Addiction Science

Addiction science has led many researchers to believe that maybe what’s in your head is far more physical than psychological in nature.

All in Your Head?

Addiction isn’t just something that takes over your life. When you have an addiction to drugs, to shopping, to television, or to anything pleasurable, your brain changes. Each time you turn to the thing you love, your brain releases feel good hormones which begin to make you feel good. You feel like you can do anything, that your life is completely within your control, that you are the person who can do it all without any consequences.

And then when you come down from your high, you begin to crave those feelings of intense pleasure again. Your brain wants to go back to the good feelings and will begin to change in order to encourage you to feel that way once more. Even if you don’t think you have a problem, try to stop your addiction. You can’t, can you?

Addiction changes the way the brain functions. Each time your brain experiences pleasure, it wants to return to the pleasure. Each time your brain wants to avoid pain, it will remember incidents of pain and avoid them. It makes sense too. In order for a human to survive, your body needs to remember what is good and what is bad in the environment. But in these days of more complicated drugs and other pleasing substances, it can be difficult for the brain to realize what is actually necessary for it to use.

Over the course of time, your brain will change in terms of the chemical contents. You will produce less and less dopamine, for example, which will cause you to feel down. In order to get back ‘up,’ you will need to go back to your addictive behavior or substance. And when you don’t have this substance, you will have troubles functioning. While your brain can recover from these imbalances and chemical disruptions over time, addiction is something which will continue to try to pull you back in – all because your brain is fighting against you.

Your brain begins to lose control of decision making behaviors that you’ve had. It begins to work against you instead of with you. You will begin to have troubles making decisions that are good for your body – all because your brain has been chemically altered to think otherwise.

Your brain wants to be rewarded and that feeling of intense pleasure is the reward it seeks. And when you don’t give it that reward, you will find you are cranky, upset, and agitated until you have that reward again. You might even have physical symptoms which can cause you to feel horrible until you meet that desire.