Understanding Addiction

Distraction from what? From what you're here to do. You know, that sense of something more that when the lights are low, there's no one around, TV's off, and you feel it? Yeah, that voice that says something like, "Is this it? Is all there is?" "This" would be referring to the circular dance of feel something missing, reach somewhere outside for something or someone more than what's here now to fill the void, notice that it didn't work, and look for the next thing.

BILL: Addiction specialist Lynn Telford Sahl, author of the best selling “Intentional Joy,” recently told me of a patient who used to have a mocha latte once a week as a reward for a hard week completed. She liked the sugary, caffeinated rush, and began to crave her weekly shot. It progressed from a weekly pleasure to a daily must-have, and now if she doesn’t have her caffeine fix she feels depressed.  DR. DAVE: The problem with “Lite Addictions” is that the more we use them, the more we’re training our brains to rely on unhealthier forms of stress relief.

The most recent understanding of drug addiction is that it is not a ‘moral failing’ but rather a disease.  In fact, if Health Care Reform passes, addiction and mental illness will most likely be included in parity with other physical diseases.  Funding then would come from the national health insurance rather than from federal or state block grants. However addiction treatment has to be understood in a different way than treatment for traditional physical illnesses.

You might think you eat when you're hungry and finish when you're full, but scientists know better. They know that food labels, plate size, lighting and music, what's on our plate, what the person next to us is doing and our subconscious eating routines, are more likely to influence our eating behaviours than hunger. And these external signals and cues, when added to our not-so-good subconscious habits, encourage us to overeat and slowly add inches to our waistlines. If we understand why we overeat, how to beat these external influences and create new habits, we can take control of our eating behaviours, our weight and our health.

The documentary What A Way To Go concludes that industrial civilization -- and its end product, consumerism -- has disconnected us from nature, the cycle of life, our communities, our families and, ultimately, ourselves. This unnatural, inorganic, materialistic way of living, coupled with a marked decline in society's moral and ethical standards -- what the French call anomie -- has created a kind of pathology that produces pain and emptiness, for which addictive behavior becomes the primary symptom and consumption the preferred drug of choice.

The implications of these findings are substantial.  First of all, it demonstrates that self-injury in individuals with substance use disorders shares many characteristics with self-injury in other populations.  Second, it indicates that emotions play a primary role in self-injurious behavior in this population.  Despite a common belief that DSH is an attempt to manipulate others or a behavior with no coherent rationale, there is substantial evidence that, far more often than not, when individuals engage in non-suicidal self-injury, they are attempting to decrease the intensity of their own negative emotions.

Boredom usually stems from one's own lack of motivation, endeavor or creativity. Everyone gets bored now and then, but it is the difference between changing that mood to healthy alternatives versus sitting around with friends "passing the pipe" for a few high flying hits. This kind of boredom can ultimately lead to an anti-social, destructive path toward addiction.

So... is relapse part of recovery? Yes and no depending on whom you are talking to. If one has relapsed, learned from their "slip" and embraced a stronger, more formidable recovery, then the answer is "yes". However, if one continues to relapse...

Research reveals a curved relationship between practice and automaticity. Say you want to create a new habit, whether it's taking more exercise, eating more healthily or writing a blog post every day, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires Herculean self-control?

If you have suffered a head injury, you may be left permanently affected in different ways depending on which area of the brain was injured. Possible effects include memory and learning; changes in personality and behaviour; and more.