Drug and Alcohol Addiction - Little Creek Lodge
THE SCIENCE OF ADDICTION
1927 was an exciting year. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby was a role model for the self-indulgent and entitled. Rumble seats, bootleggers and flappers took America by storm. Sinclair Lewis took religious hypocrites to task with Elmer Gantry. Al Jolson took silent films into oblivion with The Jazz Singer. Charles Lindbergh was oblivious to fear and took three sandwiches, a quart of water and The Spirit Of Saint Louis from New York to Paris. Babe Ruth stayed in New York and took a lot of sandwiches, beer and 60 baseballs out of Yankee Stadium. AND, a genius named Ivan Petrovic Pavlov took a dog from his laboratory into every psychologist and psychiatrist’s office in the world.
In my opinion, Pavlov was the most important player on the world stage in 1927. We all know that a dog will salivate when consuming enjoyable food. The good Doctor Pavlov proved that a dog would also salivate solely on the anticipation of food by ringing a buzzer before he dispensed the food itself to Fido. Fido remembered that his dinner was preceded by the buzzer and began salivating upon hearing the sound. The theory of classical conditioning is Pavlov’s contribution to today’s neuroscientific view of addiction.
For half a century prior to Pavlov, Americans quantified drug and alcohol abuse as a gross failure of character, or social disease. This stereotype has now given way to academia’s recognition that addiction has a clear neuroscientific, biological basis no different than other forms of mental illness. Addicts and alcoholics are not bad people trying to be good. They are sick people trying to get well. Time Magazine reporter Alice Park has authored a series of compelling articles substantiating this premise: “ Imagine a slug of whiskey, a puff of a cigarette, a toke of marijuana, a snort of cocaine or a shot of heroin. The moment you take that slug, that puff, that toke, that snort or that shot, trillions of potent molecules surge through your bloodstream into the brain. “Once there,” Park writes: “they set off a chain reaction of electrical events that ricochets around the skull and rearranges the interior reality of the mind.”
There are trillions of neurological pathways in the brain, each of which communicates a specific feeling. Feelings of pleasure are generated in the reward pathway where neurons release a transmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is transmitted rapidly from the axon of one neuron, across a synapse, to the receptor of an adjoining neuron. This dynamic creates a sharp jolt of pleasure in the brain. Addictive substances including alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, narcotics and most pills significantly increase the amount of dopamine released across the synapse. The receptors feeling of pleasure is magnified accordingly. The brains recognition and memory of the pleasure creates an insatiable craving, or salivating ala Pavlov’s dog for more and more pleasure in the reward pathway.
Addiction is born. Neurologically. Scientifically. Medically. Thank you Doctor Pavlov. Thank you Fido. This realization has inspired additional research and a myriad of exciting new treatment options for the afflicted and their families. If you would like to discuss this matter as it relates to you or a loved one please contact me.
Andrew J. Pace
Program Director
