When Carrick was a young teen, she'd seemed to incessantly play a Smashing Pumpkins song that got into my head. The chorus went:

despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

The lyrics popped into my head this morning when I read about a new study of rats who were given cocaine, then denied the drug for three weeks. Those who were more addicted had rewired dopamine receptors that led them to crave the drug more.

"This work shows that there are profound alterations in the brain mechanisms that regulate motivated behavior with addiction," the senior authors said in an online summary of the article that will be pulished in Neuropsychopharacology. "It really shows that the addicted person is ill-equipped to cope because the brain is now wired to make them crave drugs more and get less satisfaction out of the drug or other life events that may be rewarding, and this study found biological changes that would explain these behavioral changes."

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