Understanding the science of addiction can help a person sustain long-term recovery.

The following is a guest post by Judith Ann Miller and Leslie Carol Botha. Judith Ann Miller, Ph.D. is the founder and CEO of Courage to Change Addiction Recovery Ranch in southeastern Colorado, “integrating holistic modalities in addiction recovery; use[ing] your brain for change.”  Leslie Carol Botha is the Marketing Director at Courage to Change.  Botha also hosts a radio show on KRFC 88.9 FM the first and third Mondays of the month from 6 to 7 p.m.

More than a half century ago, the book Alcoholics Anonymous brought into the mainstream of American consciousness the idea that alcoholism is a physiological disease, as opposed to a moral failing.

Until then, American thinking was dominated by the Calvinist principles of our Puritan forbearers. This tradition, that perceived private life as a matter of public welfare, found resounding failure in the 12-year experience of Prohibition. If the nation learned anything from that era it was that moral teachings, however worthy, cannot stop most alcoholics from drinking, and punitive models of treatment, however well-intended, do not work.

Drug addiction – illegal and legal – certainly falls into the same category. Even today families and colleagues of substance abusers fail to understand that when a “habit” becomes an addiction there is no longer a personal choice over “stopping.” Messages are still based on the Calvinist principles of lack of morals and will power to stop the behavior that not only affects the addicted but ripples out to all who are connected to them.

Over the last two decades, the scientific understanding of alcoholism and addiction has expanded exponentially. That understanding has been largely informed, not by the Humanities, but by Science – both pure and applied. Research in the fields of Neurology, Genetics, Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Nutrition – and the emergence of Neuro-Imaging, which captures the actual workings of the brain – have all converged to provide a new concept of human thought and behavior. Its implications for the treatment of addiction are profound.

Sustainable Recovery | Understanding the Science of Addiction

The ground-breaking research of Dr. Nora Volkow; director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse changed the tide on how science perceived addiction.  According to a statement made by Volkow in 2006:

“Drug addiction is a disease of the brain that affects the circuits
involved in processing punishment and reward.”

It is the reward-pleasure aspect of addiction that causes the brain to tell the addict that the body’s very survival depends on taking the drug. The phenomenon of craving is not so much self-indulgent pleasure seeking as it is a distorted drive to survive. Eventually, even drug-induced pleasure eludes the addict. It is not unusual for methamphetamine addicts to resort to cutting; i.e. cutting them selves – just in order to feel something…anything.

Neuroscience has brought us a profound new understanding of the exact mechanism by which the brain is affected by addictive substances. It also has given us a profound understanding of how nutrition affects the brain. It is at the interface between nutrition and brain chemistry that hope for real repair and sustainable recovery reside.

The field of nutrition has also come to the forefront with cutting edge science in treating alcoholism and addiction.  Although amino acid therapy has been trialed since the 1950s, the capability to work at the molecular level, which boosted so many of the sciences, has permitted nutrition researchers to apprehend deficiencies and target treatment as never before. Amino acid therapy provides actual physiological repair of the brain, as opposed to the masking of symptoms that synthetic medications accord.

For the better part of the latter half of the 20th century, Americans pursued their illusory happiness in the legal psychotherapeutic drugs developed and marketed by Big Pharma.   Over that time period their lessons in the pursuit of happiness were not lost on the emerging generations.

Teens discovered their parent’s medicine chests. America now has a far-reaching problem with legal drugs that are being used illegally. Nearly 150 million prescriptions (2007 statistics) for the legal opiates hydrocodone (e.g. Vicodin) and oxycodone (e.g. OxyContin) are written annually, enough for half of all Americans. Inevitably, these reach the street, where they sell for upwards of $100 per pill. And enough prescriptions for benzodiazapines are written to cover a third of the American population. These too, are piped to the street or shared illicitly among friends.

Now that we scientifically understand that the brains of alcoholics and addicts are physiologically different; that they function differently — from “normal” brains and that the cause is the neurotransmitter system that is damaged from alcohol, drugs, and for that matter all environmental toxins, treatment can begin to focus on healing the brain for a sustainable recovery.