Blowing Up a Fairy Tale

As being a analyst who has read a doctor's book "The Heart of Addiction" and used it in my very own job with sufferers, I can confirm to the truth that the method he starts to describe here and fleshes out in much greater detail in the book can change addicts' life in a profound and lasting way.

Addiction has been poorly understood for a very long time, and lately the case has become worse with the popularization of the thought that addiction is a "brain disease." Supporters of this fallacy point to the truth that pleasure centers of the mind "light up" while people use certain drugs. They conclude this must be important to understanding addiction.

It isn't. Everyone who takes certain drugs will have his or her brain activated ("lit up") in the same way. The puzzle of addiction is not which section of the brain is stimulated, but why some people who take alcohol and other drugs feel compelled to use them repeatedly, while others do not. Alas, no imaging technology can explain this central mystery.

That something else is going on in addiction becomes self-evident when we examine the facts. For one thing, not all addictive behaviors involve drugs. It is well-known that people with addictions can shift their behavior back and forth from drug use to non-drug compulsive activities such as shopping, gambling, even cleaning house. Such astonishing variety clearly cannot be attributed to narcotic effect or a "brain disease."

For another, even where physical addiction is present, there are no simple rules. After the Vietnam War, thousands of soldiers who had become physically dependent on heroin stopped using it once they returned home, despite the famously "addictive" nature of this drug. Once they weren't subject to the stress of war, over 90 percent of these veterans readily gave up using a result that cannot be explained on a neurobiological basis.

Indeed, a more modern understanding of addiction reveals an interesting fact most addicts feel better not when they use the drug, but when they decide to use the drug. That means there is an emotional and psychological element at play here. In fact, the critical moment of decision to perform an addictive act can occur hours or even days before the act itself. It is the emotional content of this moment that is key to understanding addiction from the inside out, and what is important in that moment is a need to remedy a sense of helplessness as I've described in a number of academic papers and my book, The Heart of Addiction.

We live in a time of neurobiological reductionism in which we are repeatedly told that the mind can be reduced to the brain. Yet this will never be true. Just as chemicals that make up living things are not alive themselves, cells that make up the brain have none of the psychology that make us human. Our emotional lives come into existence only when billions of cells work together, and what they produce can not be predicted by looking at a single cell and extrapolating. As Nobel laureate Philip Anderson pointed out in a seminal paper on complex systems, "Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry." Those who study brain biochemistry are doing useful work in understanding biologically-based major mental illness such as schizophrenia. But they make a mistake when they believe they are discovering something about the vast area of conflicts and emotional issues that make up the lives of the rest of us.

If we could have a more exact picture of addiction in the human brain, it would include much of the history and lots of the events that make us who we are. The unendurable helplessness that drives addiction is diverse for every person, but this much is known, it is much more private and complicated than a bright spot on a screen. Until we create a machine that could read our souls, a sympathetic understanding of ourselves and talk treatment remain the most effective tools we have.

Drinking is societal to me, I can stop at one glass of wine and that is it for me, but I take prescription meds day by day for lasting sleeplessness, disquiet, and unhappiness. When anxious I eat, so I am 19 lbs over wt. If it were simple to get heroin, i would do it. Emotional hurt is the toughest and I just want it to stop. I work and support myself, what I do at nighttime is nobody's business, so long as i work and am a productive member of society.

Copyright by Lucy, a beautiful girl who likes swimming, shopping online and has a shop with cheap coach purses and fashion things.