Understanding Addiction: The Gas and Brakes of Human Motivation in less than 3 minutes
Transcript:
From the outside, we can easily tell that something has gone wrong when a person becomes addicted to alcohol or drugs. A kind person becomes mean. An honest person deceptive. A hard-working and reliable person inconsistent or neglectful. How does addiction cause these disturbing changes?
It might be helpful to think about the human motivational system as a car. We crave things that promise reward or relief — that’s the gas pedal. But not everything that provides reward or relief is consistent with a person’s values, goals, or sense of self. If we eat everything that tastes good, we will become unhealthy. If we have sex with everyone we find attractive, we will have trouble maintaining a stable or committed relationship. If we roll over and go back to sleep when our alarm goes off, we may lose our jobs. Our brain has a set of brakes that we use to inhibit unhelpful impulses and secure the things we want over the long term.
Watching someone with addiction is like watching a car that is out of control. The gas pedal is stuck and no matter how much they pump the brakes, they can’t stop.
What makes that loss of control possible is that the part of our brain that I’ve been calling the gas is the survival center of the brain. Scientists call it the limbic system. And that limbic system is designed in certain cases to override all efforts at conscious self-control. Let us be clear. This capacity to override self-control is not a design flaw. It is meant to keep us alive.
Imagine that you are caught in the wilderness without food and water. After a couple days you are thirsty and fearful of dying. Suddenly, you come across a pool of water but there is a sign that reads “POISON: DO NOT DRINK.” The water looks clean and fresh and as time passes, you are stuck between the choice of dying from thirst or drinking the allegedly poisonous water. At first, all of us would pump the brakes — using our self-control to hold back and look for a safer option. But eventually, most if not all would drink from the poisonous pool. Our thirst and our drive to survive would overpower our concern about the warning sign. Persons with addiction try to make reasonable decisions, but their reasoning capacity fails against the power and persistence of their cravings.
Addictive substances and behaviors are capable of causing such strong and persistent cravings that they override our self-control and we find ourselves sacrificing our own values, goals — -everything we hold dear — for the immediate relief of our craving.
