Opium poppy
That’s a quote from a recent reader, and I think it’s a fabulous metaphor. The idea is that brains and the chemicals that run them come from molecules that have been part of the evolutionary marketplace for a very long time. So the “code” that our brains use to operate (and to have fun) is easily mimicked by compounds out there in the world. When we find those compounds and consume them, we hack our own nervous systems.
Indeed, our major neurotransmitters are extremely old. So are the neuropeptides (which include opioids). I read somewhere that male lobsters stand up and rear their claws when they get a spurt of the peptide vasopressin…which comes from their own brainstems. Vasopressin is an important neurochemical for inter-male aggression in humans! A humbling thought. So not only do we share neurochemicals with extremely ancient ancestors and extremely distant cousins, we even share their functions.
Now pre-hominids weren’t much good at extracting stuff from plants. Hands are really useful for that. But hominids have been around for a couple of million years, and even the period of agrarian civilization, about 5-10,000 years old, is plenty of time to experiment with the profusion of plants that make feel-good chemicals. The fact that neurochemicals are cobbled together from existing molecules, as pointed out by the same reader, is hugely important. That’s what improves the odds that our favourite neuromodulators will have cousins in the plant world. All we had to do was find them, refine them, and eat them (or smoke them or snort them or shoot them).
According to Berridge’s theory, dopamine doesn’t make you feel good, but it makes you feel engaged and excited. It’s opioids that make you feel good. The fact that opioids automatically release more dopamine means that liking and wanting are closely bonded. Unfortunately, though opioids increase dopamine flow, the reverse is not the case. Dopamine flow just makes you try harder. Hence, whether you get your dopamine rush from methamphetamine, coke, from planning your next batch of cookies, from anticipating the next rib, or from the vicious cycle of addiction itself, there is no pot of gold waiting at the end of that rainbow. Unless you put it there yourself.
We are indeed a species who hacks our own brains with the stuff we find lying around in nature. And since dopamine and opioids are so crucial to the reward system, it was almost inevitable that we’d find them, use them to hack our brains, use them some more because they work, and then start to work hard to get them. Thus, it’s almost inevitable that we’d evolve into druggies. And, I suppose, just as bad backs are an unfortunate byproduct of upright posture, it’s almost inevitable that many of us would become drug addicts.
Informed by unparalleled neuroscientific insight and written with his usual flare, Marc Lewis’s The Biology of Desire effectively refutes the medical view of addiction as a brain disease. A bracing and informative corrective to the muddle that now characterizes public and professional discourse on this topic.” —Gabor MatĂ©, M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
Hi Marc
There are many ways to approach this topic; you could branch off and go in so many different directions. As we have evolved, and will continue to evolve, I believe it is imperative that as a society we learn to understand all of the functions of our brains.
This should begin in primary school. We are very concerned that our children receive an indepth sex education, why shouldn’t we be just as concerned that they learn how the brain functions? Thus, mental health would become an understood, and hopefully accepted, part of our overall health. Young teens often do not understand or recognize mental health issues, they hide their symptoms afraid that parents or those in authority will be angry. This can lead to self medicating, while struggling to feel better, thus leading to drug and alcohol addiction. The wonderful feelings that drugs create last a short time and then you have to go in search of that feeling once again. My daughter, who was a drug addict, said that the first time she did Meth it felt like a wonderful warm hug. After that she began searching for that wonderful feeling again. It would appear to me that this is true for most things in life. As individuals we have to understand that “you can never go home again”, nothing ever feels quite the way it did the first time. Perhaps if she and I had had a better understanding of mental illness we could have helped her before she began self medicating. It seems to me that as humans we have to understand the feelings that the opioids and the dopamine create and then learn how to deal with them. If children learned of brain functions and mental health early in their education they would have the language to communicate any issues they are experiencing, and possibly learn to feel empathy towards others earlier. Perhaps we can do away with a great deal of bullying during junior and senior high school years, and then we can go really wild and imagine fewer drug and alcohol addicts as their mental health issues are recognized sooner.
Hi Carolyn. Thanks for your comment, and I’m sorry it’s taken so long to reply. Maybe we should teach neuroscience in school, as you suggest. At least in High School it should be accessible, and I agree that understanding the brain might help teenagers think about drug use in a different way. It might even help them avoid it. Teenagers are known for their risk-taking behaviour, so in some sense it hardly matters what they learn in school. They’re going to take chances anyway. But one of the best lessons from brain science is that the chemicals of attraction and reward, dopamine and opioids, are freely available from inside us. We get big gouts of dopamine from pursuing attractive goals, which of course include attractive people, and we get opioids from touching, cuddling, playing, and being in love.
The conundrum you mention, that nothing ever feels as good as the first time, can be overcome by getting your neurochemical highs from your own brain structures. These chemicals are designed to be used in highly diverse activities. So you don’t have to do the same thing over and over again in order to feel excited or to feel warm inside. Maybe you do if you’re a frog or a lizard, but human brains are built for variety, and they’re built to reward variety. Which is why drug addiction is so very boring and unsatisfying. It’s the complete opposite of variety.
I’d really love to hear your views on how people use caffeine (coffee, cola etc) in our culture.
Massively wide use of quite a strong drug; goes straight through the blood brain barrier and causes energy increase, garbled thought, anxiety, sleep issues… different effects on different dosages… withdrawal maybe kicks in after only 12 hrs, so many, many people getting withdrawal symtoms every morning…
Would you agree with current doctors who say very many people feeling they suffer from anxiety etc (and perhaps on other massive meds for that reason) are actually just suffering caffeine side effects?
Interesting idea. My wife has a double espresso as soon as she wakes up, which makes me wince. And she sometimes has trouble sleeping… Hmmm, you may have a point. But we now live in the Netherlands, where people seem to drink coffee throughout the day and evening, and people actually seem fairly relaxed here. On the other hand, that may be because they ride bikes everywhere. I guess it’s the whole picture that really counts.
I don’t have much of an opinion about caffeine. It seems to me like a rather “coarse” drug. But that in itself could be a good thing. People like their cups of coffee, but few would be tempted to sell their own mother to get one. Methamphetamine simply feels a thousand times better and is thus many times more dangerous.
Thanks.
It sounds like you don’t use it at all (cola etc?)?
This gives a flavour of how real caffeine issues are to many people; http://coffeefaq.com/site/node/11?page=4
– more than 150 pages of comments!!
I often have a cappuccino in the morning. It gets my eyes to open the rest of the way.
the more I think about it the more important your 11th Commandment; Avoid Temptation is. I have never had Methamphetamine, and it sounds like I would be wise never to try it.
Hi John,
I am a truly exceptional caffeine head 5I’d say easily in the top 1-5 percent in consumption terms) have quit entirely 3 days ago after tapering. I’m very intrigued by your post when you said “different effects on different dosages.” What do you men by that? I know that Nicotine (which I quit awhile back) certainly does have different effects at different doses. It is very stimulating at low doses but oddly sedating at high doses.
Drew very best wishes.
What I was thinking was that maybe trace or very small dosages (which I was trying at the time) gave many of caffeine’s advantages without many of the disadvantages. However I tried it for a while and for me I don’t think it’s true; even trace dosage, or decaff (typically c.1/5 the caffeine of normal) give me the caffeine effects of increased aggression, garbled thinking, higher tension, likelihood of using alcohol later to defuse, and above all, higher anxiety both at night and in the day.
My experience is that you only get the clear un-garbled head and the normal-only anxiety with no caffeine.
I’m on c.day 16 now and it’s going well.
I’d strongly recommend you have a browse of the massive thread I mentioned above (http://coffeefaq.com/site/node/11?page=4); 150+ pages of comments from people very largely sharing experiences and encouraging each other ref. coming off caffeine.
John,
Thanks for the reply link (Coffeefaq). I was extremely interested by your story. The 3 things in my life I’m really trying to reduce are
1. Garbled thinking/ brain fog
2. Anxiety
3. Anything that produces/Aggravates 1 and 2.
” clear un-garbled head and the normal-only anxiety” is another great way to put it. It finally has dawned on me that some of the things I use to “cool off” or “concentrate” may actually be having the opposite effect. One thing I know for SURE is that nbicotine – amazingly – turned out to be a massive cause of stress/anxiety and that became completely clear after I quit. I work out a lot but also with all the caffeine (and nicotine) I too seem more and more out of it. Nervously awake but crap concentration (worst of both worlds). The last 3 years I drank WAY more than usual and realized this was yet another “relaxer” that when overused makes me anxious and terrible concentration.
I’m on day 3 decaf but after your post I will now plunge straight into cold turkey. What you brought up – “garbled thinking” is the TOP issue for me I need to get this handled as I have a lot of work and stressful occupation and I find it harder and harder to get it together each year.
Thanks and I hope you post some updates on your progress I certainly will. I want to figure out once and for all if caffeine is good, bad or neutral in my life (and concentration). I will go wherever the facts lead.
John,
Here comes a very unorigional question but… How long after you quit ALL caffeine (inlcluding trace amounts) do you find that your garbled thinking issue gets noticeably better?
Drew
I found un-garbling of thinking happened almost immediately, and certainly after say 3 days. However it is taking me longer to harness the thinking again; e.g. to face challenges and jobs I have been avoiding, to get down to work.
(As a result I am thinking about taking other stimulants/brain distorts out of my life, e.g. sugar, processed foods, bread…)
One point on exercise; it is also effectively a drug I think ( e.g. endorphin release) so my advice is to be very regular each day in how much and at what time you exercise.
Very best! Look forward to hearing about your journey.
(The brain is incredibly vulnerable to hacking | Memoirs of an Addicted Brain) is a nice post so I posted it on my Facebook ,I hope you don’t mind. Perhaps you could look into Socialize plugin to make it easier for your readers to post to their social bookmark. Just my 2 cents.
Of course I don’t mind. It’s an honour. I’ll take your suggestion to my website designer and see what he says. I’m pretty old-fashioned when it comes to social media, so I don’t have a clue. But thanks for the idea.
I am very much enjoying your blog . Thank-you for sharing your knowledge so generously . I have almost finished reading your book and can hardly wait to see how it ends 🙂 In the old days , I would never have had access to this kind of knowledge .
Your blog feels so easy to read and flows naturally . Looking forward to reading more .
Well you know there’s a relatively happy ending, since I’m still here to write about these things. I’m glad you’re liking the blog. Me too. This kind of communication is so novel and so touching, even intimate. It’s magical. Thanks for joining us.