April 23, 2008

• The Nature of Addiction

  “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

  Mark Twain
  Autobiography

  Recently, I spent a few years attending several meetings a month of AA, NA, and Double Trouble in Recovery, all 12-step groups.  Although I could swallow their dogmas only by altering them in my mind, so that the god in them wasn’t an invisible friend with a beard up there somewhere in the sky, but was the force of love that permeates the Cosmos, and by overlooking the archaic view of addiction as character defect, I kept going back for two major reasons.

  First was the fellowship of spiritually minded people without so many hypocritical hangers-on as I would find in even a Unitarian church.  Second was the opportunity it afforded me to do twelfth step work by informing people about the neurochemical nature of addiction and to improve their chances of transcending their addictions.  I have not given up on that.  I will go back again, when I can feasibly tolerate the physical exertion of a trip to town, after the firewood is out of my driveway and I can get my car on the road.  Meanwhile, my fellowship is with Spirit, and the audience for my information about addiction is online.

  A few days ago, trunthepaige initiated a philosophical discussion that might have gone on for days and daze if she had not brought up serial killers.  I think, when she began to look at the idea of “evil” in the light of some facts about serial killers, she might have been less convinced of her earlier convictions regarding good and evil.  Who knows?  She might have been only worn out and despairing of ever converting me to her way of thinking.  Whatever her reason, she eventually stopped treating me like an idiot too stupid to see the obvious… and just when I was really beginning to get into the discussion, too. 

  With that as preamble, I am going to continue on the subject of the serial killer as addict.  It isn’t an idea unique to me, although in my studies of serial killers through the 1980s and 1990s, I had noticed addictive patterns in their behavior before I read any expert analyses that examined the idea.  In that era, studies of serial killers, and addiction studies, were using the psychological model.  Compulsive behavior was viewed as an attempt to fill some emotional void.

  The later neuropsychological model views addictive and compulsive behaviors as responses to neuroelectrochemical stimuli.  Thus far, every addiction studied, whether to substances or to processes such as gambling or sex, has been shown to involve dopamine receptors in the brains of the subjects.  Addictive chemicals bind to those receptors, and addictive behaviors stimulate the brain’s production of dopamine.  Other chemicals are also involved to some degree or another depending on specific addiction.  These include endorphins, enkephalins, GABA, norepinephrine, acetylcholine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters.

  In some ways, such as the neurochemical cascade, all addictions are alike.  In other ways, including the specific mix of chemistry involved, each addiction differs from others.  Most if not all addicts become cross addicted, craving more than one substance or combination of substances and processes.  Someone who habitually tops off a gooey dessert by rolling a blunt or grabbing a bong (or does it the other way ’round) is cross addicted to THC, sugar and gluten.  Those who catch their breath after a casual sexual encounter and then use it to light up a cigarette, are responding to cravings produced by a broad range of neurochemical imbalances.

  Orgasms happen in the brain and individual quirks or preferences, for rough sex or risky encounters, for example, involve cravings initiated by depletion or imbalances of various neurochemicals.  The imbalances involved in nicotine addiction are similar to those of opiate addiction combined with cocaine addiction, which accounts for the fact that tobacco is widely acknowledged to be the most difficult of all addictions to kick.

  Hip and savvy addicts such as often found in NA understand that substituting another drug or a process for their drug of choice does not relieve the original addiction, but rather adds on a new addiction to the substitute.  The medical profession has caught on to this as they have had to deal with, for example, people addicted to both heroin and the methadone that had been prescribed to get the addicts off heroin.

  Many animal lovers equate trophy hunting with serial murder, and at least one serial killer, Robert Hansen, progressed from trophy hunting to picking up prostitutes, taking them into the wilds, setting them loose, stalking, and shooting them.  Hunting and killing human beings didn’t stop him from going after caribou and Dall sheep, but it probably blunted the thrill of those hunts somewhat, as the adrenaline (norepinephrine) of his legal risks was added to the dopamine from the pleasure of the successful stalk and kill.

  Strenuous physical activity such as walking, running, climbing, bicycling, etc., has the potential to become an addiction as the neurochemicals stimulated by the activity become depleted or imbalanced.  Any sport has addictive potential if the participant or observer derives pleasure and satisfaction from it.  When the neurochemical transition from pastime to addiction happens, it is not just a habit and not necessarily a harmless  pastime, because in any addiction there is the potential for cross addiction and escalation, and the sense of losing control is destructive to an addict’s self esteem.

  Hillwalkers and mountain climbers become highpointers and peak baggers, sacrificing professions, families, and often their lives in pursuit of their addictions.  Snowmobilers become highmarkers, and die in the avalanches they trigger.  The more obsessive and compulsive any behavior becomes, the less real pleasure there is in it for the participant.  It becomes a way to satisfy a craving, to fill a need, to ease a discomfort, rather than a pleasure in itself.

  Whether an addict is killing people or other animals or only himself, it is counterproductive to think of addiction as the “devil’s work,” or a character defect.  No addiction was ever cured or transcended by that judgment.  Some addicts have been able, through spiritual or psychological help, to control their behavior and abstain from indulging in their addictions, but the majority of them have gone to their graves addicted and their deaths have directly or indirectly resulted from their addictive behavior.  Nutritional intervention to balance their brain chemistry, coupled in some instances with counseling to help them deal with the psychological damage resulting from being addicted, could have given them longer, healthier, more productive and happier lives.

  

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