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Smoking is enjoyable and beneficial.
This might sound like an outrageous and irresponsible assertion, but it is absolutely true.
Smoking is really enjoyable and also good for you …
This is why smoking is enjoyable and good for you.
After cheating its way through the BBB, nicotine affects your faculties by again conning its way through specific receptors in the brain.
Somewhat like the BBB, but much more scrupulous, these receptors are the 'gatekeepers' of the neurons, the brain cells. But they are obviously not all that competent, as nicotine manages to fool them too! |
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The receptors continuously screen vast variations of molecular structures, including certain hormones - called neurotransmitters - that function as couriers of information. As their name suggests, they transmit information to the neurons. Once information is received through the 'door', the neurons perform accordingly, usually in a chain reaction. The gatekeeper of the neuron, the receptor, is designed to allow access (or 'binding') only to 'authorized' neurotransmitters. The receptor verifies the molecular print of each potential intruder - like a guard checking ID at a gate - and permits entrance only if the specific neurotransmitter is identified as an 'authorized' visitor.
However, nicotine and most other psychoactive drugs, whether illicit or pharmaceuticals, manage to 'fool' the 'gatekeepers' by carrying 'fake ID's'. The gatekeepers are obviously quite slack. |
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Psychoactive drugs therefore manage to 'fool' the receptors and bind in where they don't belong.
You could imagine a psychoactive drug as being like a robber with a well-crafted skeleton key. Such drugs roughly imitate the molecular structure of the original neurotransmitter and so manage to get thorough the forbidden door. | |
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