Service Learning - BIOL 212

My service learning was a volunteer opportunity at a newly developed Buddhist Temple called Tu Tam Meditation Center.  It's a recently formed community, and the Temple held many events to teach people how to meditate, and apply Buddha's teachings to resolve problems in their lives. The event started off with a small praying session with well Known Buddhist monks around the area.  I was assigned to introduce the monks a lead the teaching session according to plan.  After the teaching session, I helped serve lunch to the community and clean up.  It was a long day, but filled with knowledge and interesting examples that actually happened to real people.  These examples were given to teach people one of the main Buddha's teaching: "You will reap what you sow".  One interesting example given was about a lottery winner.  After she won the lottery she spent her money carelessly and slowly becoming unappreciative of everything in her life.  To her at that point, everything she need she can have. She spent her days shopping, and her nights partying.  Soon after she tried marijuana and other drugs, ultimately she was addicted to heroin.  She wasted all her money on drugs and became homeless after 7 months of winning the lottery.  At this point I recalled the "Mouse Party - Addiction" app  and the mechanisms of heroin on the brain .   Heroin mimic the body's natural opiate and bind to the opiate receptors in the brain.  Once bound, heroin caused the neurons to stop secreting a type of inhibitory neurotransmitter that would prevent the secretion of dopamine.  Since the prevention of dopamine secretion is inhibited, dopamine is constantly secreted in heroin users.  The neurons with the opiate (aka heroin) receptors are found in parts of the brain responsible for pain, stress, and emotional attachment.  Of course I didn't recalled ALL of this during the session at the Temple, but rather the session encouraged me to revisit these scientific facts after it was over.  I would never thought volunteering at Temple could help me remember facts about the CNS, and relevant drugs mechanisms.  

Some scientific questions I had after reflecting upon my volunteering session: 

Besides marijuana, what other drugs did this person use and how might that affect her brain and behavior? 

If she was able to recognize her problems sooner and fix them (i.e: rehab center) how long will it take for her to completely be drug free? 

Is the addiction she had was to drug or to the excess amount of dopamine in her system?  Can or Is dopamine be use as a part of the treatments for addiction? 

What causes relapse in a previously drug-addicted person?  What happened in his or her body that causes this relapse? 

I'm not sure how to translate event into English, but I will try my best... 

Tittle of event: Learning Buddha's Teachings and Meditate To Regain Inner Peace

Number of Hours I volunteered: 4 

Name and email of event organizer: Dien Ho, hxdien@gmail.com

Citation: "Mouse Party-Addiction".  University of Utah, Genetic Science Learning Center.  2006. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/mouse/