Over the last one or two decades, a very strong impression of drug and alcohol abuse in Mississippi has emerged. The addiction treatment program in Mississippi is now considering these problems as mental sicknesses and putting them in the league of problems such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, phobias, depression, anxiety disorder, etc. In fact, there is a whole dual diagnosis treatment program in Mississippi that is specifically designed to help people out of their dual conditions of substance abuse and an underlying mental condition. It is quite obvious that substance abuse in Mississippi is being considered at the level of mental sicknesses.

But why has this impression emerged? One of the main reasons is that these substances of addiction, whether they are drugs or alcohol, will directly attack the brain. Most of these substances will trigger the excess production of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a pleasure inducing hormone. That is the reason when people take these addictive substances, they get a rush of pleasure which we call as the euphoria.

However, the feeling does not last. When it wears off, the person will be ordered by the brain to take more of the substance. Hence, it is the brain where the addiction persists. As time passes, the person's brain will become more and more immune to the substance and this will be the time when it will ask the person to consume more and more of the substance.

It is quite justified then that drug and alcohol addiction in Mississippi is being considered as a mental illness and also being treated as one.