Prescription and illegal drugs have addictive properties, but our body's natural response to these drugs causes us to become resistant to them, causing us to need doses higher. When drugs enter our body, our body responds by trying to return to homeostasis, the state in which our body is most natural or balanced. Part of the reason why the effect of drugs begins to weaken can be explained in part by classical conditioning and the environment in which the drugs are taken. Controlled drugs such as morphine, an opiate usually administered by a doctor, can be just as deadly as a "street" drug like heroin, another opiate derived from morphine. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Our body has a natural state of balance that it tries to maintain, known as homeostasis. This includes body temperature, fluid and chemical balances. When an unwanted chemical, such as a drug for example, enters the human body, the body attempts to counteract the drug by returning it to homeostasis. The first few times the drug is administered, the effect may be just as strong, but as the drugs are introduced more and more into the body, our mind begins to prepare for when the drugs are going to be taken and will try to thwart him as he goes along. drugs enter our body. This tolerance is due to factors such as the dose and the number of times the medicine has been taken, but there is also another reason why a tolerance begins to develop without our mind. This is where classical conditioning comes in. an unconditioned stimulus, the drug effect as a conditioned response and an environmental cue as a conditioned stimulus; Classical conditioning can explain how and why tolerance to a drug begins to develop. In one case, a man took morphine in his bedroom for a month. Over time, he needed stricter prescriptions as he began to become tolerant to morphine. When he decided to take morphine in his living room, he died. Here, his room was the environmental cue and conditioned stimulus. When he took morphine in a different environment than he normally took it, his mind did not prepare his body for the morphine he was about to take. This means that his tolerance to morphine was no longer there. Keep in mind that he was already taking higher doses of morphine, but it wasn't until he found himself in a different environment that he died from it. Similarly, dogs injected with adrenaline began to show signs of bradycardia (slowing of heart activity) to counteract the adrenaline when the dogs saw the injection rack where they were normally injected . The unconditioned stimulus, the drug, and the conditioned stimulus, the environment, form a relationship in the brain. When the person taking the medication enters the environment in which he or she is accustomed to taking the medication, the body responds by preparing to counteract the medication. Over time, the medication no longer produces the necessary effect due to tolerance developing, meaning higher doses of medication are required to produce the desired/necessary effect. Even when taking these higher doses of medications, the body can still handle the effects and dosage because of the tolerance it has developed. BUT, when the.