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/
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