Addiction transcends reason in many ways. If it did not, most addicts and alcoholics would only need to suffer a few negative consequences before they would draw on reason to motivate them into making changes that would move them away from their addictions. To the non-drug-or-alcohol-addicted (this discussion lends itself well, by the way, to many other behavioral addictions, but substance-abuse addictions are often easiest to illustrate) there is a natural reaction of incredulity when faced with the seemingly non-reason directed decisions their addicted loved ones make over and over and over again. I have often asked myself how best to explain to the non-understanding (often the loved ones of addicts) the reality behind this unbelievable, unreasonable, and completely illogical behavior. What motivates human beings with all of their biological and innate survival instincts, to act so seemingly stupidly? What is so important? How good could a high be? Well, for those who are looking on and asking these questions, or for those addicts who read this having not yet found a suitable answer for themselves, I propose that Bob said it best. The addict needs something, anything to relieve a state of consciousness that finds pressure in the reality of shoelace tying. Contained in this movie quote is the reality that the addict has at least a low-grade, and somewhat constant, traumatic experience of life in general. It is a feeling that needs tending to and a feeling that is responsible for creating an insatiable hunger for soothing and calming. It’s an unreasonable emptiness that, in itself, also transcends everyday reason and logic. What the hell is so pressure producing about tying one’s shoes?

Now, it would be outside the scope of this short post to describe, in detail, all the reasons behind this phenomenon, and of course the particulars of the story are unique to each person. But suffice to say that the reality I am describing, whereby the addict experiences life as being somewhat traumatic just as it is, probably finds its origins in early life when reality is defining itself for the young infant or child through the process of attachment. Furthermore, this process is probably coupled with a genetic component of one kind or another (although specifically which genetics is not known). It is not my intent to go further here, but important to mention so that I can say this. One way to look at this reality for the addict is that they carry along with their neural programming an emotional disruption and a resulting post traumatic reaction to said disruption. This early experience with attachment meets with a genetic expression, forming an emotional amalgam resulting in a feeling of consistent disconnectedness and an insatiable need for soothing. An undeniable thirst.

I return now to the fact that I am directing this information primarily towards those for whom extreme drug or alcohol use makes no sense. I have pointed out that an addict’s using can seem so nonsensical when viewed by a rational, non-addicted outsider, and I am hoping that it now makes more logical sense. Self-soothing is the primary need in the addict’s life. Ultimately, whether consciously or not, it comes even before the need to eat or shelter properly. The pursuit of the high, in whatever form, is the pursuit for the most basic acquisition, that of feeling loved and connected (this has nothing, whatsoever,  to do with how much they actually are loved). When this need is recognized, the addict’s use will be no less heartbreaking to the loving observer, but hopefully this post makes it somewhat less confusing. There is a purpose, a supreme purpose–to achieve a state of being, of consciousness, where the fact that shoes must be tied isn’t, in its tiny self, a pressure producing reality.

As is my default mode of explanation, let’s look at an example. To better illustrate emotional perception, let’s take a look at visual perception. (If someone reading this post is visually impaired, you can extrapolate this example to pertain to any of the senses you are using to read this). When we look at the material world, we are not actually seeing it. What we are actually seeing are light waves reflecting off of objects, light waves of various lengths representing different colors and material qualities. The light waves are then transported through our eyes to our brains through a process called transduction. The information is then (very quickly) coded by our brains as being this or that object. Luckily, this process takes place very quickly and automatically so that we are able to take for granted that what our brains are telling us is true. If for instance we see two people standing next to each other, one only as tall as the other’s knee, we use cues (in this case bi-focus) to determine that they are not actually men of different size, but that one is simply standing much closer to us than the other. This is visual perception, the fact that we ultimately “see” with our brains, our eyes just taking in light waves. Another and more important example would be the phenomenon whereby we see something out of the corner of our eye and swear that is is a person, for example, only to realize after a second glance that it is actually a stop sign. Initially, we will actually “see” a person there until we look more carefully and give our brains a better chance to make out the stop sign. We actually “see” the mistaken object because our brain has coded (incorrectly) that the stop sign is a person. Furthermore, the object that our brains tell us is there before we have a second look is not picked randomly, it depends on the history of the perceiver. A mistaken object seen quickly in the periphery of a person living in the wilds of Alaska would be different than that, say, of a person who lives in the middle of New York City. That mistaken object might be a bear or a Cadillac in each case, respectively, depending on the subjective history of the perceiver. Furthermore (and importantly, as we will see later) were the New Yorker to visit Alaska, and should he bring with him a fear of bears, he would be much more prone to “seeing” bears incorrectly from his peripherals. The fear itself would ready or prime his brain to “see” bears. Let’s return now to the discussion of emotional perception, bringing with us this understanding of the brain’s propensity to make non-random perceptual mistakes.

If information taken in through the eyes and then “seen” by the brain is in some cases subjective and not always reflective of the material world, it is only much more so the fact with emotional information. There is far more room for interpretation in the emotional world, especially the part of the emotional world that deals with interpersonal navigation. In visual perception there is only so much room for interpretation (so long as there is sufficient light), but in emotional interpretation there is much more room to assign personal meaning to what is perceived. In much the same way that we “see” more with our brains than with our eyes, we “perceive”, almost completely, with our brains. Just as the man who fears bears may keep thinking he sees them everywhere during a visit to Alaska, a person with a history of abandonment may perceive abandonment within the relationships he experiences whether it is there or not. A neutral cancellation in plans by one can easily be “seen” thus “experienced” as abandonment in the world of another who is primed to feel abandoned. Automatically, people look out at the world ready to notice and interpret reality very subjectively, but then code and react to the information as if it were fact in their lives. The person I refer to above, primed to notice abandonment, will actually experience abandonment–literally code it into the memory circuits of their brain–when it is perceived. It matters not what is actually happening in the real world of the other. And because our erroneous interpretations are not random, but tailored to the exact specifications forged of our past experiences, there is a tendency to reinforce whatever dominant themes we already carry around inside us. Each time a person plays out and experiences these non-random patterns, he grows stronger in his conviction that the world is just the way he “knows” it to be. In turn, this will only deepen the ruts carved into the pathways of his implicit memory, ensuring that he will non-randomly “see” the same patterns again and again.

It is important, when making psychological changes, to attempt to break free of  the ruts in memory that I am describing. Almost always (and the topic of another post), people who’s non-random perception tendencies “fit” together, find each other. Usually, the degree to which a person’s subjective reality differs from actual reality will end up being similar to that difference in those they attract and are attracted to–another non-random process. But when a person can learn to truly see the nature of their personal perceptual idiosyncrasies, they can learn to move beyond them and then begin to create a different reality through a different neural and experiential reality, but it takes time and effort. There is no more difficult a task than to address and challenge the lenses through which one sees and interprets the world, but also no task more worth undertaking. To become cognizant of and change one’s perceptual tendencies changes one’s world. As Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon point out in their book, A General Theory of Love, “It’s a rare person who glimpses the expanse of his own subjectivity, who knows that anything before his mind’s eye is the Hindu’s’ Maya–an elaborate dream of the world, worthy of a god, but reverie just the same.”

To illustrate this point, lets first look at the physical body. If, for instance, a person experiences regular heartburn, it wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) suggest that this person is suffering from an antacid deficiency. While there may be genetic predisposition playing a part, and while sometimes heartburn could result from something more serious, heartburn is ultimately caused by overindulgence in particular foods (or overeating in general) overpowering a valve in the digestive system (esophageal sphincter) which then allows stomach acid to rise back into the esophagus. The heartburn, then, comes as a natural result of the combination of the person’s body and of what they are using to feed themselves. To feel better, they could take an antacid to counteract the natural consequences of their chosen diet, but to get better they would need only to figure out what nutritional changes would create balance within their body and would naturally and simply not result in heartburn. The discomfort of heartburn, then, could be seen as a natural indicator of physiological distress. The disharmony is not the negative symptom experienced as heartburn but the improper combination of body and food. Heartburn’s psychological equivalent would be the distress experienced as depression, anxiety, general unrest, etc.

Bringing the discussion back to psychological experience, then, a balanced brain naturally changes it’s neural synthesis as a result of a lifestyle that doesn’t satisfy. If, for instance, a person comes in to see me who has spent the last ten years in an abusive relationship, she will probably present as depressed. She should be depressed. Depression (or anxiety, stress, unhappiness, etc.) would be the natural consequence of living in an emotional environment that supports abuse. While medications may be useful at times, true change will need to come through the creation of a life experience that will naturally create feelings of safety, nurture, and support. Furthermore, a person who finds himself in an abusive relationship will often have experienced many relationships throughout life that have also supported similar experiences and realities so the problem is compounded. The example of abuse is an obvious one. More often, it is a little trickier to discover the route or reason for the distress, but in my experience, it is always there.

The problem with this paradigm (other than the fact that it doesn’t put pharmaceuticals and the profit they represent to the forefront of therapeutic approach) is that it puts the responsibility and focus of change on lifestyle and life path. This can be a problem because it means there must often be much more of a commitment to feeling better on the part of the person feeling the feelings. It supposes that there are rarely quick fixes to problems and that feelings are always natural extensions of how the life we are living feeds the self at the deepest level. That feelings (the ones we like as well as the ones we don’t) are guideposts answering the question–whether we are consciously asking it or not–of whether the life we are deciding to live truly agrees with us and supports us at the deepest level. It means that if we are not happy then we, ourselves, are ultimately the ones responsible to make changes if we want to feel better. This process can be made much easier if we use a therapist to aid in the exploration, and medications can also be used during stages of change, but ultimately it will be living in and experiencing the changed life that will end up changing the brain chemistry. The brain is not simply an organ with a mechanisms that are regularly faulty and in need of tuning. The unsated person’s brain will change its chemistry as a cry for help not because it is imbalanced. Feelings of pain are a siren, a warning call beckoning the conscious self to find alignment with the unfulfilled deeper self, not a request to find the correct medication. The brain is just the physical extension of our emotional reality projecting the level of fulfillment that our life experiences and decisions have created up to this point.  Once the idea of chemical “imbalance” is seen as natural, so too can the path to chemical “balance.”