness, and therefore stay away from any and all alcohol beverages as a way to ensure their