Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome the Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. And hey, it's summer. People
Speaker 1: are on break. Uh, So we thought we'd rerun a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes that we're really proud of that I
Speaker 1: think has a lot of really insightful information about addiction.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's dive into the science of addiction.
Speaker 1: Julie has returned to us from New York City once more.
Speaker 1: It's true, you have returned from Laryngitisville. Yes, yes, for
Speaker 1: the most part. Yeah, yeah, you're there. Um. Yes. When
Speaker 1: I was in New York, I attended the World Science Festival,
Speaker 1: which if you guys have never heard about it, you
Speaker 1: should immediately well after this episode check it out because
Speaker 1: they have some online offerings that are wonderful. Like when
Speaker 1: I was there, I checked out this panel on something
Speaker 1: called the craving brain. And that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today, this idea of what addiction is and
Speaker 1: what it is not. So it's it's about the craving brain,
Speaker 1: not craving brains. Not that. Yeah. No zombie content, as
Speaker 1: far as I know, is going to tumble forth from
Speaker 1: our lips today because it's my understanding, if you showed
Speaker 1: up for this, uh, this talk expecting a light hireded
Speaker 1: discussion about zombies, you would have been pretty disappointed. And
Speaker 1: so that's what we're discussing in this episode. Addiction, the
Speaker 1: science of addiction and uh and it's it's really fascinating
Speaker 1: this topic because for me, I had not really looked
Speaker 1: into it. Before I had, I wouldn't say this just
Speaker 1: a surface level understanding of addiction, Like I was pretty
Speaker 1: to some of the science and some of the the
Speaker 1: levels of deeper understanding involved in addiction research. But but
Speaker 1: still it's so misunderstood at large in our culture even today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we are only now getting a
Speaker 1: baseline understanding of it. And a lot of that has
Speaker 1: to do with the in itself. We talked about this
Speaker 1: all the time, like we still don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: the brain works, and we have more of a clue
Speaker 1: now than we did a hundred years ago or even
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. Um, But the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: that addiction at large is still going to be something
Speaker 1: that we can't fully cover in depth, and in fact,
Speaker 1: for us to do that, we would just have to
Speaker 1: become the addiction podcast, so we could really um give
Speaker 1: it its due day to talk about every single aspect.
Speaker 1: But what we want to talk about today is just
Speaker 1: sort of like this, this idea of addiction in the
Speaker 1: past and the present and what are some of the
Speaker 1: driving conditions. So this idea of addictive substances, Um, you
Speaker 1: go back far enough in history and you get into it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have to go far back in
Speaker 1: history at all, where our culture is full of simplistic
Speaker 1: examples of what's going on, simplistic explanations for what's going on.
Speaker 1: You know, you can say, oh, well, that person is addicted.
Speaker 1: Clearly there's a flaw on their character, or that person
Speaker 1: is addicted, there's a there you know, they're completely controlled
Speaker 1: by this demonic substance. Or you can throw it to
Speaker 1: environment and say, well, they're just not in a good
Speaker 1: environment to uh you know, and that is what's making
Speaker 1: them weak to this substance. And that's the thing too.
Speaker 1: It's often seen, even even among people who have a
Speaker 1: better understanding it of it, it's seen as some sort
Speaker 1: of of of a weakness of character, even though there
Speaker 1: that we have so much science to to argue differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this real need to blame someone or something when
Speaker 1: it comes to addiction. And so you had mentioned the substance, right, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the substance that is the problem that has deminutic,
Speaker 1: demonic possession of the person. Well, if that were the case,
Speaker 1: then everybody who ever put a bottle of whiskey to
Speaker 1: their lips would be addicted to whiskey. Right, So we
Speaker 1: just know that that logic is faulty, and um, yes,
Speaker 1: it's also looked at as a shortcoming in a person's
Speaker 1: moral compass, you know, a lack of willpower. But finally
Speaker 1: we are beginning to understand addiction in terms of a disease,
Speaker 1: with genetics and environment really playing into how the human
Speaker 1: brain can change a person's behavior. Indeed, it's that disease
Speaker 1: model of addiction that has really taken hold and become
Speaker 1: our major means of understanding exactly what's going on, even
Speaker 1: even though again that still hasn't quite seeped into every
Speaker 1: uh you know, level of our culture in terms of
Speaker 1: viewing addiction in those round us. Yeah, but I do
Speaker 1: think that the more and more information that is um
Speaker 1: that's really given to the disease brain part, the more
Speaker 1: we can understand it as a disease like diabetes or
Speaker 1: anything else that's sort of chronic. Um. But let's talk
Speaker 1: really about what an addiction is, because when I think
Speaker 1: about it, I think about this irresistible urge to consume
Speaker 1: a substance or engage in a behavior over and over again,
Speaker 1: even though I know it's going to cause me some
Speaker 1: sort of problem later on. And it turns out there
Speaker 1: are three dimensions to addiction. Craving kind of binging to
Speaker 1: just in toxic intoxicating yourself, and three the withdrawal or
Speaker 1: the negative effect. So you have to think about addiction
Speaker 1: in that way. It's not just I really like uh
Speaker 1: cremblay and so I eat that ten times a year.
Speaker 1: It's that you can't stop eating kremblay even though you
Speaker 1: keep throwing it up. Yeah. Yeah, there's some people, may
Speaker 1: you know, jokingly say oh I'm addicted to this, that
Speaker 1: or the other. But unless it's unless're actually throwing up
Speaker 1: that crember lay again, you're you're you're probably not hitting
Speaker 1: all the other points in the addiction. So some of
Speaker 1: the basics here that you you just alluded to. Um,
Speaker 1: we've discussed many times just in terms of what it
Speaker 1: is to be human. And that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about addiction is that is really tied in
Speaker 1: with the human experience. Um. Because you mentioned the short
Speaker 1: term goal versus short term vision versus long term problems.
Speaker 1: You know that that that constant and ability in humans
Speaker 1: to really decide on the on the long term benefit
Speaker 1: over the short come benefit benefit. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing is that this is of course all um tied
Speaker 1: in to the pleasure centers of of the in the
Speaker 1: reward circuit about you know, in which we have neurotransmitters
Speaker 1: of dopamine, and it's tied into the basic genetic mission
Speaker 1: of the human creature. Right. Uh, we're getting getting this pleasure,
Speaker 1: and the pleasure is a reward for things like eating, drinking, mating,
Speaker 1: the very basic things that we have to check check
Speaker 1: off the list in terms to meet that genetic mission.
Speaker 1: But when you layer up on you know, all the
Speaker 1: complexity of cognitive evolution human culture, it gets more complicated.
Speaker 1: So suddenly have all these other different activities that can
Speaker 1: end up releasing dopamine. I mean everything from eating and
Speaker 1: drinking and mating to going shopping. Studies of showing you
Speaker 1: get that release sometimes even when you're you're you know,
Speaker 1: donating to charity, uh, but also when you're engaging in
Speaker 1: something like illicit drug use, or even even quote unquote
Speaker 1: non illicit drug use, legal drug use, or or even
Speaker 1: just a you know, a cup of coffee in the morning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean to put it really simply, pleasure is tied
Speaker 1: into our survival. It's the way that our our bodies,
Speaker 1: in our minds are wired. And so when you think
Speaker 1: about these different things that we become addicted to, you
Speaker 1: can kind of think about them in terms of supernormal stimuli.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this how that has such a
Speaker 1: pull on us, because that's that thing just kind of
Speaker 1: like with lights blinking around it, saying, hey, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: You should try me. If you get pleasure from me,
Speaker 1: you should do it again. And in this way, you
Speaker 1: could think of a drug as being a sort of
Speaker 1: like heroine, being super normal stimuli, that sense of contentment
Speaker 1: and pleasure that you would get. Um, your body doesn't
Speaker 1: know whether or not that's a good thing or a
Speaker 1: bad thing. It just knows the feeling. So most drugs
Speaker 1: activate this pleasure circuitry. This uh, this dopamine circuitry that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. So we're talking alcohol, we're talking nicotine, heroin, cocaine,
Speaker 1: uh amphetamines, cannabis. The only things that really don't make
Speaker 1: this list are halluciniens, LSD and mescaline. And as a
Speaker 1: side note, food can be an addiction to. But well,
Speaker 1: we can talk about that pretty like any human behavior.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you have, you know, a glass
Speaker 1: of wine. There's that reward that occurs in the brain.
Speaker 1: You get a flood of dopamine or I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: a flood because it's not an actual flood, but you
Speaker 1: get a significant amount or increase in the brain that
Speaker 1: feels like a flood, and that strengthens the neural pathways
Speaker 1: the memory of the behavior, making it far easier to
Speaker 1: recall the pleasure and then engage in that behavior again
Speaker 1: and again. Yeah, this is interesting. One of the presenters
Speaker 1: at the World Science Festival mentioned nine eleven. The whole idea,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone knows or thinks thinks that thinks they
Speaker 1: know exactly what they were doing when nine eleven occurred,
Speaker 1: like that strong memory, that that sort of pillar standing
Speaker 1: up standing out from the landscape of our existing memories.
Speaker 1: And drug memories are like that, nor a de alcohol.
Speaker 1: What's the presenter by the way. Um, But on one hand,
Speaker 1: this this this sounds completely obvious, right, because when when
Speaker 1: one is engaging in some some kind of drug, be
Speaker 1: it a cup of coffee, a cigarette, wine, heroine, etcetera,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with a heightened level level of pleasure and therefore,
Speaker 1: conceivably that is a more memorable moment. Right. You're feeling
Speaker 1: really good at that moment, and therefore your brain is
Speaker 1: encoding that memory and all the very stimuli around it.
Speaker 1: So it's not just I had a cigarette and a
Speaker 1: cigarette was uh enjoyable and was pleasurable. But I had
Speaker 1: a cigarette at a bar. I had a cigarette among
Speaker 1: this group of people, this song was playing. All this
Speaker 1: stuff sort of gets encoded into the memory. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that makes us really complicated in the
Speaker 1: sense because it's very hard to chease out the behavior
Speaker 1: from the genetics, from the memory, from the environment. It's
Speaker 1: almost like all of these have a bit of play
Speaker 1: into addiction. And according to the National Institute of Health,
Speaker 1: you can see that with brain imaging technology that addiction
Speaker 1: is disrupting specific brain circuits affected by addiction. And they
Speaker 1: say that this these changes go beyond the brain's rewards
Speaker 1: stem to include regions involved in memory learning, impulse control,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that later. Stress reactivity and
Speaker 1: repeated drugg exposure resets these circuits toward compulsive behavior, so
Speaker 1: that a person's control over the desire to seek and
Speaker 1: use drugs is compromised, despite whatever consequences arise. So I
Speaker 1: thought that was interesting. Again, it's not just the behavior,
Speaker 1: it's that it's creating these kind of neural pathways, these
Speaker 1: sort of ghosts in the machine of your brain. So
Speaker 1: even if you abstain from from drugs or that thing,
Speaker 1: you may still have triggers that would activate those pathways.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're discussing addiction, the science of addiction.
Speaker 1: We've just finished talking about addiction. UM, what it is,
Speaker 1: how it works, What are some of the basics, uh
Speaker 1: in terms of our understanding of of of addiction from
Speaker 1: a disease model standpoint. And UH, this leads to the
Speaker 1: inevitable question who becomes addicted? Because we we've seen this,
Speaker 1: We see this all the time in the world around this.
Speaker 1: It's not an equal playing field. Addiction is not an
Speaker 1: equally equal opportunity offender. Uh, some people have more of
Speaker 1: a problem with it than others. And how do we
Speaker 1: figure that out? Like what's going on there? We can't
Speaker 1: just say it's you know, God shooting lightning bolts of
Speaker 1: addiction down at people and making uh, you know, packets
Speaker 1: of drugs land in front of some and not others.
Speaker 1: I mean they're uh, just as addiction itself is a
Speaker 1: is more complex than that. Uh, who becomes an addict
Speaker 1: is also a fairly complex situation. Yeah, And of course
Speaker 1: the older model would be, oh, it's the person who
Speaker 1: has no will power, It's the person who just doesn't
Speaker 1: have any integrity. And we know this is not true.
Speaker 1: We know that addiction is not any one sort of
Speaker 1: magic bullet um that arrives in a person's chest. You
Speaker 1: could have a genetic disposition which would cause you to
Speaker 1: have a blunted reaction to dopamine, and that would require
Speaker 1: more and more of the substance to produce the same
Speaker 1: sense of pleasure in someone else. So in other words,
Speaker 1: for me, um, I genetically have stuff um that has
Speaker 1: to do with addiction in my family. So it maybe
Speaker 1: maybe that I need uh six beers to your two
Speaker 1: beers to have that same level of dopamine activity in
Speaker 1: the brain in that sense of pleasure. So that's one
Speaker 1: way that that a person might be become addicted because
Speaker 1: they have circumstances in place. And then of course we
Speaker 1: have um, you know the environment, um, how much stress
Speaker 1: is in that environment, and we also have the way
Speaker 1: that the brain develops. So genetics, let's talk about this
Speaker 1: real quick. Studies of identical twins indicate that as much
Speaker 1: as half of an individual's risk of becoming addicted to nicotine, alcohol,
Speaker 1: or other drugs depends on his or her genes and
Speaker 1: twin studies on addiction don't reveal the full reaction range
Speaker 1: of genotype, right, but they do indicate that under a
Speaker 1: particular and really relevant societal scenarios, genetype plays a substantial
Speaker 1: role in your vulnerability. Is pretty impressive because that is
Speaker 1: that is higher than some cancers in terms of how
Speaker 1: much genetics is playing a role. Now, it's also not
Speaker 1: as simple as saying, oh, well, here's the gene for addiction,
Speaker 1: can we zapp that. No, it's it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: We are we're not at the point yet where we
Speaker 1: can just say we can look at somebody and do
Speaker 1: some sort of funny little scan or blood test and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this person is prone to addiction, although one day we
Speaker 1: may be able to but of course that it's just
Speaker 1: it's a hard thing to answer right now because UM,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you were to scan a
Speaker 1: child and say you would appear that you may become
Speaker 1: addicted to something or you may have addictive behavior, part
Speaker 1: of that environment is going to factor into that. UM.
Speaker 1: So again it's just not that UM, you know, cut
Speaker 1: and dried. So David Lyndon the neuroscience, as an author
Speaker 1: of the Compass of Pleasure UM, has some really good
Speaker 1: information outfare about variants and genes that turned down the
Speaker 1: function of dopamine signaling in the brain. If anybody wants
Speaker 1: to read more about that. UM, but we should probably
Speaker 1: talk about environment and its stressors triggering self medicating behavior
Speaker 1: because David Lyndon says that stress hormones are secreted by
Speaker 1: your adrenal glands and that sits on top of your kidneys,
Speaker 1: and they pass into your brain and they bind stress
Speaker 1: hormone receptors on neurons in your pleasure circuit, and they
Speaker 1: set in motion a series of biochemical steps that end
Speaker 1: with you, say, having a bowl of ice cream or
Speaker 1: smoking a cigarette, essentially anything that's pleasurable to try to
Speaker 1: negate the stress chemical reaction happening in your body. Right,
Speaker 1: and then we eventually end up encoding the habit right
Speaker 1: where we associate feeling stressful with the release of having
Speaker 1: that cigarette, that ice cream more of course, been in
Speaker 1: Jerry's cigarette ice cream. Yeah, and we can. We'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about habits later on. But then
Speaker 1: you also have other conditions like you might have PTSD,
Speaker 1: you might have depression or a d h D, and
Speaker 1: those underlying factors could certainly ramp up this feeling of stress,
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression. Um add to this, you have teenagers
Speaker 1: who are beginning to take on some of these substances,
Speaker 1: and their brains are pretty malleable. We know this. We
Speaker 1: know that the preventable cortex, for instance, the seat of judgment,
Speaker 1: doesn't even really complete itself until the age of in
Speaker 1: some cases much older. So we know already that teenagers
Speaker 1: are at risk in the sense that they don't have
Speaker 1: the sort of executive functions that might stop them from
Speaker 1: engaging in risky, risky behavior. But moreover, there's some evidence that, say,
Speaker 1: dabbling with nicotine with cigarettes could actually prepare their brains
Speaker 1: to become more receptive to other substances. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: really interesting research because it deals impart with that idea
Speaker 1: of of something as a gateway substance, as a gateway drug,
Speaker 1: which is a term that has really lost a lot
Speaker 1: of value, I feel, thanks to its overuse in drug
Speaker 1: war campaigning, because because you know, we we all heard
Speaker 1: this growing up. You know, this substance, this experience is
Speaker 1: a gateway to other experiences. It's like you know, stepping
Speaker 1: your your foot into the water and then that undertow
Speaker 1: is gonna grab you and just drag you down through
Speaker 1: worse and or drug experiences into some sort of ultimate doom.
Speaker 1: And of course people's realities tend to be uh you know,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, well, you know, don't smoke cigarettes. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a gateway drug. And then what
Speaker 1: when one eventually tries a cigarette and they realize, hey,
Speaker 1: my life didn't just end. You know, I don't feel
Speaker 1: the world collapsing around me. I don't feel that undertow
Speaker 1: dragging me down. Therefore this can't be that bad, and
Speaker 1: those they must have been just completely full of it
Speaker 1: and trying to scare me with scare tactics into not
Speaker 1: trying these things. So it's you know, reasons like that
Speaker 1: that you end up throwing the idea of a gateway
Speaker 1: drug out out the window. But the science behind this,
Speaker 1: UH really argues in the favor of of cigarettes, particularly
Speaker 1: serving as I almost don't want to stay gateway drive
Speaker 1: because again that the term is so uh so bad.
Speaker 1: But but but what is occurring here is that the
Speaker 1: nicotine is essentially opening up the pathways, loosening the pathway
Speaker 1: for addictive behavior with other substances. Yeah, according to UH
Speaker 1: neurobiologists a Mere Levine, and he was on the panel
Speaker 1: of cocaine users smoked first in their teenage years, which
Speaker 1: is astounding. So he thought, well, is this is just
Speaker 1: you know, cause correlation here is there's something actually to this,
Speaker 1: And so he and his colleagues began to look to
Speaker 1: see if there are any long lasting changes in nicotine
Speaker 1: use um in the formative years in the teenage years,
Speaker 1: so whether they do. They applied mice with nicotine, followed
Speaker 1: seven days later by cook cane and compared with mace
Speaker 1: on cocaine who had not previously received nicotine, the animals
Speaker 1: were percent more active and seventy eight percent more likely
Speaker 1: to return to areas previously associated with the cocaine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the reverse did not hold true, that cocaine had
Speaker 1: no effect on nicotine induced behavior in the mice stepped
Speaker 1: in the study. Right. So, um, this all has to
Speaker 1: do with something called the fosph B gene, which is
Speaker 1: related to addiction. And what we see is sort of
Speaker 1: a this is sort of Layman's terms. Are I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get too deep into it. Um, Probably the best way
Speaker 1: to say this is that there's a sort of a
Speaker 1: greater expression of that gene, of that fosp by gene.
Speaker 1: If as you say that, the pathways have been loosened
Speaker 1: by nicotine. So when cocaine comes along, Hey, look at this,
Speaker 1: we we sort of know the drill. Here's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Yeah. Yeah, it loosens up the DNA packaging system.
Speaker 1: That's that's involved here, and it's in it and it
Speaker 1: allows greater express action of that fospe gene. Now, the
Speaker 1: added problem here is um, as we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: the amygdala in teenagers has a heightened sense of fear
Speaker 1: and a heightened sense of stress when you're a teenager.
Speaker 1: And the magdala is so interesting to me because it
Speaker 1: processes both physical pain and emotional pain. So if you're
Speaker 1: a teenager and you're brooding, you really may feel like
Speaker 1: life is terrible, life is ending, you're being hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did that whole episode on the what I was
Speaker 1: a teenage teenager? I think, yeah, I was a teenage teenager,
Speaker 1: and so it was I think we had mentioned then,
Speaker 1: So as an adult, do you hear a teenager talking
Speaker 1: about this and you feel like they're just being histrionic
Speaker 1: when in fact they are actually feeling that level of
Speaker 1: pain and discomfort. Yeah, and there I think we discussed
Speaker 1: in that that episode. And one of the things about
Speaker 1: the teenager's brain is that from a you know, an
Speaker 1: evolutionary standpoint, the teenager is primed to leave his or
Speaker 1: her community and find a new community in which to thrive,
Speaker 1: which means that there's an increased dependence on social pressures,
Speaker 1: on fitting in with a social group, because that, in
Speaker 1: an evolutionary sense, means survival and you know, to add
Speaker 1: more fuel to the fire if you happen to be
Speaker 1: that person who's whose genes dictate an amygdala in the
Speaker 1: first place, that's more reactive to stress. Then you are
Speaker 1: going to feel things a little bit stronger than your
Speaker 1: average bear, both as a teenager, teenager and an adult.
Speaker 1: So that makes dealing with environmental factors UH emotions a
Speaker 1: lot harder. And you can see how people begin to
Speaker 1: turn to things to comfort themselves, right, whether it be
Speaker 1: food or smoking, or drugs or some other leave sex addiction, UM,
Speaker 1: there are so many different ways to to actually try
Speaker 1: to stoke those UM. I guess you can call them
Speaker 1: members of pleasure and content. Now, an important thing to
Speaker 1: keep in mind about about addiction is that it actually
Speaker 1: changes the brain UH in many ways, physically changes the
Speaker 1: brain of the addict UH and uh and and so
Speaker 1: we're gonna run through some of the changes that are
Speaker 1: happening here. Yeah, we mentioned that there is a loss
Speaker 1: of dopamine receptors in the brains of addicts as D
Speaker 1: two receptors, So again you would see that it takes
Speaker 1: more dopamine to get that same sort of level in
Speaker 1: your brain of pleasure. And we I think we mentioned
Speaker 1: that more in genetics. But when you're taking a substance
Speaker 1: UM repeatedly, of course you're going to have some changes
Speaker 1: in your dopamine receptors. And what's interesting here too, is
Speaker 1: that it's not not just the dopamine receptors as affected
Speaker 1: by the drug, because that's kind of an obvious, almost
Speaker 1: a cliche that we understand with with drug addiction. Oh well,
Speaker 1: now you have to use more to try and chase
Speaker 1: that original high, or you're having to drink more to
Speaker 1: to to to to reach the same level that you're
Speaker 1: reaching previously. But it also bleeds over to other areas
Speaker 1: of the dopamine experience, and two things such as love
Speaker 1: I appreciate and a food various you know, and other
Speaker 1: other things in life that would give you the same
Speaker 1: dopamine effect, you feel less of it. So an addict
Speaker 1: ends up feeling their connection to the rest of the
Speaker 1: world dampened or even deadened. Uh and UH. And the
Speaker 1: easiest way to feel normal again in regards to those
Speaker 1: connections is to turn back to that drug that's warped
Speaker 1: the dopamine uh cycle to begin with. Yeah, it's terrible,
Speaker 1: right because at first you you're just chasing pleasure, and
Speaker 1: then UH that the effects of that substance have taken
Speaker 1: such a toll that you're just trying to chase a
Speaker 1: sort of equilibrium. Yeah, that's an important thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. And and also, um, something that they hit
Speaker 1: on in the presentation of World Science Festival is that
Speaker 1: there's it's easy to fall into this outsider mode of
Speaker 1: thinking that, oh, a addic just likes to feel good
Speaker 1: and that's why they keep taking the substance in order
Speaker 1: to feel good and to get high and to escape.
Speaker 1: Whereas that, to your point, it eventually becomes not about
Speaker 1: feeling good and about recreation. It's about treating self medicating
Speaker 1: their own illness. Really well, anybody who has experienced the
Speaker 1: hair of the dog the next day, right, you know,
Speaker 1: let's well, think you have a hangover hair in your mouth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a hangover and you've got a bunch of
Speaker 1: dog hair clown knows on and uh, you don't know
Speaker 1: what happened. No, actually you wake up and you say,
Speaker 1: I'll just have a beer to sort of reset myself.
Speaker 1: I've always wondered if that works. I always read about it,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're always doing that in various noir
Speaker 1: stories and all but work. I feel like we went
Speaker 1: in we went over this in the Hangover episode we
Speaker 1: did ages ago, but I don't recall. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's been so long since I engaged in that I
Speaker 1: feel like I probably did it. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: probably later that night, had more of whatever like wine,
Speaker 1: and then felt terrible again, and then woke up again
Speaker 1: and again. You see how this all plays out. What
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting about the panel at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival is that they showed the brains of a
Speaker 1: methodic heroin addict and um an obese person, and what
Speaker 1: they saw, again is all less D two receptors in
Speaker 1: the brain. And they said, look this this is also
Speaker 1: true for obesity, which is essentially food addiction. And if
Speaker 1: you look in terms of obesity cases of severe obesity
Speaker 1: our food addiction, with only ten of the cases of
Speaker 1: severe severe obesity having to do with a metabolic defect. Again,
Speaker 1: some of this bleeds over to this other area. When
Speaker 1: we talk about obesity, we tend to judge the person
Speaker 1: in the willpower right or the lack of willpower, when
Speaker 1: what we're seeing here is the habit becoming so ingrained.
Speaker 1: Another way the brain changes, addiction results in more synaps connections.
Speaker 1: This is the idea that the pathways to the habit
Speaker 1: forms more connections. Uh, and then more the more the
Speaker 1: substances abused. And this is an area that research are
Speaker 1: still trying to to fully understand what's going on here.
Speaker 1: But but my understanding, based on the research materials we're
Speaker 1: looking at, is that that this is thought to tie
Speaker 1: in tow again those drug memories. There are formed the
Speaker 1: idea that when one is taking the substance, you're encoding
Speaker 1: all these memories about the use of the substance, the
Speaker 1: environment which the substance is used, and and then that's
Speaker 1: playing into these various synaps connections. Yeah. They had a
Speaker 1: great image of that and you could see where the
Speaker 1: little synaptic connections were created and um, and it did
Speaker 1: kind of give you this idea like, here's all this
Speaker 1: stuff that's being created so that you can have a sticky,
Speaker 1: sticky memory of the path to get back to the
Speaker 1: behavior or the addiction. Yeah, sticky memory in a sense.
Speaker 1: It's like a sticky placed right on the brains thing. Yea, hey,
Speaker 1: this is this is the way to feel good right here. Well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of and it was sort of a terrifying
Speaker 1: image too, because I sort of showed that the normal
Speaker 1: snapped the connection there and then this other sort of
Speaker 1: thing that shows up and it had sound effects to
Speaker 1: remember it kind of went right, did have some sort
Speaker 1: of alien like brain alien Yeah. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: that has affected is your hippocampus that's sort of rewired
Speaker 1: in the brains of alcoholics. And we talk about hipocampus,
Speaker 1: we're talking more about memory here. So it would make
Speaker 1: sense that if you're an alcoholic, um, a lot of
Speaker 1: your memories are going to be stored in the same
Speaker 1: way or even committed long term in the same way.
Speaker 1: And what has been found is that heavy drinking can
Speaker 1: reduce total hippocampus volume, and that was reported in the
Speaker 1: November two thousand and six issue of Alcoholism Clinical and
Speaker 1: Experimental Research. I've seen other papers on this too that
Speaker 1: will say, now the person's memory while it can suffer
Speaker 1: that the brain sort of shuttles um the hippocampus or
Speaker 1: rather some of the functions of the hippocampus to other
Speaker 1: parts of the branding to try to make up for that. Um.
Speaker 1: But what we're talking about here is an imperfect memory, right. Also,
Speaker 1: it has an effect on willpower, you know, with the
Speaker 1: with decreased willpower. Yeah, so that's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: adding links insult to injury here, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: you engage in the behavior and if it becomes rutinized
Speaker 1: enough than all of a sudden, that part of your
Speaker 1: brain that deals with executive function, well, you don't have
Speaker 1: nearly as much neural activity there because of the behavior.
Speaker 1: So even if you wanted to quit, it makes it
Speaker 1: that much harder. Another way that that that we're actually
Speaker 1: seeing the brain change here with addiction. UH two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine,
Speaker 1: using mice in a in a research project, found that
Speaker 1: heavy alcohol use actually a rewires brain circuity, making it
Speaker 1: get harder for alcoholics to recover psychologically following a traumatic experience,
Speaker 1: which again feels like another kick in the gut to
Speaker 1: this overall situation because suddenly decreased the willpower and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have harder time bouncing back from from traumatic events.
Speaker 1: And therefore, what comfort blanket you run to, You go
Speaker 1: to the the substance that is the gateway to feeling
Speaker 1: normal again. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more specifically
Speaker 1: about relapse on the next episode. UM but when we
Speaker 1: talk out more abou the future of addiction. UM but, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that when do people tend to relapse, Not
Speaker 1: when things are going well, it's when something terrible, stressful
Speaker 1: is happening in their lives. And um again, you've got
Speaker 1: those ghosts of the neural furcuatory just sitting there waiting
Speaker 1: to be activated. Yeah. I think when we were discussing
Speaker 1: habits in one of our habit episodes for around the
Speaker 1: year's time, I think we talked about when that when
Speaker 1: the brain forms a new habit, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: a road. Okay, you have a two lane highway going
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. When you want to
Speaker 1: build a new road, you have to build next to
Speaker 1: that existing road, you know, or even off of that
Speaker 1: existing road. So maybe you have the new four lane
Speaker 1: highway over here, but that two lane highway is still there.
Speaker 1: The brain still knows where it is, and if it
Speaker 1: has to, or if it thinks it has to, it
Speaker 1: will take that road. That's right. So if that road
Speaker 1: is that you take a drink at six pm, and
Speaker 1: that's when all of this would begin these triggers, then
Speaker 1: you just take the other road. Maybe you go and
Speaker 1: work out at six pm. You have to take something
Speaker 1: else to place the behavior in order to really sort
Speaker 1: of um mess with the ghosts of the neural circuitry um.
Speaker 1: In fact, when we talk about habit um, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of authors and researchers and m Grabel and
Speaker 1: Kyle S. Smith writing for Scientific American, and they say
Speaker 1: that we learn in chunks, kind of like if you're
Speaker 1: committing the digits of pie to your your memory, you
Speaker 1: would probably do them in chunks, like say seven digits, right,
Speaker 1: And they're saying the same thing happens with habits. And
Speaker 1: this happens when the prefrontal cortex communicates with a stri
Speaker 1: itum and the stri item communicates with the mid brain
Speaker 1: where dopamine helps with learning and assigning values to values
Speaker 1: to goals. And they say that these circuits create feedback
Speaker 1: loops which help us to figure out what's working and
Speaker 1: not working in behavior. And as we were even and
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the point where you can be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know about this behavior, right, Like you're maybe
Speaker 1: you're executive functions are sort of still intact. But let's
Speaker 1: say you keep repeating the behavior over and over again, Well,
Speaker 1: that feedback loops become stronger, stamping routines into these single
Speaker 1: units or chunks. Yeah, the chunking process, which I think
Speaker 1: when we've touched on on this before, the analogy I
Speaker 1: always go to is is like hot keys. You know,
Speaker 1: instead of instead of going through you know, go to
Speaker 1: the drag down menu and in a program and then
Speaker 1: go to another sub menu to pull up this cool
Speaker 1: that use all the time, you just start using the
Speaker 1: hot key, and then the hot key becomes such a
Speaker 1: habit you forget how to find it elsewhere. You may
Speaker 1: even forget what the hot key is. You just have
Speaker 1: the muscle memory of hitting it. And this you see
Speaker 1: the same thing in various programming right, and where the
Speaker 1: program is in X than y and z. So that's
Speaker 1: what your brain is doing. It's taking the shortcuts. It's
Speaker 1: a it's an economic way of doing the same task
Speaker 1: over and over again. Well, here's the crazy thing that
Speaker 1: these researchers saw is that and they saw this in
Speaker 1: rats too. By the way they saw they did a
Speaker 1: ton of research on this um They saw that chunking,
Speaker 1: that imprinting getting stronger and stronger with the feedback loops
Speaker 1: and a aventually another system called the infro limbic system. Well,
Speaker 1: it says, I'll help you out here, strike item, and
Speaker 1: I'll help you chunk some more of these and imprint
Speaker 1: this stuff. And so what happens is that the infrolymbics
Speaker 1: cortex begins to work in concert with dopamine and begins
Speaker 1: to really control when we should dabble in this activity.
Speaker 1: And it's almost like that infrolymbics system becomes it's sort
Speaker 1: of like this outside part of the brain going, well, okay,
Speaker 1: strike item. If you're gonna keep doing this and your
Speaker 1: loops are gonna get you know, uh more and more
Speaker 1: well trenched, then I'll go ahead and let this behavior.
Speaker 1: And as we talked about with Charles Doohig and his
Speaker 1: book about habits, at some point habits become so ingrained
Speaker 1: that your prefrontal cortex is just like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't need to do this. I know this, this
Speaker 1: person's this is that person's habit, and I don't I
Speaker 1: just need to give radio silent here because the rest
Speaker 1: of the brain knows what to do now and pick
Speaker 1: up all right. So I know what everyone's wondering at
Speaker 1: this point is all this damage we've we've we've talked
Speaker 1: about the changes that occurring to the brain of the
Speaker 1: damage is it reversible? Can you actually turn back the
Speaker 1: clock on this and and sort of reclaim the brain
Speaker 1: kind of depends on ageing genetics according to the panel
Speaker 1: from the World Science Festival, and the level of neural plasticities. So, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're younger and you catch this, well, obviously the
Speaker 1: damage to your brain can be UM, then you can
Speaker 1: kind of go back in the time machine and work
Speaker 1: things back out. And you're often earlier in the overall
Speaker 1: timeline of addiction to so you have that working in
Speaker 1: your advantage. So basically, the earlier you catch it, the
Speaker 1: earlier you're able to actually get in there and not
Speaker 1: not not as much as even turn back the clock
Speaker 1: as much as just try to prevent um going further
Speaker 1: down the road the better if you're going to be
Speaker 1: If you are further down the road, Um, you've got
Speaker 1: those molecular and cellular scars that remain on the brain. Um,
Speaker 1: you could actually maybe have a little injection of synthetic
Speaker 1: human growth hormone. And researchers from Upselling University and so
Speaker 1: we didn't have been doing this. They have been looking
Speaker 1: at brain cells targeted for early death by continued opiate use,
Speaker 1: and they're seeing that that some of those cells can
Speaker 1: be salvaged by this um human growth HORMONELL so, but
Speaker 1: you know who knows sort of what the side effects
Speaker 1: are that and that's yeah, certainly down the road. Don't
Speaker 1: head your bets on that and say, oh, I'll just
Speaker 1: get an injection at my brain and that will fix
Speaker 1: everything once I've I've actually put put the halt on
Speaker 1: the drug use. Yeah, if you've listened to our earlier episodes. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't be on yourself if you've been stung by jellyfish,
Speaker 1: don't self trepionate, and don't inject yourself with h H.
Speaker 1: All right, So there you have it. Uh, there is ah,
Speaker 1: just you know, intro into the science of addiction. What's
Speaker 1: happening in the brain, what kind of changes are occurring
Speaker 1: and uh, and what can be done ultimately to reverse
Speaker 1: some of this damage and put a stamp on it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And David Lyndon said something very interesting to Terry Gross
Speaker 1: when he was on her show and he was talking
Speaker 1: about his book The Compass of Pleasure. He said, when
Speaker 1: you understand the biology of the pleasure circuit and when
Speaker 1: you understand how the contribution of genetics and stress and
Speaker 1: life experience. Actually, even starting in the womb and going
Speaker 1: forward all come together. The end result is that you
Speaker 1: have to realize that any one of us, any one
Speaker 1: of us, could be an addict at any time. Addiction
Speaker 1: is not fundamentally a moral failing. It's not a disease
Speaker 1: of weak willed losers. When you look at the biology.
Speaker 1: The only model of addiction that makes sense as a
Speaker 1: disease based model, and the only attitude towards addicts that
Speaker 1: makes sense is one of compassion. So they have it
Speaker 1: the science of addiction. And hey, the next episode is
Speaker 1: going to explore the future of addiction, so I hope
Speaker 1: you will stay tuned UH to listen to that episode
Speaker 1: as well. In the meantime, you can explore this and
Speaker 1: countless other topics that stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's our mothership. That's where you'll find all the videos
Speaker 1: on the podcast, blog posts, the links out to our
Speaker 1: social media accounts like our Facebook, our Twitter, and our tumbler.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you want to shoot us an email,
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts about addiction, UH, your own dealings
Speaker 1: with it, your own dealings with the science of it,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email at Blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com