I agree with what he says wholeheartedly.. Thats how the VTA and dopamine reward pathway works.. it monitors all sensory input and if it identifies something it feels is an opportunity to obtain a gaol needed for the sustenance of life it will drive at it. Addiction happens when a the use of a drug is programed into this system as something necessary for life. The brain has many things pre programmed into this system.
Thirst= the drive to drink water or craving for water
Hunger=the drive to eat food or craving for food
Sex drive= drive to have sex or horininess or craving of sex
Addiction=the drive to use DOC or DOCs
So say we are walking down the street and all of the sudden we smell a barbeque .. the reward center in the brain has access to this sensory input and it recognizes this smell as an opportunity to get the reward of food and drink. It then will manipulate and drive us to figure out how to get the food. So it can make us feel hungry and make us crave the food, it can make our stomach feel empty and make our mouth water, it can send us memories of times we have eaten good barbeque, the old "it smell so good, I can almost taste it", It can also drive us with negative emotion as well, say we do not get any food because we dont know who is throwing the barbeque and we walk by it can make us feal anxious, sad, jealous, or angry that we are not getting any barbaque. It also males the food desirable because it rewards us if we get the food. So say we walk back and ask for a plate and a cold drink, when the plate is handed to us we feel happy and excited and when we eat the food it tastes so good, and when we are eating every juicy enjoyable bight of charbroiled steak and with every thirst quenching cold icy drink of soda we feel really good and it is pleasurable and when we are done we feal happy and relaxed. So there is so much manipulation going on there.. it makes us crave the food and drink.. the memories of really good barbecue food and watering mouth etc, it makes us feal uncomfortable or our stomach growls and we can feal weak or agitated (hunger), then when we pass by it says wait your making a mistake and drives us back with jeluosy or sadness etc, and when we get the goal it wants it makes it taste so good and makes us feal "high" and happy.
Same thing with sex, we are walking along and we smell some nice perfume, the reward center in the brain goes, wooo hoo there is a chance to get laid and promote life through procreation, so jolts us out of whatever idle thought we are engaged in and says look around and find the source of that smell, so we do and our eyes happen to fall on a mate that sexually mature and so well look at their body and we see a nice healthy person who looks good, now the reward system is like hell yeah you need to have sex with this person, so it "turns you on" or makes you sexualy aroused, it can make you crave sex by making you horney and sending memories of past pleasurable sexual experiences, it can cause you to fall in love, it can make you obsessed with a person where all you do is think about that person, then if we can have sex with the person it makes it really enjoyable through the intoucourse and if we are able to mix genetic material it makes this the most enjoyable of all as its the real point. Then it can make us feel really attached to the person after sex, the old I slept with them and "everything changed" or it was like they were a totally different person after we slept together.
Also we can be driven to have sex even if we are not triggered. if we haven't had sex in a while it can make us stressed out, anxious or angry etc.. then we get laid and the old "man did I need that"
So its the same thing with drugs we are addicted to, as they have become programed into this system, also as addicts so often have addicted children does it not make some sense that once this is programmed into the brain that it might be passsed on to offspring? but so yeah we are at a party and all the sudden we get a quick peak at someon through a almost closed door who is doing what we are addcited to. The brain sees this as an opertunity to obtain a goal that is paroamount to the survivial of life, so it can make us jones or crave use, it can try and drive us to use by useing any of its bag of emotional manipulaitons, such as it can make us feal really anxiouse or really sad, it can make us feally guilty or ashamed, it can hit us with hoplessness.. or it can make us feal really good, sending memories of really pleasurable scenes around use.
It really is a huge manipulation, the memories it sends of use are just fantasies, the old chasing the first high really may not be accurate as I'm not sure the first high ever existed in the first place but might rather be something our minds put together and feeds to us as fact when it never even happened that way. Like sometimes I am triggered for a Big mac hamburger and when I am I get these memories of this amazing mouth watering sandwich. but everytime I get it it is this little burger with grade d beef and stale bun slathered with thousand island dressing, never what I remembered.. LOL, but the fast food people know well how to addict us and it really has nothing to do with taste, it has to do with how much fat, salt, and sugar their products contain.. as the consumption of fat, sugar, and salt all cause large amounts of dopamine to be released and thus the consumption of these products is then logged into the reward system in the brain and thus can be triggered. This may be the reason that fast food commercials are always the same and they run them non stop.. just pictures of their products to trigger us.
This is why I stated that depending on the addict the use of a certain drug or drugs may infact be a trigger for the reward circuitry and limbic system and result in an addictive push. But i dont think that just stimulating the reward pathway results in an automatic addictive push. This would go against so many things that we use to combat addiction. Take for instance a fellowship meeting.. this is basically a dopamine factory and has so many reward pathway stimulations. Self applause, the feeling of fellowship or belonging, prayer for the addict that still suffers, hugs, successful problem solving, giving ourselves credit through the acknowledgment of clean time, all these stimulate dopamine and thus affect the reward pathway.
I think people can certainly get an addictive push through continuously using substances that manipulate dopamine as this will likely deplete dopamine levels, lead to people failing to address emotional problems if the circumvent the system and use drugs as an "escape' which will cause unsolved problems to begin piling up, and there is always the crash associated with use and this could trigger an addictive push as I feal that maintaining a high dopamine level is essential to having a peaceful recovery.
I think the desire to abuse other drugs than or DOC indicates that there are issues the addict need to address and if they choose to try and "address" these issues by using another drug this will of course eventually fail and the situation will get worse potentially causing a really uncomfortable addictive push which could likely cause a person to relapse onto their drug of choice and active addiction.
