Addiction to drugs, evolution and society: a study on the addiction starting from the evolutionary psychology (La adicción a las drogas, evolución y sociedad: un estudio sobre la adicción a partir de la psicología evolutiva)

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the evolutionary foundations of human addiction to psychoactive substances. To this end, we used two recurrent dichotomous hypotheses in evolutionary psychology literature. The first is that natural selection has structured mechanisms of pleasure in our mind that are linked to the maintenance of life and the reproductive success, and in that drugs are a kind of shortcut within these mechanisms, the co-opts so to speak. In this context the addiction would be linked to chemical imbalance in our brain caused by a wear. The other hypothesis is that psychoactive drugs were important for the maintenance of life of our ancestors when going through difficult times or uncertainties. So, if we consider its addictive factor it would be an adaptive consequence of the common use of drugs in the past. Our results show that even that is not possible to define which of the hypotheses is more adherent, both results show that humans are susceptible to addictions.