The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1610397126
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease, based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing.
Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. Brains are designed to restructure themselves with normal learning and development, but this process is accelerated in addiction when highly attractive rewards are pursued repeatedly. Lewis shows why treatment based on the disease model so often fails, and how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery, given the realities of brain plasticity. Combining intimate human stories with clearly rendered scientific explanation, The Biology of Desire is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.
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While. Addiction is a habit, which, like many other habits, gets entrenched through a decrease in self-control. Addiction is definitely bad news for the addict and all those within range. But the severe consequences of addiction don’t make it a disease, any more than the consequences of violence make violence a disease, or the consequences of racism make racism a disease, or the folly of loving thy neighbour’s wife makes infidelity a disease. What they make it is a very bad habit. Although this.
Second or up to a thousand times a second, a spurt of electrochemical energy is passed along to the neurons it connects to. This energy flow is how experience is produced by the brain. That’s what puts the picture on the screen of your mind. But of course the brain needs input from the outside world in order to experience something. As highlighted by fifties-era sci-fi, a brain in a tank is not a happy brain. Synapses are tiny spaces between neurons, where the fibres of one cell (the sender).
Spill coffee all over your pants, or the sudden excitement and pleasure that Brian felt as soon as “crystal” came to mind. Whether it came from his visual system, because he’d suddenly discerned the pipe on the bedside table, or from his memory system, where thousands of meth associations swam about like fish in an aquarium, the image of “crystal” was immediately imbued with emotional meaning by his amygdala, whose synapses had been sculpted over two years of continuous use. Feeling and focus go.
When Monday morning finally came, Michael and Donna’s brother half carried her to the car. She had never been in treatment of any kind. She then met the woman she would continue to talk with for several years. Someone who had also been an addict once upon a time. The therapist wanted her in a residential setting as soon as possible. Donna fought it. She didn’t want to go. But she thought of Michael, waiting in the waiting room. She finally agreed, giving up the last shreds of what seemed like.
Love and, 166–168, 176–177, 181–182 NIDA defining, 6 partner, 166–167 physical, 50 Recognizing Addiction as a Disease Act, 11 self-control and, 142 self-deprivation and, 143 stress and, 3 without substances, 165–169 summarized, 198–199 symbols and, 143–145 See also behavioural addictions; choice model; disease model; self-medication model; specific interviewee; specific topic Addiction: A Disorder of Choice (Heyman), 21 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) CDC study and, 178–179,.