The question of what motivates drug use is an extremely difficult question to answer. Maybe because there are many different correct answers.
Psychologists distinguish between two types of behavioural reinforcement - 'positive reinforcement' and 'negative reinforcement'. A lot of people think of negative reinforcement as punishment, but they are actually quite different concepts. In positive reinforcement a stimulus is presented when the desired behavior is emitted (or performed) in order to reinforce the behavior by rewarding it. In negative reinforcement the same thing is happening - a behavior is rewarded in order to reinforce that behavior and therefore lead the animal (or human) to be more likely to perform the behavior in response to a given stimulus. However in the case of negative reinforcement an aversive stimuli is removed as a reward for the emitted behavior. So in both cases there is a reward but in negative reinforcement the reward is the removal of something unpleasant. An example of negative reinforcement in humans is the putting up of an umbrella. Doing so is rewarded by stopping the rain falling on your head. This is negative reinforcement.
In the case of drugs there has been some debate over whether the drug taking is positively or negatively reinforced. Do people take drugs because the are rewarded with a high or because they a rewarded by the removal of depression, anxiety, or other unpleasant emotions? What if it is both? One could argue that the concepts of positive and negative reinforcement are not very useful. In any situation of reward with something there is also something taken away. If I give a dog a biscuit I am also removing hunger. If I open an umbrella the rain stops falling on my head but I also gave myself a dry space under the umbrella. I am sure there are many other examples that you can think up.
It is not my intention to answer the question of whether these concepts are useful but just to share the idea with you. It is another way of highlighting that to find the answers to the drug problem we must think outside the box and question everything that we assume to be true. The toolbox we have had in the past has not been able to solve much but I believe we now have the tools required - The Internet and and open mind.
