When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal. But when we instead experience the raw quality of the itch or pain of the wound and do not scratch it, we actually allow the wound to heal. So not giving in to our addictions is about healing at a very basic level.
—Pema Chödrön
Addiction is continued use, despite adverse consequences.
reward-based learning process that they had gone through; “I would have a flashback [to some traumatic event]” (trigger), “get drunk” (behavior), “and this was better than reliving the experience” (reward).
What initiated their addiction and what was sustaining it.
reward came from making something unpleasant go away (negative reinforcement). Rarely did one of them say that it felt great to go on a three-day cocaine binge.
Medications mostly help either by providing a steady supply of nicotine, leading to a steady supply of dopamine, or else by blocking the receptor that nicotine attaches to so that dopamine doesn’t get released when someone smokes. These mechanisms make sense: an ideal drug would be one that quickly releases a surge of dopamine, yet only when we recognize our specific triggers.
that trains people to challenge old assumptions and change thinking patterns (cognitions) in order to improve how they feel and behave.
catch it, check it, change it” when they notice negative beliefs about themselves that can lead to drug use. If they have the thought, “I’m terrible,” they learn to check to see whether it is true, and then change it to something more positive.
RAIN.
RECOGNIZE/RELAX into what is arising (for example, your craving)
ACCEPT/ALLOW it to be there
INVESTIGATE bodily sensations, emotions, and thoughts (for example, ask, “What is happening in my body or mind right now?”)
NOTE what is happening from moment to moment.
notice (and note) the physical sensations arising in our bodies that make up a craving, we become less caught up in the habit loop, simply through that observation.
Avoiding cues (triggers) might help prevent people from being triggered, but didn’t directly target the core habit loop.
mindfulness decoupled this link between craving and smoking.
Target craving and you can conquer an addiction. And this targeting of craving was not through brute force but, counterintuitively, through turning toward or getting close to it. Through direct observation, we can become, as the term asava is translated, less “intoxicated.They became less enchanted with their intoxicants by directly observing what reward they were getting from acting on their urges. How does this process work, exactly?
the current psychological models of reward-based learning. These seemed to me much like the Buddhist model of “dependent origination.
Dependent origination describes twelve links of a cause-and-effect loop. Something that happens depends upon something else causing it to happen—literally, “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not.” It had caught my eye because it seemed to be describing operant conditioning, or reward-based learning, 2,500 years ago. It goes like this. When we encounter a sensory experience, our mind interprets it based on our prior experience (which is classically described as “ignorance”). This interpretation automatically generates a “feeling tone” that is experienced as pleasant or unpleasant. The feeling tone leads to a craving or an urge—for the pleasant to continue or the unpleasant to go away. Thus motivated, we act on the urge, which fuels the birth of what is referred to in Buddhist psychology as a self-identity. Interestingly, the term for fuel
upadana) is classically translated as “attachment”—which is where Western culture often focuses. The outcome of the action is recorded as a memory, which then conditions the next “round of rebirth,” aka samsara, or endless wandering.
Starting at the top, the classical concept of ignorance is very much like the modern idea of subjective bias. We see things a certain way based on memories of our previous experiences. These biases ingrain certain habitual reactions that are typically affective in nature—that is, they involve how something feels emotionally. These unthinking responses correspond to the bit about pleasant and unpleasant as described by dependent origination. If chocolate tasted good to us in
A pleasant feeling leads to a craving in both models. And in both models, craving leads to behavior or action.dependent origination, behavior leads to “birth.Trigger. Behavior. Reward.
behaviors are shaped in the following way: “Events which are found to be reinforcing are of two sorts. Some reinforcements consist of presenting stimuli, of adding something—for example, food, water, or sexual contact—to the situation. These we call positive reinforcers. Others consist of removing something—for example, a loud noise, a very bright light, extreme cold or heat, or electric shock—from the situation. These we call negative reinforcers. In both cases the effect of reinforcement is the same—the probability of response is increased.”2 Simply put, we, like other organisms, learn to engage in activities that result in positive outcomes, and avoid those that result in negative ones.
Nucleus accumbens is one of the brain regions most consistently linked to the development of addiction.
there seems to be a link between the self and reward. Talking about ourselves is rewarding, and doing it obsessively may be very similar to getting hooked on drugs.
We have to eat to live; our social food may taste like real food to our brain, activating the same pathways.
we were conditioned to think that the feeling we get when dopamine fires in our brain equals happiness.
Don’t forget, this was probably set up so that we would remember where food could be found, not to give us the feeling “you are now fulfilled
