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The Brain and Addiction

That is a very common logic about addiction. But in subtle ways it reinforces the overall stigma and overly simplistic logic that addicts are bad people. For one thing, if addiction takes over one's morals, and leads people to make bad choices, those morals and choices reflect on one's character. So it, even in small ways, reflects badly on them - and if only to a degree, they become bad people.

The problem is the label bad I think. It isn't that addicts make bad choices, it's that they aren't able to engage in the process involved in decision making because they have become so conditioned by their experience of addition. Addiction is very much a developmental, learning disorder. If we do away with the bad/good dichotomy and replace it with skillful/unskillful adjectives, it might be less moralizing, but there is still a value judgement there.

Drugs aren't bad or good, they're just drugs. How they are used and how we treat people how use them determines the effect they're going to have on individuals and society. So perhaps the bad/good dichotomy really only applies to our drug policy and its efficacy (or lack thereof).

Addiction is tricky, because addiction is largely environmental - in many ways it is a social construct, shaped by a society's drug policy and relationship with various mind altering substances and behaviors. I don't think it's really possible to have a meaningful discussion without taking the broader context into account. Addicts aren't born; addiction itself is learned, and largely learned through socialization (or the lack thereof).

I'm making some subtle points here. What is more important is that people engage in the discussion about what addiction is, and about what recovery is. That conversation is incredibly impoverished in most circles.

I'm tired and rambling, so feel free to ignore any of this...
 
neversickanymore said:
Addiction and the Dorsal Striatum and Striatal Dopamine​

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The main theory of this thread is



In researching and contemplating this theory I have been astounded with the expansive scope to which it lead and the long standing mysteries it has the probability of explaining. Even more amazing is how flawless and natural the complex pieces seemed to fit together. Unfortunately, most of our brains do not currently enjoy such a placid relationship.

The limbic system/subconscious naturally holds executive power over us and our actions. It also has many limiting disadvantages and one significant obstacle is the inability to reason. This is were we, the conscious mind, come into play. We are motivated, by manipulations wielded by limbic system, to address and solve the issues its not capable of.

Over a life time, the nature and combination of problems we are asked to solve is staggering. Fortunately for us the limbic system is proficient at learning. It learns from all our successes. It also records all of our success and failure to memory; in most cases, the memories will be available to conscious when confronting a relevant problem in the future.

When we successfully solve problems, the limbic system recognizes our success and adopts and incorporates that ability; Thus from our success, it has learned what to do and how to do it. Given the exact same problem, under the exact same circumstances, the limbic system will be able to handle the situation on its own. If a similar, but moderately different, situation is encountered we would only be required to adjust our initial solution by solving any small problems the variance created. In facing many similar problems we can solve for any and all common problems presented by variance. In accomplishing this we, or rather our limbic system, would have obtained mastery over that situation. The solution would become "second nature."

A good example of this in action is the process of learning a new sport.

For most people skiing is a very difficult and stressful sport to learn. It requires our conscious to implement and develop extremely foreign movements, working with week and untrained muscles, while traveling breakless down an unfamiliar and constantly changing mountain side wrought with peril. We can add into the nightmare that we are required to balance, wearing unbendable shoes, upon alien and utterly uncooperative long thin waxed bullets that skim almost frictionless over snow and ice while work so poorly that we have concluded they are broken or the weapon of some evil conspiracy designed to kill us. All of this must be accomplished to a ridiculous level of perfection, during a raging snowstorm and without the aid of any vision as the ice filled goggles are hanging in that tree that we hucked them at in a uncontrolled fit of rage three hours and a pathetic 15 meters above where we are currently sobbing and stuck in a position that would make an acrobat wince.


Many years, and thousands of ski days of later we have finally trained our limbic system to mastery. Effortlessly, we use a few of the blind sobbing pretzel people as cones and make a few warm up turns while planning dinner and heading down to a backcountry gate. The gate was just dropped and we drop a little 3m rock on the way into the trees. Landing in thigh deep untouched, we just let the mechanism utilize its mastery and do its thing, the painting comes alive, and we are set free to fly silently down a mountain soaring through snow covered trees.
Click to expand...

This post is under construction.
 
Funny. I read SAMHSA Principles of addiction medicine and did a similar keynote but in finnish.
 
I held that keynote in rehab and others started thinking me about genius which I am not and said that I understand more about addiction than most of the staff.

It gave me self-esteem as I have before been able to do keynotes about areas I am interested but I havent for few years.
 
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