Stress and Addiction: How Are They Really Related?

It makes sense to us that stress and addiction go hand-in-hand, but how are they really related? There is more than a decade of research available that demonstrates that changes in the synapses of the brain’s reward center relate to addiction behavior. Certainly, most of us who have worked in the addiction field for any length of time have witnessed the strong correlation between stress and an individual’s risk for addiction and relapse. So what is really happening in the body that makes stress such a precursor for addiction and relapse?