Re-Wire

Water is powerful! Its effects can be permanently altering, beautiful, and sometimes devastating. Just how powerful, think of the Grand Canyon or limestone, water does that.

Drugs, of all kinds, are the same. I know for some the term beautiful may be offensive, but it is to the addicted individual or they would not keep doing it in the face of, often, overwhelming consequences. If you are trying to help someone trapped in addiction you MUST understand this truth.

This past week in the USA we celebrated an important holiday, Thanksgiving. It is actually rooted in faith. It is a celebration of Gods promises to His people to meet their needs. It is what, perhaps, the most famous passage of scripture starts with, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want” … that means He gives me all I need to be all I can be.

During this time, a lot of people indulge in a lot of things too much. Being reminded of that made me think of how all of us can relate to the statement about what an addicted person “gets” out of the drug. We all have something that we have or still can’t stop. Maybe it’s food, maybe it’s shopping, maybe it’s a relationship that isn’t, ever, going anywhere, but we keep doing it. It is like the old joke about the smoker who said, “I do not have a problem with smoking, I can quit any time I want . . . I have done so many times!”. Of course, that statement is funny but nicotine is not. Nicotine is one of the worlds most powerfully addictive substances. Many lives are lost from it and many of our young people are being hurt as a result of its new vehicle, vaping, so nicotine is not a laughing matter, but you get the idea of what I mean. It might be a bad habit, and for some, it might be what their faith calls sin. Yet even with that, these things are often hard to shake free of. That’s what your addicted loved one feels, they can’t stop.

We all have something we can’t stop. I know, many of you may be saying right now, “What I do is not illegal or as dangerous as drugs”. You are probably right, but you get the idea that you cannot let go of it.

Please understand when I say “can’t” I do not mean it is not possible, I mean you just can’t see or believe that life is possible without this action. Recovery is always possible, no matter what our addiction is because there are people who have recovered, probably many of them.

Although there are many reasons for this. Some physical, some physiological, and some psychological, all combining to produce a powerful need.

This image is a picture is estuary mud (this often happens at the mouth of a river but I have also seen images of this happening on hillsides) with deep channels cut into it by the water. This image illustrates a powerfully important element of addiction as it is influenced by how our brain functions. When you and I perform an action or an experience (like doing drugs) the action cuts a path, a connection in our brain. How, why, etc. are way beyond my pay grade. The more we perform this action, whatever it is, the deeper the pathway is dug into our brain, making the desire for the behavior stronger and stronger. That’s why you and I can find things that we just can’t seem to stop. That’s why people that genuinely love God struggle with following the principles the scripture reveals. And that’s why your loved one might say, and mean it, “I can’t stop”.  Those are the very words I said to my wife when she begged me to stop using cocaine and explained that she could no longer live the way we were living and if I couldn’t stop she would have to leave. Through tears, I told her I loved her, but I could not stop for her or anyone else. I simply could not believe there was another way. For me, a big part of that was faith that showed me that I could rewire the pathways/connections I had allowed to control my brain.

In fact, the very reason this happens is the reason our loved one, or us, can re-route the pathways (like the channels cut in the mud) in our brain. It is through the wonder of Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, also known as neural, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. These changes range from individual neurons making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping. The neuroplasticity of the brain also allows the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that is hugely impacted by drug use in younger people that monitors judgment, to reorganize after damage. In some cases, parts of the cortex can take over the functions of damaged areas. ReLearn is a post that explains why this happens further.

This is what we consistently need to be helping our loved ones do, rewire the “habits” they have formed in their brains. It takes time. In addiction, unlike perhaps other areas of our lives new habits ARE NOT formed in eighteen days. The truth is new research has shown that new habits take as long as long as 3 years, especially when drug use was started young. See below for links explaining this.

The good news is that in spite of how far drug abuse and addiction can take us we can find a way back with a little help from those that love us.

Habit is a big part of addiction we do not talk enough about today. Kent Dunnington, the author of Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice  . There also two very helpful videos of Kent talking about the importance of understanding addiction and habit The Perilous Gift – Part 1 and The Perilous Gift – Part 2 .

This weeks featured image is by Brooke Shaden, I am not aware of the title.

Links about building new habits:

https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2012/01/breaking-bad-habits

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16106242/

https://bjgp.org/content/62/605/664

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.695.830&rep=rep1&type=pdf