Pleasure Unwoven II: Is Addiction a Disease?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA8F89537FD4C3FD1

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There are two sections of the brain involved in the disease of addiction:

1. The frontal cortex which is responsible for morality, judgement, personality, evaluating the world, considering consequences, choice, and the creation of emotional/moral/spiritual meaning. It is the sunlight of rationality. Drugs ultimately do their work on the frontal context but they do not begin their work here. They start to work, rather on the…

2. Midbrain – the older, survival area of the brain that we have in common with nonhuman animals. The midbrain does not think or understand moral choice. It handles the next 15 seconds and is responsible for keeping us alive. This is where unconscious survival impulses live: to eat, to defend, to have sex. The midbrain is usually held in check by the frontal cortex. In addiction this goes wrong and the midbrain comes to dominate the frontal cortex. A rapidly fatal addition develops in the pleasure circuit between the midbrain and the frontal cortex as drugs hijack the survival mechanism in the brain. Drugs eventually become the answer to hunger, pain, stress, and danger. Drugs become identical to actual survival to the midbrain. Someone in an early stage – a drug or alcohol abuser – can stop if conditions are compelling enough – but someone in true addiction cannot. They do not have free will any more.

THIS DESTROYS THE IDEA THAT ADDICITON OR THE BEHAVIOR OF PEOPLE IN ACTIVE ADDICTION IS CAUSED BY A MORAL FAILING OR AN INHERENT PERSONALITY DISORDER.

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