Addictions start out as innocent, fun ways to enjoy yourself, to let off a little steam, to relax, to feel good. What do all these phrases have in common? Neuro-biologically, activities that make us feel good, like having a drink, buying new clothing, playing a game, eating a good meal, all release a little neurotransmitter called dopamine which is our “feel good” hormone. This feeling good is intricately tied to our hard-wired pleasure-reward system, our motivation system and through the body always seeking homeostasis, it is also tied to our pain-suffering system as this blog will attempt to explain.
Alcohol and other addictions, after a time, disrupt dopamine regulation in the body. Genetics can affect how much dopamine you have, how much dopamine you make and how many dopamine receptors you have in your body. Nurture, the way you were treated or the way you treat yourself or care for yourself now, in your present life, can affect the dopamine levels in your body.
When you drink alcohol, or participate in any other addiction, you get a dopamine surge that makes you feel energetic and happy. Over time you build up tolerance and you don’t get the same effect from alcohol or other addictive activity. You have to drink more, take more, do more to get the same effect or good feeling from the alcohol, the substance or the activity (shopping, gambling, sex, scrolling on your phone, playing video games, exercise, etc.) The addicted person is always chasing after that initial feeling of the surge of energy and happiness. In some circles that is called chasing the tail of the dragon. Biologically, the body is always searching for homeostasis. When you drink or engage in your particular addiction, you get that dopamine rush. Overtime, that makes your body stop producing it own dopamine. The body becomes lazy counting on the substance or activity to make this dopamine surge happen. This makes your body go into a dopamine deficit. Dopamine deficits create cravings. It’s like a chain link or a cogs and wheel system where when one part moves, every part is affected. Sometimes those cravings are so physiologically strong that a person will do anything to just feel better. Now they are no longer searching to get that elusive high or dopamine surge, now they are using to just try to feel better. So, dopamine is tied to the pleasure-reward system in our body. But since everything is interconnected in our bodies, and our bodies are always seeking homeostasis, you go into a dopamine deficit because your own body can’t produce the dopamine that you need anymore, so you are not receiving the reward-pleasure that you are seeking, and your body will go into deficit and the deficit causes pain and suffering. As stated before, that is where cravings come from. They are neurobiological. The important part is the introduction here of pain and suffering. You will hear that again a few paragraphs from now but let’s talk about cravings for a minute.
Cravings can be big or small. They can last from a short time to a very long time, sometimes months and even years from the time you stop the addiction, but they do tend to dwindle in frequency and intensity over time and that’s helpful to know. But do they ever go away completely? I think it is helpful to think of these cravings as little roaches running around in your brain trying to crawl onto your consciousness and hijack it to get you to return to the substance or activity of your addiction. You know how adaptable and long living roaches can be! Once they latch onto something it is hard to shake them off. Their little legs have a grip that is like a vice and that is what a craving does in your brain. But a funny thing about roaches and you can imagine this as you are experiencing a strong craving; if you walk into a dark room and there are roaches around, the minute you turn on the light, they scatter everywhere. So that’s what we will talk about when we get to the part of this article that addresses how to overcome an addition- turn on the light (enlightenment)! That is what we want the cravings to do, we want to create habits in our life and gain knowledge that cause the roaches to scatter away in every direction and stay away. That is what we are striving for; to be able to manage the cravings when they come and eventually to not have the cravings any longer. So, when we ask a person who is trying to recover from alcohol, nicotine, shopping, gambling or whatever addiction, we ask them to abstain for a month so that their body can begin to create its own dopamine. That means a person is going to be in a mode of pain and suffering. (Some people cannot do this on their own and if that is you, please call me. There are clinics that specialize in medical detox and ibogaine for addictions of a chronic and severe nature.)
Going through this withdrawal is the body’s attempt to create homeostasis and to begin to repair its ability to create and distribute its own dopamine again. The client, you, needs to know this is a natural part of becoming whole again and coming back into dopamine regulation. It will get worse before it gets better but knowing that is helpful. This is where we start to see the symptoms of withdrawal and those can be anything from mild irritability to sleeplessness to delirium tremors and severe psychological and physiological withdrawal symptoms where a person needs to be medically supervised in a clinical setting and again, please reach out if this is you. Help is available.
This is the body fighting to get back to the ability to produce and regulate its own dopamine system. There are also some things that you can do to help this along. When we talk about the pain and suffering part of recovery, that sounds like an unpleasant event to experience, however through research, it seems to be a necessary part of re-establishing stability, so just by knowing that this is going to happen and by enhancing that experience we can help to shorten it.
When you think of pain and suffering, it doesn’t have to be all bad. Remember a time when you first started an exercise program, something that is healthy for you, right? You were probably sore the next day. That is part of the body’s trying to get back to homeostasis and in doing so, it makes you healthier. Exercise is difficult, it requires effort, it hurts, but it also produces endorphins, some of them the neurotransmitter dopamine! So, intense exercise or starting an exercise program can help with the body’s ability to regulate and begin to produce its own dopamine again. Always check with your doctor before starting any kind of a new exercise program. Likewise, any task that requires effort is part of the pain and suffering aspect of dysregulation, trying to go back to normal regulation of dopamine in the body. If you think about it, scrolling through social media produces a dopamine rush every time you scroll across something that interests you and the social media platforms have algorithms that learn what you like and deliver more and more to you- which can become an addiction in itself. But we don’t want to trade one addiction for another, so research suggests learning a new skill, something that requires effort. Learning a new language or playing a musical instrument, taking dance lessons, pottery or art classes, etc. Schedule the task of learning this new skill at the same time that you would be using your drug or activity of choice that you’ve been addicted to. So, for example, if you like to have that glass of wine or highball at 5:00 happy hour then you would schedule to sit down at the piano or your musical instrument and work on learning a song for 30 minutes to an hour, or you would work on leaning a new language for 30 minutes to an hour. Just surf the urge by redirecting your attention to something that requires effort and concentration. Some other suggestions are to meditate, go outside for a walk, any activity that would normally create dopamine in the brain is something you can substitute for the preferred addiction activity. Of course, it really helps to work with a therapist one-on-one or go to a support group. It is necessary to get to the root cause of the addiction. Gabor Mate, a renowned addiction expert, says “don’t ask why the addiction, ask why the pain”. What is it you are trying to run from or numb yourself against?
I want to say a word about the fact that learning a new language, learning to play a musical instrument, and finding a support group are all easily found online. I mentioned online addictions, to social media, game playing, gambling, etc., and the way you can combat that if social media or games are your addiction that you are trying to stop, is to have the support of a friend or a group for accountability. Remove all the apps that you used so that you can’t get to them and consciously limit your time on your phone or your iPad to only that time when you are taking the lesson for the new language skill or the new musical instrument or the new exercise program, meditation class or yoga class. I would conversely like to encourage you to go out into your community to find this support because part of addiction is isolation and loneliness and that is also part of depression. Depression and addiction often go together, as well as PTSD. Any time that you can get out and connect with people is golden and also supportive of your neurotransmitter regulation. Remember that an addiction is defined as something that has negative consequences in your life and that you continue to do even knowing that it is going to end up with negative consequences in your life, in your health and in your relationships.
So, what can start as an innocent, fun activity for you such as having a drink after work to relax or playing Wordle or any other video game online or buying scratch off lottery tickets or smoking a cigarette to look cool or shopping to lift your mood, or any behavior that eventually becomes an addiction, can start off as a fun thing and no one is being harmed but in the end it becomes a problem. I ask you just to think again about the definition of addiction one more time. The term psychoneuroimmunology is popular these days because this fun thing becomes an addition, and this addiction becomes a stressor because it is causing problems in your life. Stress is the foundation of all degenerative diseases, so why do we want to put extra stress in our lives? We don’t. It may have started out innocently and then the systems within the body got hijacked, but knowledge is power. The point I want to make is that the addiction becomes an escape and a way to not deal with life and that is where good psychotherapy comes in. Having a therapist ask you questions such as,
And I have to say, because I specialize in psychotherapy with psychedelics and plant medicines, the positive research outcomes with these modalities for addiction, depression and PTSD cannot be ignored. My own experience with clients using psychotherapy and psychedelics to get to the root cause of addictions has been phenomenal. It brings these addicted parts to life and we have an opportunity to have real conversations with them and instead of being angry or disgusted by them, we learn to love them, have compassion for them and understand their important role in our lives and then become allies with them to solve the problems they are bringing to our attention. You learn healthier ways of dealing with stress. You repair the rip in the space/time fabric from childhood. Psychedelics open windows of opportunity for healing we thought were long gone. The title of this article, “Is Addiction an Affliction or an Awakening” means that these parts played vital roles in protecting us and the addiction was an attempt at adaptive behavior to deal with the stress or trauma and then it became seriously damaging or maladaptive to us. Addiction can bring the root cause of the stressor to our consciousness, thus beginning an awakening to really finally heal once and for all!
One last caveat, I want you to know there is no specific gene for alcoholism or addiction. There are genes for dopamine regulation, serotonin regulation and other hormonal regulations within the body. There are genes that regulate sensitivity. That refers to a person’s sensitivity to stress. A person’s sensitivity to stress is related to their thoughts about a stressor and their beliefs about themselves in the world. Beliefs about themselves in the world come from the way they handled their sensitivity to trauma or what they perceive to be traumatic events in their lives. According to the research, trauma seems to be implicit in addiction. Not all traumatized people will become addicted, but all addicted people have trauma in their history.
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Thank you for your interest and understanding Blessings on your healing journey 
