08/02/2023
Good morning family. Yes it’s a Wednesday💃🏾💃🏾.
Today I want us to talk about a repulsive illness that is easily confused with willful badness, yes I want us to talk about addiction. If I said to you right now that addiction is a disease, you’d probably laugh at me yet it really is. Today I want us to take a closer look at addiction to help us debunk some of the myths about it and encourage people to be a little more understanding towards people living with addiction.
Addiction is a disease of volition, it is simply a disorder in the brain’s ability to perceive pleasure. It is a broken pleasure sense caused by early, continuous or even inherited stress. Just as a blind person cannot perceive light or a deaf person cannot perceive sound, an addict cannot perceive pleasure.
There are different reasons that can make an individual become more prone to being an addict. These are not causes of addiction rather factors that determine whether one will become an addict or not. These include genes, reward (dopamine), epigenetics, memory and stress. I will not be going deep into all these factors but I will explain a little about how our reward system is a factor that determines whether one will be an addict or not.
REWARD SYSTEM (dopamine)
Dopamine is the first chemical in a cascade of chemicals that generates rewarding experiences. It is a chemical of survival importance because it reinforces behavior, which means it increases the likelihood of something happening again. For example, if you eat chocolate and dopamine is released then you are more likely to want to eat a chocolate again.
It is important to understand that the reasons we want to eat our meals, have prospering careers, make our parents and friends proud is because each time we do these things our brains release dopamine. This then reinforces these behaviors.
ALL DRUGS OF ABUSE RELEASE DOPAMINE. On a normal day, a human being runs on 50 nano grams per deciliter of dopamine and on a bad day where you don’t feel like waking up or doing your bed or talking to people it’s on 40. On a very good day, say you win the lottery then you might go to 100 nano grams per deciliter. Drugs of abuse cause the brain to release up to a thousand nano grams, making the brain believe that the drug is of survival importance.
The problem is, the brain cannot handle that much dopamine, so it begins to kill some dopamine receptors in the brain. These means the same dose of a drug doesn’t give them the same high any more, they now need more doses of a drug for the same high. Eventually a person depends on the drug just to be on 50 nano grams per deciliter, making the drug a need not a want in the individual’s life.
When a person living with addiction does not take the drug, it means dopamine can decrease all the way to 10 nano grams. This makes the brain believe that the person is dying so the brain increases the intensity of craving so that the person does whatever it takes to get the drug. Without the drug, an addict can actually die.
Next Wednesday we will look into other factors that determine whether a person can be an addict or not. Remember addiction is a disease not moral failing.