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It turns out the gateway drug for amphetamine addiction is a substance provided by your own brain. The culprit protein is called DAT, so named because it is a dopamine transporter — and dopamine is the feel-good, get-motivated neurotransmitter that keeps you happy, hungry, and full of energy. Just as some people are born with the ability to grow larger muscle mass than others, some are born with the ability to squirt more dopamine into their brains because they have a greater-than-average helping of DAT. People with elevated DAT levels are quite literally better at getting high than people with average levels. How do we know? A group of researchers in North Carolina and Pennsylvania recently bred a group of mice to have DAT levels three times above normal and then gave them speed. Here's what happened. More »
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