How an addiction works (The addicted soul)

Prologue

Have you ever done the evil you didn’t want to do, promising after that never again just to fall back into it for God only knows the number of times?

1)What is an addiction?

2)What makes us addicts?

3)How does an addiction work, or to put It plainly what is the neurochemistry of addictions?

4)What are some specific types of addictions and how do they operate in us?

5)And finally, how can we solve the problem of addiction?

Well, let’s dive into the subject….

The Origin.

Addiction comes from the Latin word, “addicere” which means to assign to, yielding its traditional innocuous meaning as a habitual activity or interest often with positive purpose. In the times of Shakespeare, it was defined as the passionate thing someone does with all his being. Or according to other sources, an addict would be a mentee, signing an engagement to follow the teaching of his mentor. It is, however in the roman empire, that an addict, ‘addictus’, in Latin, was considered as an individual, who, having defaulted on a debt was assigned to his creditor as a slave. It is from this that we derived the conventional definition of an addiction. In summary, It’s a slave-master relationship.

So, what is an addiction in the twenty-first century?

To put it in simple terms, an addiction is the compulsive taking of a substance or indulgence into a behavior, despite the negative consequences the substance or the behavior has on the addicted individual and to those around him or her.

But we all take in substances or indulge into some form of behaviors, does it mean that we’re all addicted to those things? Of course not. We all eat food, but we are not all addicted to it. Even healthy activities like exercising can become addictive by the way.

How do we draw the line between a normal substance consumption or activity and an addiction?

For any substance or behavior to become addictive, there must be pain, craving, and relapse involved. Pain comes from the negative consequences the indulgence into the behavior has on the addicted individual and to those around him. Craving comes from the rewiring of certain brain structures due to the indulgence into the behavior . Relapse comes as a result of the inability to resist craving and withdrawal symptoms. The combination of these three characteristics will constitute an addiction. Dr Gabor Maté, an addiction expert, even moves further by saying that: even if you claim to be passionate about carrying on a particular activity, and even when society is on your side, by the moment these characteristics are present, you can consider yourself as an addict. In other words, your passion must cause no harm to anybody. He uses a good question in this regard: who is in charge?  YOU OR THE SUBSTANCE OR THE BEHAVIOR? If the answer is not “you” then you’re addicted.

An addiction, in brief, is a habit that causes pain to the addicted individual and to those around him.

It’s now clear that although we do or take certain things for fun, out of passion or necessities, we can all get addicted to any substance or behavior. For that to happen, however, we need the perfect combination and we have an addict. So let’s move into the these causes of addictions.

CAUSES OF ADDICTION AND THE ADDICTION FORMULA:

Here we want to know what is at the root of addiction, what pushes someone to become addicted to something that he needs, is passionate about or that causes him great harm. ADDICTION AS THE PAIN SOOTHER….

The addiction equation.

As an amateur of chemistry, I permit myself, ladies and gentlemen, to give you what we can call an “addiction reaction”. In an addiction reaction, the elements are a susceptible organism, and a substance or behavior with addictive potentials.  And factors likely to favor the reaction will be the environment, age and stress. Like in a chemical reaction, a good dosage of everything gives varying amounts of products or to put it plainly, of addictions.

An addiction equation can be summarized as follows:

susceptible organisms + a drug with addictive potential + the perfect environment + stress → addiction.

But please do not reduce an addiction to a simple aquation, I just do it for convenience.

Having said this, let’s move deep into the causes of addiction.

Cause 1: Pain and pleasure

How is it possible that a necessity like food consumption can become the door to our graves? The answer lies in PAIN And Pleasure. Assuming that we all have an idea of physical or psychological pain, let’s talk of infant for a moment.

Although we are all vulnerable to suffering, enfant haven’t developed a particular mechanism to counter pains or are still in the development of such mechanisms (We shall see why I am talking of enfants). Compared to adults, they are more vulnerable to suffering. This has to do with the fact that man, compared to other animals, and because of some evolutionary reasons is born premature which has some implications. Firstly, it means we get less from our parents in terms of genes, and although we might resemble them and reproduce most of their habits, most of who we are in the future will be determined by the society in which we live. Secondly, premature babies are extremely vulnerable to environmental threats, and will need the help and support of elderly ones to be able to survive.

The amount of time they need for support will depend on how well their survival and defense mechanisms have been developed. A snake for instance can hear, see, move and hunt straight from the moment it is born, so, it will be independent from birth although there are very few exceptions like pythons and vipers. Young enfants, on the other hand, cannot defend themselves which makes them extremely dependent on adults around them for support. If our parents’ genes represent the seed, the environment represents the sun, water and the day care given for the germination of that seed. what we become in life is mostly a reflection of what we have been feeding on in society. The seed tells us which plant will germinate but the environment tells us what the quality of the germinated plant will be.

A neglected or abused child will either be inauthentic to get loved or will look for something to soothe his pain. And these pain soothers have an impact on those regions of the brain that are important for our survival. So let us look at those Brain regions…

Cause 2 : Rewiring of brain structure (The neurochemistry of addictions).

As many neuroscientists would say, the brain is a powerfully complex system, and up till now the most complicated, and least understood biological structure that exists on earth. It consists of about eighty to one hundred billion nerve cells each branched or connected to one another. In addition, there are trillions of support cells called glia, that help the neuron thrive and function.  The space between two nerve cells is called a synapse and are found in trillions. The activity of these networks of circuits produces millions of firing patterns every second of our lives. And as you can guess everything about addiction happens in the brain.

Three parts of the brain are involved in the addiction process: The opioid apparatus, the incentive-motivation system and the self-regulating system of the brain.

The opioid apparatus

Among all its uses, one that we must remember in the context of addiction is that it is very important for attachment and bonding. Which is particularly important for our survival, especially that of young mammals.  Endorphins, which are considered as our natural narcotics, are released from the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland to the opioid apparatus, for pain soothing.

They are naturally produced by mammalian parents and infants when they are attached to one another. Endorphin is, in other word, the chemical of love. It is released in young mammals whenever attachment is present. In the mammalian mother, in addition to endorphin, there is also the presence of oxytocin, to prevent tolerance from the naturally produced endorphin. The absence of these chemicals in the brain of mammalian adults’ results in a lack of parent-enfant attachment.

Notoriously addictive substances like morphine and heroin having the same chemical structures as endorphin, are used as substitutes for attachment. Also have in mind that physical and emotional pain are felt in the same area of the brain: The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). It is fired for both pains. Because of that, an emotional pain like separation or isolation needs soothing by endorphins, be it natural or artificial. If the pain felt by a young mammal like separation is properly addressed, endorphins are released if not the child seeks another way out or dies of loneliness.

The incentive motivation system or the dopamine System.

This system is important for motivation as it is written and for one to be motivated about something one needs to be curious about that something.But Being addicted kills your incentive motivation system to the point where you have no interest in any other form of activity that might be in your own best interest.

Dopamine, after its discovery in 1957 by Kathleen Montagu, was considered as the pleasure molecule. But later studies found out that this is not the case. Dopamine, to make it clear, is the reason why we get interested in certain activities not the reason why we enjoy those activities. The euphoria we get comes from neurotransmitters that get us into the moment like endorphins or serotonins. Dopamine gives us the pleasure for starting out new activities but has nothing to do with the pleasure derived from the activity.

You know what it means to be high by the moment you are high. You know what sexual orgasm is by the moment you have sex or masturbate to the point of orgasm.Out of that, all what you feel is just a potential high. And only God knows the distance between potentiality and actuality. Note the difference between craving and high. Dopamine causes craving while a present-oriented neurotransmitter like endorphin causes the ‘high’.

Whenever there is a stimulus, dopamine, majorly produced in the ventral tegmental area, moves from one neuron to another through the synaptic space, until its reuptake to the originating neuron. It is the time spend in the synaptic space that excites and gives us this sensation of high.But dopamine does not produce the high. It is, as scientists have it, based on predictions and errors. It is the difference between what we predict to experience and what we experience.

It is responsible for you dreaming of paradise but is never involved in that paradise. There is pleasure in the pursuit of paradise but nothing great in paradise itself for dopamine. Dopamine is helpful for all that you expect of life, and it is precisely because you expect good things to happen in life that you think life is worth living especially if the idealized future is paradise.

Tell me who will not want to die if the certainty of death is paradise? That is the role of dopamine. It is a good ally to move us into the unknown. But that same dopamine which motivates us to move to the moon can create an illusion that is completely out of reach.

That is why an important evolutionary behavior like sex, can get so addictive. For dopamine, knows one thing: More. According to it, there is never enough of anything. If something is in abundance, dopamine will act as if it finishes tomorrow, or in the next seconds. The most important thing for dopamine is to maximize the number of resources you have for the future, especially evolutionarily important ones like sex and food. And it does that by making the future look better than the presents. We enjoy the journey to the promise land, but despite the promise land because of dopamine.

Dopamine, however, is not a bad thing in itself. With less dopamine produced by the brain we feel less motivated and more depressed. The problem comes when dopamine is mostly responsive to substances or behaviors that are not useful to us and can even be fatal in the long run. It is necessary for our survival. We should not let it get hooked to the wrong masters.

The prefrontal cortex, the self-regulating system.

It is the rational part of the brain. It tells us when we should move towards something and when we shouldn’t. It tells us what the benefit might be of doing one over the other. This makes it the self-regulating area of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that will argue against the illusory promises of dopamine. But it has its limits especially when it comes to addiction. Compared to other brain systems involved in addiction, it is our only ally and one of our chances of getting out of the addiction.

Sadly enough, this part of the brain that is supposed to let us move out of the addiction is impaired because of the addiction.  Its impairment makes us incapable of making good decisions for ourselves and for those around us. especially when it comes to avoiding the clues related to the addiction or simply to fall into it. What happens next is that the cycle of addiction will be crystal hard to break when this part is impaired.

In the context of addiction, we can consider our brain the battlefield between dopamine and the prefrontal cortex. In an addict, dopamine is the winner.

Stress as catalyst.

The last thing very important in the addiction process is stress. It gives people more reasons to move into their addictions and presents the addictive behavior as the only remedy for the body. We have mentioned that addiction comes as a result of pain, and pain never stops if we are stressed. Stress acts as a catalyst that can either create pain or amplify the previous ones.

CONCLUSION OF FIRST PART.

Let’s summarize everything.

Almost all substances or behaviors can become addictive provided that the following is applied: pain, craving and relapse. Stress intensifies the pain of the addict which intensifies the addiction. The chains of addiction are embedded deep within us. For some of us, since childhood.

An addiction is in itself very hard to identify as it is good at disguising itself into something else. At the beginning the substance or behavior acts like a friend on which we can rely to soothe our pain. But it is the source of pain. It makes itself the only remedy to life’s suffering and the addicted mind lives in these illusions perpetuating the pain.

Then, the brain which contains the pain, must find the source of the pain, and provide a solution to the pain. To paraphrase Marcel Proust, it is as if the object you are searching for is the thing with which you are searching. An addiction is a demon that slowly introduces itself into your house, and it is just a matter of time for it to get all of you. An addict, to borrow from the Romans, is indebted to himself. He pays the debt through servitude.

Let’s conclude the first part with these questions :

Do you do the evil you don’t want to do, and fail to do the good you wanted to do?

Are you an addict?

Well, I hope you have an answer. See you next time for part two which will be on the various forms of addictions.

This article was largely inspired by Dr Gabor Maté’s book, Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addictions.

Thanks for reading, please. don’t hesitate to suggest ways for improving the article.