Inside the Brain of Your Addicted Loved One
June 21, 2019
Last week we talked about many of the common approaches to addiction in the post “Starving for Knowledge“. Today I want to talk about a lessor known treatment that is in response to the wave of information we are discovering about addiction and how it works.
The other day I happened to read a new research study called “Addiction Is a Brain Disease.” It was published in 2001. When I realized that I thought wow that’s eighteen years ago. Advances can, and perhaps should come slowly when it involves hurting lives.
Today we live in an extremely polarized world, we see it in politics, religion, the kind of computer we use, the phone in our pocket or car we drive. Treatment of addiction is no different. The moment we encounter an article with a title like the one above, two opinions seem to emerge, addiction is either a disease or it is a failure of the will.
Addiction is an extremely complicated disorder. In the post called “Complicated” I talk about other issues that affect people with an addiction. As evidence of how complicated it is, ask yourself why it is so incredibly hard to treat? Why is nearly 25% of our population addict, and if we expand the definition of addiction to include many of the other things we can be addicted to, food, sex, shopping, the percentage would be far higher? Is it just a matter of will? Are the individuals left without hope of ever changing because it’s a disease?
I use a working definition of addiction that helps me remember how convoluted addiction is “Addiction is a bio-psycho-social disorder which demonstrates itself in any behavior that a person enjoys or finds relief in and therefore craves in the short term. This behavior results in negative consequences in the long term yet the individual doesn’t give up the behavior despite those negative consequences.”
The article, mentioned above, by Alan I. Leshner, uses a definition that is helpful for us in what we are talking about today.
“Addiction is a brain disease that develops over time as a result of the initially voluntary behavior of using drugs. The consequence is virtually uncontrollable compulsive drug craving, seeking, and use that interferes with, if not destroys, an individual’s functioning in the family and in society.”
Here is an extremely informative 4-minute video on how addiction hijacks the brain and physiologically changes it. It will help you see inside the brain of your loved one who is fighting an addiction. “Your Brain on Drugs”
The article that which was published in the Spring 2001 issue of Science and Technology[i], you can read it for free here, you may need to enter an email address www.jstor.org/stable/43314081 . The article cites much research that may challenge your preconceived ideas about addiction. We need to get this right because it may mean the life of someone we care about and love.
One very interesting statement in the article is that …
“Virtually no brain diseases are simply biological in nature and expression. All, including stroke, alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and clinical depression, include some behavioral and social aspects. What may make addiction seem unique among brain diseases, however, is that it does begin with a clearly voluntary behavior-the initial decision to use drugs.”
The article also clearly reveals that aftercare is vital in long term successful recovery. The people that an addicted individual is connected to can be instrumental in influencing that.
If you have a loved one battling an opiod addiction this short video may explain how opiods crush the brains ability to feel good with out using the drug “What Happens to a Brain on Opiods”.
Understanding that addiction does change the brain of an individual does not minimize that individuals participation. Addiction started as a voluntary behavior and those facing addiction have a significant responsibility for their recovery.
One way science is responding to the research is revealed in the story of a young man by the name of Patrick Perotti. He eventually found himself in what looked like a dentist chair to receive a treatment called “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” under the care of Dr. Luigi Gallimberti. Patrick thought it was all a hoax to drain money out of the pockets of desperate people. He was shocked when it worked, helping to end a long cycle of lapsing into severe cocaine use.
Here is the issue, by taking advantage of the brain’s marvelous plasticity, addiction remolds neural circuits to assign supreme value to cocaine or heroin or gin, at the expense of other interests such as health, work, family, or life itself.
Gallimberti had the notion that the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) which has been used for years to treat depression, migraines and other disorders might be effective in the treatment of addiction and what it does to the brain. He felt that the repeated pulses of the device might activate drug-damaged neural pathways, like a reboot on a frozen computer. The device itself is really nothing but coiled wire inside a wand.
Gallimberti teamed up with his partner, neurocognitive psychologist Alberto Terraneo, and Antonello Bonci at the National Institute of Drug Abuse to test the technique. They recruited a group of cocaine addicts: Sixteen underwent one month of brain stimulation while 13 received standard care, including medication for anxiety and depression. By the end of the trial, 11 people in the stimulation group, but only three in the other group, were drug free. The findings of this test where published in January 2016 issue of the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. The team plans to conduct further studies, and researchers around the world are testing brain stimulation to help people stop smoking, drinking, gambling, binge eating, and misusing opioids. “It’s so promising,” Bonci says. “Patients tell me, ‘Cocaine used to be part of who I am. Now it’s a distant thing that no longer controls me.’ ”
If you would like to read more about this treatment and how drugs can change the brain physiologically visit “How Science is Unlocking the Secrets of Addiction” at National Geographic.
Addiction is extremely complicated, another important point from the article “Addiction Is a Brain Disease” is that the array of services included in an individuals treatment must be matched to his or her particular needs. Treatment and long term recovery is definitely not one size fits all.
This week’s featured image is by Brooke Shaden called Fiber Clouds. When commenting on creating it she closed her statements with this “When we fly we take off soaring, and when we fall we must learn to make something new from our ashes.”
[i] LESHNER, ALAN I. “Addiction Is a Brain Disease.” Issues in Science and Technology, vol. 17, no. 3, 2001, pp. 75–80. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43314081.
If you could contact please I would appreciate it. My son is suffering as an addict. My family gets mad at me even if I give him food. They are not Christians. I am!! I don’t know what is doing too much