All Addictions are the Same in the Brain
Dopamine is the ultimate reward neurotransmitter involved in learning, specifically operant conditioning. Operant condition is an integral way of learning from life events with positive or negative reward. Positive and Negative Reinforcement are almost always presented incorrectly in media, television, the news, and even by well-intentioned mental health experts. Society can’t afford to miss this lesson any longer. I say all of that to really encourage you to read this awesome article on the subject of operant conditioning. For example, many people think spanking is a negative reward but it is positive. Negative reward is the removal of something. The parents ultimate job is to cause the child to make the right choice on their own.
Parents of children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder really struggle. Dopamine is like the glue that cements in the lesson that the child takes from every situation they face. The more repetition, the more the nerves hardwire. The more they get randomly rewarded, the more the dopamine cements in bad behavior or bad lessons (unhealthy interpretations of life events in general). Without healthy parenting and the unconditional love of the grandparents and in-tact families, dopamine gets used to help numb pain. It is up to each of us to make a choice on the lessons we take from life experience – on one else. If we’re not careful, we can become lazy and reach for something pleasing and rewarding (full of a Dopamine reward in our brains) to make us feel satisfied, however artificial and sick it is. No addiction is chemically “worse” than another.
Uber-Addiction (not the car service)
My favorite example of dopamine reward is in the gambling industry. Gambling uses random reward to increase addictive behavior. The use of Abilify (a complex, dopamine-related medication) increases the chance of a patients developing a gambling addiction while taking the medication. Abilify increases the risk of gambling addiction by 3-5% and 3-5% of American gamblers have addiction. Therefore, the total increase in gambling addiction while on Abilify is as low as 9% and as high as 25%. This is an example of an addiction being fueled by a medication, highlighting the specific role of dopamine in the process. No one is studying all the other addictions increasing while they’re on Abilify, to my knowledge. This chemistry is over all addictions and environmental toxins may be playing a role in this Uber-Addiction (addiction over-all).
Doing this math was all the proof I needed to see the direct link between normal childhood learning, free will and choice, addiction, and programmed helplessness – we do it to ourselves. Why? In almost all cases it’s because of previous trauma combined with ongoing environmental stress and toxins entering the brain. What is the real problem-magnifier? The residue in the body from past trauma, progressively heightening emotions ultimately to the point of continual suffering. I believe this is why some people remain suicidal after years of sobriety and therapy, a fact I recently confirmed with a veteran of 46 years sobriety (I have 34).
So, you can tell your child “no” 99 times, but the one time you say “yes” teaches them to never stop begging. You have to extinguish the behavior all the way or else the begging is your fault. (Sorry, I couldn’t think of a softer way to write that, but this thinking helps me personally and also applies to pets and service animals.)
Why mixed recovery groups are successful
Dopamine Dysregulation Disorder is life dysfunction due to any cause of dopamine extremes, typically involving addictive learning, chronic fatigue, chronic inflammatory conditions, cognitive dysfunction and the propensity for heavy toxin exposure. This combines the diagnosis of Dopamine Dysregulation Syndrome with other toxic and medical causes of dopamine dysfunction, as well as all addictions of every type. All addictions involve dopamine disruptions (depletion of receptors and natural neurotransmitters), despite the drug of choice. Perhaps the dopamine hypothesis explains why so many people numbing themselves from trauma wind up with addictions. It helps that recovery of a healthy dopamine reward pathway is possible if you have truly holistic mental health advice and treatment, no matter the cause.
So long as we are sane (capacity) and mentally competent (ability), we are in charge of our dopamine through our attitude and life choices. Everyone trains their own dopamine using a little thing called free will. Children are programmed with the expectation of rewards coded in their subconscious body memory. Everything up until age 6 is downloaded as normal, no matter what they’ve experienced. This is exactly why that should have zero contact with bullies, media, electronics, movies, entertainment or the news – not even for a few seconds to avoid normalizing it in the subconscious bod memory. The consequence of allowing a child’s subconscious to be programmed with hate is that you can’t talk them out of it when they’re adults. They are “provoked to wrath”. The invisible layer of the subconscious memory is the main problem-magnifier, it turns out. This fact shows up for us all the time as adults, sometimes in healthy ways and other times not so much. Unfortunately, dopamine can be used for sick, disgusting purposes when people train their brain by rewarding themselves associated with progressively heinous acts. If you are suffering from Dopamine Dysregulation Disorder, I invite you to Mindshift.
What families need to know about Trauma combined with Substance Abuse
[This was before I learned about Energy Medicine.]
2016 presentation at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, Texas.
