Many people do not understand why or how other people become addicted to drugs. Some feel it is the drug abusers choice and decision to live in less gratified situations. It is often mistakenly assumed that drug abusers lack moral principle or willpower and that they could stop their drug use simply by choosing to do so (www.drugabuse.gov). What people don’t know is that drug abuse becomes an illness, a disease that alters the brain making it difficult to quit even for those who have made the decision to willingly quit on their own. Drugs change the brains normal function to include compulsive drug use and abuse which make quitting a challenge. Drug abuse and addiction have negative consequences for the individual, their families and our society. Besides the cost of drug abuse, exceeding over $600 billion, the effects of drug abuse poses risks to family disintegration, loss of employment, failure in schools, domestic violence, and child abuse (www.drugabuse.gov). So what exactly is drug addiction? According to the World Health Organization, the definition of drug addiction is “a state of periodic or chronic intoxication produced by repeated consumption of a drug” (Swinson & Eaves, 1978, p. 56). Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite the harmful consequences it may cause the abuser and to those around him or her. Many theorists have studied addiction with intentions of identifying the mechanisms that best explain behaviors observed in addicts. In the article, Theories of Addiction: Methamphetamine Users’ Explanations for Continuing Drug Use and Relapse, the authors studied and addressed the following theories; negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, incentive salience, stimulus response learning, and inhibitory control dysfunction (Newton, De La Garza II, Kalechstein, Tziortzis, & Jacobsen, 2009, p. 294). According to Newton et al., (2009), the negative reinforcement theory provides one of the earliest theoretical explanations of addictive behavior. The idea is that drug use reduces withdrawal dysphoria and pain avoidance. A symptom/ side effect of withdrawal is pain and in order to prevent pain, the abuser will continue to use. Positive reinforcement theory is based on pleasure seeking behaviors (Newton et al., 2009, p. 295). The user will say they use drugs because they enjoy them. The incentive salience model is based on “cravings.” Drug related stimuli is increased by exposure to abusive drugs, therefore, with this theory drug use is attributed to cravings. The stimulus response learning model identifies habit learning as the key to understanding addiction (Newton et al., 2009, p. 295. In the classical learning theory, stimuli and responses are associated with outcomes, and the outcomes determine the likelihood that the response will follow the stimulus in the future. In stimulus response learning, the outcome is less important, and the stimulus itself elicits a habitual response. With this model, the users will describe drug taking as habitual or compulsive (Newton et al., 2009, p. 295). The final theory summarized is the inhibitory control dysfunction model. With this model, impulsivity is the factor that underlies addiction and it is predicted that users will attribute drug use to impulsivity or preservation. All of these theories have been researched to examine behavior. To further understand the perception of the reasons why drug abusers use, researchers constructed a survey. The results of this particular study concluded; “the greatest number of participants rated positive reinforcement or pleasure seeking as a very important motivation for their drug use, with a smaller but generally non- overlapping group reporting pain avoidance or negative reinforcement as a very important motivation for drug use” (Newton et al., 2009, p. 297). So what causes the addiction and motivation of an addict’s behavior? Sometimes all it takes is feeding the brain one time with the chemicals from a drug. When the brain is rewarded unexpectedly the reward system takes note in order to remember how to repeat the positive experience (www.addictsscience.com). This is a key learning mechanism. Thus though the reward system is irresponsible for feeling of pleasure, it does this in service of a higher goal, to learn memory and motivation (www.addictscience.com). Drugs contain chemicals that tap into the brains communication system and disrupt the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information. There are at least two ways that drugs cause this disruption. One is by imitating the brains natural chemical messengers and two, by over stimulating the “reward circuit” of the brain thus, altering this process and function of the reward system. Drugs don’t only get you high, they also alter normal motivationa