Last post, I emphasized an assumption of incompleteness as the foundation of craving. This feeling was referred to by readers as a hole, or pothole, or just plain lacking something. There is a lot to that, for those of us who put things (like booze or drugs) into us, in order to fill us up. But recent comments from readers struggling with anorexia or bulimia should make us think about craving more broadly. For some people there’s a compelling need to get rid of something.
What’s the common denominator?
As mentioned time and time again: relief from suffering, and I still think this translates to feeling complete. To be protected against suffering you have to be complete. For some that means filling holes, for others it means getting rid of excess. Either way, we want to make ourselves ideal, coherent, whole, and thus safe from suffering.
Let’s start with those of us who need to put something into ourselves.
This is not the time to review Freud in detail, but a hundred years of psychodynamic (e.g., post-Freudian) theory point to the infant’s need for milk or food, and the relief it provides, as the primal experience of taking something inside ourselves – something we need in order to be okay. One psychodynamic theorist, Melanie Klein, thought that young children experience a profound longing, which she called “envy,” for the mother’s breast or the mother herself. The infant seemed to know, beyond any doubt, that he or she needed something outside the self, in order to be complete. Maybe the first few times you got high, or drunk, or laid, you were reminded of how that works.
But what about those of us who need to get rid of something? There may be a feeling that we are too much, too dirty, too big, too fat, too needy, too greedy. I think even those of us who tend to shoot for more rather than less can identify that feeling. We want to trim ourselves so that we can be pure. Clean and nice. Maybe the common denominator is something really simple, like feeling “good,” which translates to lovable in cuddly mammals like ourselves.
Psychologists try to measure craving, or desire, using verbal information. For example, Hofmann, Baumeister, and colleagues (2011) got 200 people to participate in an experiment in which they were beeped at random times throughout the day and asked to record whether they were presently experiencing a desire…among other things. To make a long story short, participants reported at least one current desire on 50% of the occasions they were beeped. “On average, desires were actively resisted on 42% of occasions and enacted on 48% of occasions.” Well, I’m not sure that puts us much further ahead. Desire is a fact of life, and a lot of desires have to be inhibited. That psychological datum fails the Grandmother Test: my grandmother could have told me that.
Which is why I turn to neuroscience: the biological basis of mind. I recently heard a very succinct account of what dopamine does in the striatum. It decreases “noise”. There are always a number of competing motor plans — plans of action — vying for enactment. That’s the normal noise in the system. What dopamine does is to inhibit the weaker plans and disinhibit (augment) the strongest of the competing plans. It’s a biological mechanism, sort of like focusing your eyes. So what dopamine does in the striatum is to narrow the field of potential actions, from many down to one. And that’s the basis of craving: a narrowing of focus and motivation to one thing and one thing only.
How could it be so simple?
A “cue” in psychologese means a reminder, an association. According to the research, drug and alcohol cues (like clinking ice cubes or round yellow pills) immediately increase dopamine flow for addicts, drawing our attention to those cues and away from other things. Thus the “plan” to acquire the thing being cued (the drug or drink) is strengthened. Then internal cues — remembering, wishing, imagining — join whatever cue came first, and each of those mental cues also increases dopamine flow to the striatum. From a trickle to a torrent. So, before long, there really is only one plan of action, one intention, one goal, that feels worthwhile. And whether or not it’s forbidden, it overtakes the prefrontal cortex with its urgency: the need to get the one thing that will make us feel complete. Or get rid of the one thing that makes us feel incomplete.
That’s how brain science makes addiction make sense. Craving…addiction…an aberration, according to the ideals of our society. But a very natural process for a part of our brain whose job it is to motivate us to make things better.
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 Maté, M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
So are we able to direct or harness this focusing down? Can we, by setting strong intentions and goals, make it more likely that our healthy intentions become the one thing that’s left when the dopamine narrows the field? Or are we doomed to always struggle with that urgent preoccupation with the things that harm us?
Good question! I think the striatal dopamine pump is pretty mindless. The motor plans themselves are part of a loop that goes through the striatum, so it just picks up whatever is most dominant at the moment. A lot of that is determined without volition, but the loop also passes through brain areas that can be brought under some control cognitively.
But the cues are the main issue. If you can disengage from cues quickly enough, then I think you can nudge the striatum toward other, more productive, goals.
Without having any science to back it up, my personal experience defeating my “craving” sometimes feels like there is an old fashioned balance, like the kind Lady Justice holds outside courthouses, and on one side is the weight of the craving. I make an effort to balance the other side with enough weight to counteract the force of that craving.
I’ve learned that in my case it doesn’t need to be anything intellectual or even logical. I can sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” a hundred times over and over, I just have to fill it up enough so that the craving can’t come through.
If I start early into recognizing “oh…I’m having a craving” then I usually only need a few choruses of “99 Bottles of Beer” where if I’m not focused and keyed into the fact that I’m feeling a strong craving I may need to sing my mindless song for a few hours. And the farther away I am from active compulsive use, the less intense or insidious those craving are.
So I agree with Marc that nudging the striatum is a good effort.
I guess that if the craving was for beer this wouldn’t work as well.
Seriously, though, it’s an interesting and seemingly effective strategy. My sense is that the simplistic song you sing to yourself also has the aura of a personality — a warm, perhaps twinkly or humorous, perhaps supportive aspect of self, that reassures as well as distracts. Very little that we say to ourselves is emotionally neutral. And, as other readers have observed, there is often an affectionate or loving quality to our self-talk when we talk ourselves down from the precipice.
Interesting post. I can’t help but think of how society continues to exploit our additions and perpetuates the vicious dopamine cycle you mentioned. For instance, trying to lose weight? Never mind the fact that there’s a McDonalds on every corner or that commercial on TV showing some voluptuous sandwich. When you really think about it, cues are just about everywhere we tread. The question is, would eliminating those cues help our addictions, such as just avoiding them, or would it just create ego fatigue, as you mentioned in your last post.
My personal take: I really do think our willpower can be strengthened through daily meditation, but it’s a gradual process. From my experience, expecting quick results will only lead to more frustration. As for the competing actions, strengthening the cortical structure in our brains would probably lead to more worthwhile decision making, as new neuroplasticity research suggests the brain always has the potential to grow.
I agree with you about meditation. I’ve found it to be more powerful than everything else I’ve tried, including about five different types of psychotherapy!
But as far as the cues go, yes, of course they’re everywhere. Although they’re not neuroscientists, advertisers have excellent intuitions about the potency of cues. The whole industry is based on targeting your striatum before you know it’s happening. I don’t know what we can do about that…it seems to be a fact of life.
good morning! Dad
Well, good morning to you. Welcome to the blogosphere!
😀 (…and good day to the Family Lewis)
Firstly, thankyou to those people who responded to my question at the end of the last blog post – I really appreciate your comments!!
With regards to the current blog post – I find it very interesting to think in terms of cravings being related to needing to feel complete. I agree – but for me, the dichotomy of needing to fill a hole or take something away is not so black and white. Paradoxically, I find that i experience both – and therein lies the problem. I feel empty, not necessarily because I lack something, but because I don’t have what I thought I would have/ thought I wanted in life – and I don’t know that I will ever get it. But at the same time, I recognize how lucky i am to have what I do have – and I feel guilty and selfish for feeling so empty. I spend a lot of my time trying to accept and be satisfied with the blessings I do have because I think that will help to decrease unhealthy cravings (as you say, there will always be desires).
With regards to neuroscience, is it possible to train your brain to release dopamine in response to cues that elicit positive behaviours? Can we actually pick something that we want to make us feel good – and make it happen?
Thanks
This was almost exactly the same as Cynthia’s question, above. Please see my response. But dopamine isn’t evil. It’s function is to get us to attend to immediate reinforcers (rewards) in our environment. Think about how crucial that’s been for our evolution as intelligent apes. Dopamine got us to go after the low-hanging fruit, the edible roots, the first craft the took us from one island to another… Dopamine is also crucial for sexual attraction. It’s the main agent the propels us into the arms (and other parts) of potential sexual partners. It’s the foundation of adolescent infatuation. And that’s probably all we had going for us, a mere 10-20 thousand years ago…before societal norms became a serious impediment to these wild desires.
Thanks for sharing your inner turmoil with us. I’m sure it resonates with a lot of what other people feel. In depression, craving, and addiction, it’s easy to chastise yourself for being dissatisfied with your life. But you know, even if we’re relatively lucky, in terms of survival needs and a decent life, we are still “entitled” to suffer. We humans are just built that way!
WELL PUT, Lauren!
First I should say the core of this idea isn’t mine originally, I read it in a blog somewhere, but I didn’t bookmark it … and I don’t remember where it came from … and I can’t find it again. So if you’re reading this and the content was yours originally … well, thanks and I’m sorry; I’m being as honest about this as I can. But it seems to fit in to this discussion (in my head anyway) …
There are behavioral studies done with rats that have been conditioned into “learned helplessness” (LH). Take a rat, put it in a cage, and no matter what the rat does it gets shocked. Scurry left, shock it … scurry right, shock it. Forward, shock. Backward, shock. Climb the bars of the cage, shock. Sit still, shock. Eventually the rat learns it can’t escape and it quits trying, physically and mentally; it gives up … completely. It has been conditioned to be an LH rat. A few days later, the experimenter puts the rat in another cage where it gets a mild shock, but with an escape chute open to another cage where it’s safe. Control rats explore and escape. LH rats rarely find the way out. The percentage of LH rats that find the escape chute is much less than the percentage of control rats that do. The experiment has been replicated many times, it’s statistically significant.
There was more discussion I sort of remember, but the part that resonated with me was the comparison of addiction to the cage where the rats are conditioned to LH. As the author noted about addiction in a general way, once my addiction was established my response to every stimulus was the same. I felt good, I drank. I felt bad, I drank. Neither good nor bad … boredom, I drank. It was both the thing that filled the potholes and the vehicle I was traveling in. When it quit providing relief, when it, in fact, began to provide nothing but misery, it didn’t matter. By then the rut was worn so deep (or to tip my hat to what I’ve learned here, the neural pathway was so well established it was reflexive), I quit trying to escape, even though the way out was right in front of me. I was the rat trapped in a cage with an open door, an open door that could not, would not, register in my awareness.
I can’t speak to what anyone else experienced, but my addiction wasn’t something that happened the first time I drank. It was a progressive process … learned, imprinted, conditioned, a pathway gradually worn into place, if you will, over many years. Last fall, with more than six months of abstinence behind me, I began to hear the siren song of my addiction again. The horrible thing is, I was actually listening to it and entertaining the idea of walking back into the cage I’d been freed from so recently … willingly. The euphoria provided by the relief of not drinking any more wore off and life began to intrude with all it’s soft nooks and sharp corners, frustrations, tedium, victories major and minor in need of celebration. Stimulus – response … my mind began to fall into old ruts, and I hadn’t really done anything to train it to respond in some other way. I hadn’t developed any new reflexes to replace the one I don’t want to use any more. Just resisting the urge was becoming insufficient to keep me from picking up again. I happened to stumble on this blog, and one of the older posts, “Building brain muscle through meditation,” as well as the one immediately preceding it, and those ideas nudged me in the direction of a mindfulness practice. It was the tool I needed to begin to turn down the volume of the inner addiction dialogue … to notice thoughts of taking a drink as they arise and then turn them loose in the stream of all the other thoughts, perceptions, ideas, and emotions arising, rather than seizing on the addictive thoughts and letting them get stuck on replay … if that makes any sense at all. It doesn’t keep the thought of walking back into the cage from occurring, it just keeps my brain from filtering out all the other thoughts and fixating on walking back into the cage exclusively. From where I sit, that is an entirely hopeful development.
Thanks Chris,
a lot of people talk about mindfulness and I tend to think of it as a bit of a fad. But the way you have put it into context by firstly describing the LH experiments is really helpful – and hopeful.
Lauren
First off! Big love for your six months in the “squeaky clean” column. That’s amazing. You’re a miracle and all that cliche good stuff that I really do mean. Next and in relation to you comment, I want to add that the experiment with the rats and the shocks reminds me of the “socio” part of the psycho-social-bio part of addiction. The fact is that addiction leads us to some of the poorest parts of our environment, and I don’t just mean economically.
We’re depressed, cut from the social fabric and easy to scorn. Shock-shock-shock. We try to clean up and get a job and we don’t know how to dress properly or we can’t afford good interview clothes or manners. Shock-shock.
The people I work with give me what I call the “shocked-rat” excuses of why they can’t change. They have felonies…so why try and get a job, it only makes them feel worse about their situation. They are “stupid”…why try to go back to school.
Addiction often tells us, regardless of what beautiful people we actually are inside and under our addiction, that we are worthless, damaged and better kept away from polite society.
Shock-shock-shock.
I find it easy to understand why some addict “rats” just give up and make their home in the rats nest that is cozy to them and wait for it all to be over. Too much pain. Too much hunger of the spirit and body. Too much feeling totally flawed and alone. Addiction is a disease of culture as well as body I feel.
It *never* has to be like that. Anyone can be a firestarter to spark change. I aim to carry that message in my own work…but I’ve seen addiction snuff the spirit far too many times. Thanks for the dialogue.
Chris (above) got some wonderful feedback on her comment. In particular, China specified many of the shocks we human rats get on the path to learned helplessness (LH). And Hal (not sure whether above or below) remarked on different kinds of cravings, dividing them into cravings that complement the self (ie., are healthy) and those that seem to come from a different, perhaps foreign self (not healthy) and yet can’t be resisted. What can I add?
The “ruts” Chris mentioned are familiar to all of us. LH is a particular kind of rut, and when it generalizes across contexts, it becomes the kind of rut where “all roads lead to Rome”. In fact any behavioural tendency that generalizes (is evoked by a variety of cues) follows a similar formula, but if the outcome of that tendency is harmful, then we are basically screwed.
Yes, addiction is exactly that.
But behavioural science only gets us so far. We can DESCRIBE the rat’s LH condition, we can DESCRIBE our own recurrent “choice” to stay in the cage where we keep getting shocked, but we can’t EXPLAIN it. Neuroscience helps explain it.
LH has been a part of the psychological literature for a long time. Here’s how it works in the brain.
1) Many regions of the cortex are involved in anticipation… in fact that’s pretty much the job of the brain: to predict what’s coming next and to prepare for it.
2) Synaptic networks grow and consolidate from repeated activation. The same stimulus-response-outcome cycle, repeated over and over, will reinforce the same synaptic network.
3) Stress, pain, challenge, and anxiety accelerate synaptic shaping, partly by fueling them with excitatory neuromodulators, partly by synching up different cortical regions in relation to the same event, and partly by activating cortico-limbic (cognition-emotion, roughly) networks that are designed for rapid learning. `
Put these three premises together and what have you got? Synaptic networks activated by recurrent events…whose job it is to anticipate outcomes and generate a response…become rapidly strengthened by cycles of stress and stress-regulation…such that a greater and greater variety of cues (feeling good, feeling bad, feeling bored) activate the same network, and generate the same response, each time. Over time, that network becomes a superhighway, and that superhighway leads directly to Rome.
It’s this combination of repetition, stress, and stress-regulation, fertilized by gouts of excitatory neuromodulators, in a brain that’s made up fibers that are connected and strengthened the more they are activated…it’s that combination that is responsible for both LH and addiction.
Generalization is a critical cognitive process. It’s a big part of how young children learn about the world (oh, you’re smiling, you must be nice). But accelerated generalization, in the domain of “helpless” behavioural “choices,” is a nasty business. That’s why I call addiction “corrupted learning.”
The last postings are very interesting thoughts on craving; you’re attempting a difficult task in linking phenomenology and experience to biochemical issues. I also see the usefulness of thinking globally about ‘craving or desire’; a kind of overall Buddhist-flavored take on things. And let’s say that dopamine gives focus, helping make one desire most urgent. The prevalence of certain metaphors suggests common elements, e.g. thirst for fame; thirst for God; thirst for nirvana.
That said, “addiction” a most slippery concept, seems linked with compulsion, dysregulation, locked-in routines and ways of coping. Some of what might be called ‘cravings’ are quite different from others.
Compare
“I heard Drake’s latest song, and I just had to get it.”
“I saw her for the first time, was instantly in love and knew I had to
make her my wife, come what may.”
“I saw the bottle of whiskey, and just had to take to a drink.”
All are cases of over-mastering maybe even ‘over powering’ desire. Maybe the third is like ‘filling a hole,’ to use the metaphor, but not the first. The second describes being overcome, in some sense, but not necessarily pathological, unless the fellow leaves his four kids to starve.
Even a strong desire, repeatedly carried out, as it recurs, is not quite ‘addiction,’ e.g. the author’s desire to write another novel, maybe even a powerful thirst to write a great one; though it might be an obsession.
I think the term ‘compulsion’ bears some examination, since it’s used by many experts (e.g. shrinks) in the addiction field (e.g. compulsive gambling; sexual compulsivity scale). It’s something you *have* to do and will keep doing despite attempts to stop, to ‘consider the costs,’ etc. Part of the issue, here, is
that we thirst for something and it’s not ‘us.’ Both the first and second example arguably feel like ‘us’: It’s me; it’s how I feel. So going about fulfilling is not an issue, i.e. a bad one, save in the ‘four kids’ variant I mentioned. I’m wondering if a dopamine centered account–if that’s what it is– can account for ‘compulsion’ and
the context that makes us feel, “This isn’t me; it overcomes ‘me.’ ”
Thanks for bringing up a great topic.
Hal, dividing cravings up in this way is very useful. Indeed, all are dopamine-based, all involve attraction to something that is partially (not completely) out-of-reach, and all feel terribly compelling — even compulsive. Neurally, there is no real difference among them, within any give episode. What is different is that the goal, once achieved (if it’s ever achieved) is satisfying, and it puts a “stop” to the yearning in the first two cases — music and love. At least we hope so. But in the third case, the case of addiction, craving is only dampened temporarily, and it comes back with a vengeance a few hours later.
That unfortunate fact can simply be explained by the things we crave. Music can last. Relationships can last. Artificial neurochemical geysers (whether the chemical comes from outside the body, or whether it is merely induced from the outside–as in gambling) cannot last. The brain, by it’s nature springs back — in fact rebounds — so that what counted as a plus now counts as a minus.
I like to experiment with different techniques when craving. I use my mind against my brain and talk to it like this one time:
I stood in front of the mirror in the hallway, and look at myself straight in the eyes and said, If you leave me alone and don’t bug me ( meaning craving) I will give you some icecream later. Well I had a good laugh and felt confidant I was in control, some how it work, and Yes I did get some icecream later, CHOCOLATE hahah…Today I like trying all kinds of alternative ways, “coping tools” as its called. When I feel a craving I know my brain is stimulated to the antisipation of getting what it wants, or what it use to get drugs, now I try to harness that energy into more productive activities. I feel by looking at the brain separately from the mind a powerful tool in gaining control, you right for choice, and for me, I make it fun.
Thanks Marc
Reg; Richard
I also like to look at what’s going on in my brain as if I’m standing outside it. That’s when I notice that it has its own rhythms, its own clunking assembly-line habits, it’s own inevitable way of doing things. Like you, Richard, it makes me feel more light-hearted about cravings and other agonizing processes, and it allows me to “just watch” as the factory continues to churn out its products.
Yes, yes, I agree with Marc, moderating dopamine does seem to be “teachable” (is that a word??). I think that subconcious, slow buring desire, stimulated by whatever my trigger might be (tinkling ice cubes hit a nerve), is a precursor to that obsessive thinkiing that spills into compulsion if left to simmer.
I too find meditation a very effective control. Curiously, I find that meditation helps most when it relieves muscle tension first, then mental “tension” is relieved next. In fact, I find an effective way to meditate is to first flex my muscles, become concisous of my muscle tension, release that tension, then let my mind go.
Now I’ve just realized that muscle tension always seems to increase whenever I feel that dopamine response, and is how I recognize that “craving” state. I wonder if those two things could be corelated, muscle tension and that craving, preparing to leap, so to speak.
Peter
Absolutely. A part of you is preparing to leap — that old “approach” tendency generated by the ventral striatum. Another part of you is probably trying to stop the leap, as generated by more dorsal regions like the dorsal anterior cingulate. So the tension starts off in your brain, so to speak, and then it’s there in your body as well.
Self-control of impulsive acts is often discussed metaphorically as a rider on a horse. The horse wants to go, the rider pulls on the reins. That metaphor is certainly one that concerns tension.
But the brain-body stuff is not just metaphor. These are real goals — one to approach and one to inhibit — and each one arrives at the somatosensory cortex, which controls many of the muscles throughout the body, via its own route. At the same time, the anxiety induced by the conflict spills into the sympathetic nervous system, and tenses other muscles — smooth muscles, such as those in your gut.
By tensing and then relaxing muscles, en route to meditation, you seem to be reversing the order: starting with the musculature and proceeding to the brain. That seems a very creative way to get “into” your brain — literally to arrive consciously at the processes that are very often going on there unconsciously.
Addiction, Choices, and options…
.by Richard Henry on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 11:43am ·PublicFriends (+)Friends except AcquaintancesOnly MeCustomClose FriendsPort Colborne High SchoolSee all lists…FamilyLockview High SchoolOttawa AreaLockview Park Secondary Schoolportcolbore high school 1977AcquaintancesGo Back
PublicFriendsFriends except AcquaintancesOnly MeCustomClose FriendsPort Colborne High SchoolSee all lists…FamilyLockview High SchoolOttawa AreaLockview Park Secondary Schoolportcolbore high school 1977AcquaintancesGo Back.Certain Behaviors, become addictions, when we repeat actions, of an activity, despite the negative consequences!
When it comes to Drug Addiction, the mind under goes a constant bombardment of options, from the brain, in order to achieve its desires, that being the brains craving for its choice drug of abuse at the time.
Your brain goes into over drive, in a creative thinking mode, that drives your mind crazy, the brain sends out options, for the mind to make choice in a constant battle for relief.
Some give up their right for choice, its a battle for control, you fight and struggle endlessly that impulse to follow through with any options that become clear.
When we do give in to the craving, it brings closure to the torment, and some relief, if only temporary, in most cases its only once all avenues have been depleted and exhausted do we get some peace.
Its a battle, I will fight the rest of my life, once you cross that line, life will never be the same. Think twice the next time you thing you need something in order to have a good time.
Life is beautiful, all on its own, help others, think, positive, for its only your imagination in seeing how life is, that will bring you to that happy place, a happy heart.
Its your right, your choice to a good life! “One Life One Chance, Gotta Get it right”…
Today I’am “FREE” and I am enjoying life without all those outside influences.
My Prayers go out to all thoughts who still suffer..
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