By D. Razor Babb
Adapted from Memoirs of an Addicted Brain by Dr. Marc Lewis (PublicAffairs/Perseus Books Group, 2011)
The brain is incredibly complex. The neuroscience of addiction, the brain processes underlying addiction, is perhaps even more complex. Neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology Dr. Marc Lewis writes: “Neuroscientific research on addiction has progressed enormously in the last twenty years. It lays out the pieces of the puzzle, but doesn’t connect them, because it ignores the actual experience that turn real people, motivated by hope as much as hedonism, resolve as much as indulgence, back into addicts, again and again.”
Lewis knows something of addiction; he is a lifelong drug addict with a trail of crimes as noteworthy as many of us behind bars. At age 30 he traded up from junkie to graduate school, and now studies the brains of children who get into trouble, often reminded of how he was one of those children.
Lewis writes: “The brain is incredibly sensitive. It has to be in order to participate in the turbulent flow of reality. But that sensitivity leaves us vulnerable to gaps or setbacks in development, especially during adolescence, one of the most chaotic periods of life. Moreover, the 
impact of events out there (in the world) are paralleled by the impact of events inside here (our brain) because both are manifestations of the same electrochemical processes. So, when times are tough emotionally, the stuff that’s supposed to fulfill children’s needs (being nurtured and loved) gets traded in for chemicals (or other addictions) to carry out that fulfillment in the brain. From the brain’s point of view, both have the same effect. The flexibility of the brain is not infinite. It gets used up, even permanently, by the sculpting of synapses — a result of experience itself. That is how learning takes place, and addiction is just a corrupted form of learning. Synaptic flexibility gets used up by the healthy growth from childhood to adulthood or by the unhealthy growth of repeating cycles of drug (or other) addictions. Synaptic shaping is not only self-promoting and self-reinforcing, but is energized by strong emotions. Addictive drugs, actions, and lifestyles are addictive because of the strong emotions they unleash, emotions that trumpet their meaning and value with increasing emphasis from one occasion to the next.
“Feedback is the brain’s primary method of operation: I want to feel good, this is what makes me feel good, best, quickest, now.
“Self-control is a tenuous skill, upheld by the anterior cingulate cortex that needs nourishment. When too much is demanded, when we have to hold off temptation too long, without support of an environment, or relationship, or a philosophy, religion, or narrative sufficient to take up some of the strain, nourishment runs out and the ACC fails. The life of an addict is a process of dissolution, disintegration: the loss of a sense of self and the loss of a sense of where you fit in the world of other people. There isn’t much supporting the wall of the dam; the anterior cingulate has to work against temptation without respite, and the will gives out eventually. The addict is actually working much harder than anyone should to maintain an extremely difficult balancing act.
“The internal dialogue of an addict is ugly, riding on injury to others and deliberate self-injury, trashing the virtues of honesty and self-control. The internal dialogue is self-rebuke, resonating in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is in charge of anticipating what others think of us and our reactions. Which means that the enemy is within, and that further justifies the logic of self-destruction, a self-reinforcing cycle through which calamities of the mind arise from vulnerabilities of the brain. Because the OFC is more primitive than the engines of language production, and comes before them in line, self-disparaging messages don’t have to be heard in actual words. Which makes them difficult to resist. And the same circuits, bursting with shame, elicit fresh raw anger from brain parts that are even more primitive, before coming to consciousness. So rage rises up into the swell of voices, disguised as self-hatred until switching onto the world.
“The drug, or that to which one is addicted, stands for a cluster of needs: warmth, safety, freedom, self-sufficiency, control, security, confidence, etc., and becomes too valuable and we can’t live without it. But, ultimately, the addicted substance, thing, or activity … including crime and criminal thinking, does a lousy job of fulfilling needs and dashes real opportunities to fulfill those needs elsewhere.”
Once addiction sets in, the brain never returns to the state of innocence that preceded it. We must relearn neural pathways, fill our lives with meanings rich enough to at least compete, if not defeat the well-worn synapse of imagined value. The imagined value is deceptive. It takes clear thinking to tune into the real and what’s really going on in there. Understanding the brain helps us to understand how to deal with reality in a real manner. With a clear mind we learn how things authentically work, which is the first step to being a full human being.
Originally published in the Mule Creek Post
