Understanding Addiction

What’s next?

Written by

Marc

in

It ain't me, babe. Is it?

 

I have to figure out this blogging thing. About 2 weeks ago I was invited to host a blog on the Psychology Today website. So I set up a sort of parallel blog there, with most of the same posts. I’ve been making them a bit shorter and punchier for PT, and I’ve been providing more detail, including neuro detail, for my home blog (this one).

But I’m slightly mixed up on where to go from here. Should I retain two blogs? My PT blog gets up to 500 visits per day. It’s PT, after all. This one gets anywhere from 10 to 50 most days. And why bother with two, after all? Especially if they cover more or less the same content? But I like having my OWN blog/site, and all those flashing ads on the PT site annoy me. I have old-fashioned eyeballs.

Maybe the thing to do is to get more flowy — more personal, more newsy — and move away from essay-like postings. So says Isabel, my wife, who did a very successful blog during our last couple of years in Toronto. I like blog writing. It’s great to knock off a piece of…something…in an hour or so, rather than spend six months on a scientific paper that very few people will ever read. But the flow of my life is pretty calm at the moment, and I’m not going to try to interest people in what I’m having for lunch or my thoughts while stuck in traffic.

People who read this blog are, I think, I hope, either those with present addictions, past addictions, or people interested in the science and/or treatment of addiction. So what’s to flow about…that might be of interest to you? My addiction is mostly past, not present, though I have struggled with it in recent times. A “memoir” article in Toronto Life (November 2011  issue) recounts my difficulty getting off oxycodone last spring, after a stint of severe sciatica and recovery from spinal surgery. And I sometimes drink more than I should. So, yeah, I’m not completely in the clear. As far as I know, no addict ever is. But I’m in good shape these days.

I recently found a blog by someone who is currently — like this month! — getting off alcohol. She’s on week 2 or 3 of recovery by now, and I really admire her blow-by-blow description of what it’s like to quit: how it feels, the voices in her head, the spikes of craving, and the relief at moving on. That’s one kind of flow that can be of real interest to people in the addiction world. But my struggles just aren’t that dramatic these days.

And then there’s all this late-breaking news on the science, psychology, and politics of addiction. A special issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience was recently dedicated to addiction. And the Addiction Newsfeed from Science Daily pulls all kinds of interesting stuff from just about everywhere — Click on Home and scroll down to see it. I can be more current and more, I guess, opinionated if I follow this stuff more closely. Maybe I’ll try that for a while.

I’m just thinking out loud at the moment. But I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.

 

Comments

7 responses to “What’s next?”

  1. fredt

    I like the detail better. Please keep on with your first drafts in this blog. You are developing fans out here.

    Reply
  2. Mike Johnson

    Hi Marc:

    I am with fredt here. There is a lot of material to deal with and post your drafts here at least for a while.

    Run them against each other and see where you go- I’ll have to watch the PT site and read the responses.

    I appreciate the “recovering addict struggle” and it is very dramatic but, if I may say so, you are the one who made it back in good enough to be a neuroscientist. True, backing and luck played a role but you did do the work.

    Brain research and Neuroscience will break the addictive cycle if it is breakable within the human paradigm. This is still very unclear at this point. VERY SCARY- for me.

    Will power is an object in the consciousness to begin with but as an agent, what is it?

    On the one hand we can see that the “Will” seems to be easily overcome by the repeated promptings of the dopamine system.

    In other circumstances the “Will as control” can squeeze the underlying personality so hard that it disintegrates. Of what use is ending an addiction at the cost of fissioning the nucleus of your personality?

    I have been reading the Special Issue on Addiction @ Nature and it is some tough stuff. So tough I have been unable to forward it to people that require more compassionate guidance then I am capable of, frankly.

    The entire concept of the overuse of food as a functional addiction given the percentage of obese in our society and the current trend direction is a very sensitive area.

    As you well know this is not even the surface of research. The implications of the issues you open in your book are both the great opportunities we so require and the risks such insights evoke might just strip people right down to the frame.

    Not that we will not go ahead, we will do it, but it will be Creative Destruction in the sense that Schumpeter proposed it.

    Thanks for all you have done!

    Reply
  3. Mike Johnson

    Hi:

    Found Isabel’s blog from the link. Have to compare the subject matter.

    Reply
  4. Dave

    I agree with Fred and Mike.

    My personal view on blogs, and with respect to you, is this. I think you are limiting yourself if you stick to talking about addiction. I really enjoy your writing style, I think you could be successful even writing fiction! So, kind of like Dr. Oz does with medicine, I think you could and should cover more general topics that come under the heading ‘psychology’. You must have other topics as a neuroscientist that you find interesting, and you have a talent at conveying ideas that comes across in a very refreshing manner. I suffer with OCD, and would love to see you delve into psychological aspects of obsession and compulsion, coupled with your uncanny ability to portray the neuro-chemical goings on. After reading your book, I will forever have visions in my mind about ‘ego fatigue’, anticipation and ‘foreplay’, and images of dopamine and glutamate rushing to and fro in the brain.

    I took a classics course in University, and the professor was so interesting to listen to, it made me enjoy immensely his discussions about greek and roman mythology. I would have enjoyed hearing him do the nightly news.

    You are a great teacher, and a great communicator, and I enjoy your style, sometimes as much, or more, than the message.

    So I think you could wander, and roam around a wide variety of interesting topics within psychology.

    Your thoughts while stuck in traffic might be more interesting than you think. What’s wrong with a little free association?

    Dave

    Reply
  5. An Enigma

    Marc,

    As already noted, do not limit yourself to addiction related posts only.

    Write a bit more broadly about neuropsychology/neurobiology and behavior, etc. For example, I am personally very interested in the effects of neurotransmitters on behavior, and I know many others share that interest. This relates closely to the main topic of addiction and drugs, so I think you could write a lot about this and still stay close to the main topic covered on this blog (addiction).

    Furthermore, I think you should do research reviews, i.e. posts where you talk about a new study and provide your personal opinion and perspective. There’s plenty of new and interesting studies being released all the time – write about them. Whether you do that here or on PsychToday is up to you, but the suitability of such posts for either site would partly be dependent on the amount of technical detail provided.

    As I see it, PT is better suited for shorter articles of the ‘pop psych’ variety, while personal blogs are better for detailed/more elaborate posts, since the audience have a better pre-understanding of the topic(s)

    Reply
  6. Roger G. Albert

    Keep up the posts, Marc. I read every one you write. I’ll have more to say when I’m out from under this pile of late term essay and exam marking. One question I have though is, after reading your book, I’m wondering if you think you’re way out of your early life addiction (which beat mine hands down!) is possible for most other addicts? It seems that you had a moment of epiphany after hitting the wall. Is that a likely outcome for most addicts?

    Reply
  7. Richard Henry

    Excepting “That’s Life” is not for me!
    by Richard Henry on Tuesday, December 7, 2011 at 9:31am
    Falling to the norm of society..
    Anyone can work day in day out, follow routine, to me that’s dysfunctional. Think outside the box! “If it ain’t broke, brake it” I guess I fall out side the norm, I can not, or will not, accept” life on life’s terms”. To me accepting life on life’s term is an unwillingness to change, “Dead Heads” a society who have given up their right for choice.
    We all look to escape reality any chance we get, why do you think their is such a monopoly over things like cable, T.V, music, lottery. It puts us in that dream state, like retirement, it gives us hope, acceptance in throwing our life away to work,  in slaved to depth and taxes, interest. 
    Some of us turn to ADDICTIONS to escape, like cocaine, with no alternative medications you can became dependent, it puts you in a state of mind of ultimate escape. We are being robbed of our full potential, how many of us fall short to their natural talents, in the work force and only settle with what their are taut. Becoming stuck employed, just putting in their time to pay the bills.
     Most are to closed minded to see outside the box normally, we become blinded to life’s opportunities, opportunities beyond your greatest imagination, stuck in the materialistic things. Do you know why they don’t have an alternative medication for cocaine? Like what I like to call a “MOOD BRIGHTENER” because they don’t want you to see out side the norm. All they want to give us is sedatives, blockers, inhibitors, anti-depressants, they want you to be closed minded in accepting life on life’s terms.
    I will not accept anything less then my full potential, like my son puts it, “One Life One Chance Gotta Get It Right” I for one I’m not going to waist it away working, just to survive. “Time for change”, we can’t keep neglecting our kids, the nurturing needed in keeping our family’s together and accepting divorce as an easy way out. We must bring back the family traditions, Faith, morals, helping in the needs of others, life is not all about what we want , but what we need.
    We have accepted the increase of the cost of living where we need a double income to support a family. This at the expense of our children at the early stages of development where they need nurturing we have failed. This putting in need of rewards out side the family, many turn to the work force again, addicted the the rewards of money. The more you make the more you want, the higher the income the bigger the house.
    Is this the real so called CANADIAN DREAM driven by greed to the materialistic things in life, we don’t really own anything. The vision of self worth as success and the promise of retirement. is to be the goal for freedom? from depth?.
    At one point in my life I almost fell to their legal alternative escape of alcohol, they keep this alternative available because its a downer. I could have stayed an alcoholic and died an alcoholic, but that would have been giving up to living life on life’s terms, again its time for change in accepting  “That’s Life” Bring back our right for choice.
     If cocaine for me is an alternative self medication in seeing things clearly, why can’t I get an alternative legal prescription, Mood Brightener? Is it not my choice to enhance my creative thinking, bringing clarity to to seeing things?.
    Is it not my choice to take a stimulant to enhance my daily living, and not fall short to my full potential?But as a result of not accepting life at its weakest I become depressed , so again what?… I need an anti-depressants?
    I think not, anti-depressants is not for my mind, but for my body, its not for an unbalance. I’m sadness in the world as we see it…
    Help!!!

    Richard Henry
    981 gulf place Ottawa Ont.
    Apt. 516 k1k-3×9
    lifeinthegame@gmail.com

    Reply

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