Addiction and drug abuse are considered a character preference. Parents, friends, adults and the community think that drug addiction is moral and they also think that they should be able to quit. Research has shown that there are many other reasons why people become addicted to drugs, mainly caused by chemical imbalance in the brain. Although at first they have to make a choice if they want to try a drug known to be addictive. Because of this there are many environmental stresses related to becoming an addict. Approximately five billion people in Canada have used illegal drugs. There are several reasons why people start using drugs and most of them end up becoming addicted and then abusing them. Due to brain chemistry, research has found that dopamine is the root cause of drug addiction rather than being a moral choice to always use the drug, although there are countless root causes that cause a person to start using based on a person. Dr. Nora Volkow is head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and states that “The way a brain becomes addicted to a drug is related to the way a drug increases levels of the naturally occurring neurotransmitter dopamine.” Hirschman, D. (2010). Where the neurotransmitter dopamine is located, the brain has the ability to reinforce the reward. Dopamine is what drives us to carry out activities in our lives, such as eating or procreating, but the chemicals in drugs increase the level of dopamine, which pushes the person to continue using it in order to get a reward from the drug. taking the drugs now that dopamine has increased since the first intake of the substance. Addictive drug... half of the paper... in the brain near the amygdala has to do with memory. Since it is memory, the brain recalls the memory of the activity which is strengthened by dopamine. The amygdala deals with stimuli, so the brain has a certain response because it is affected by those stimuli. There is also a learning process involved in becoming addicted. Research has shown that dopamine plays a role in the learning process and not just the experience of pleasure. Dopamine deals with multiple neurotransmitters such as glutamate, glutamate becomes responsible for the brain's reward-related learning. Then the compulsion kicks in because the memory has a desired need and the need to recreate the behavior. Because the brain is conditioned, it is more difficult for a person to stay clean because relapses are certain to occur even after several years of sobriety..