How do drugs produce “craving”?
No one really knows. Craving is a complex phenomenon that scientists have difficulty describing and measuring. We believe that craving is one of the causes of, but not the same as, dependence (“addiction”). Craving probably leads to relapse in recovering people. Craving may arise from brain structures including the medial forebrain bundle (pleasure pathway), the limbic system, the amygdala, and the cerebral cortex. In other words, the precise brain areas involved in craving have not yet been fully studied.
