Addiction Disease or Behavior?

“Addiction is a condition that can be reversed; it is not a chronic illness.”

Addiction is the obsessive-compulsive need to consume a substance to reach a state of enhanced pleasure regardless of health consequences. Addiction is a state of mind controlling a specific behavior. This state of mind is caused by modifications in the brain due to chronic drug use. With chronic drug use, the neurons in the pleasure center of the brain get damaged and they are not producing their own dopamine neurotransmitters anymore. They depend on the external substance for pleasure reward or depression avoidance. Over time, chronic drug use creates a neurological and a mental disorder. The neurotransmitter deficiency is experienced on the mental plane as an urgent need to consume the drug and manifests as a behavior centered on actively seeking the drug. However, not everyone who uses drugs will get addicted and the question has been asked: Is there such a thing as an addictive personality?

When Drug Use Becomes Drug Abuse

Addiction and brain deterioration occurs over time, but what motivated the individual to start using drugs in the first place? Motivations for using drugs are both conscious and unconscious. The addicted person may feel that he is unable to cope with stressful circumstances in his life, or being a pleasure seeker, he may not have developed skills to move through difficulties and wants to avoid them, or he may have learnt during his childhood to cope with stress with substance abuse, or he may not be able to cope with his feeling of failure and or does not have the resource or the hardiness to fight. He may or may not be aware of his belief system and priorities. In addition to these leading circumstances, availability of the drug is important. Having friends or family who use or possess drugs makes it easy to start taking drugs.

Why Abuse Drugs? How Do Drugs Work?

Drugs work by entering the brain and messing with the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information.

Some substances imitate natural neurotransmitters. For example, narcotic pain relievers mimic the effects of endorphins, the body’s natural “feel-good” chemical. They are similar enough to the brain’s natural chemical messengers that they trick brain receptors into activating nerve cells. Stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamines cause the neurons to release too much neurotransmitter, causing the sensation users describe as the brain “racing.”

In one way or another, almost all drugs over stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, flooding it with the neurotransmitter dopamine. That produces euphoria, and that heightened pleasure can be so compelling that the brain wants that feeling back again and again. Unfortunately, with repeated use of a drug, the brain becomes accustomed to the dopamine surges and starts to produce less of it, so the user has to take more of the drug to feel the same pleasure — this phenomenon is known as tolerance.

But what causes people to want to tinker with their brain chemistry in the first place? Some are thrill-seekers, some just curious; some try drugs because their friends use, or they want to be perceived as cool. Even more susceptible, though, are the many people who use drugs in order to cope with unpleasant emotions and the difficulties of life. The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that about half of all drug abusers also suffer from a mental illness such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia.

People who are suffering emotionally use drugs not so much for the rush but to escape from their problems. They’re trying to self-medicate themselves out of loneliness, low self-esteem, unhappy relationships, stress, and many other types of problems.

Drug use doesn’t solve any of those problems, and it can easily make them worse or create new ones. But even if the user knows that, the short-term escape drugs provide can be so attractive that the dangerous consequences of abuse can seem unimportant.

Is There An Addictive Personality?

There is a school of thought that describes the following characteristics of an addictive personality. The following is from a NY Times article:

1. Impulsive compulsive behavior and difficulty in delaying gratification.
2. A self-centered personality with regard to pleasure, and lack of commitment to higher values.
3. A sense of social alienation and a general tolerance for deviance.
4. A sense of heightened stress. This may help explain why adolescence and other stressful transition periods are often associated with the most severe drug and alcohol problems.

If such a personality exists it certainly is inherited baggage. It can be changed. We provide all the guidance and care necessary to monitor the change in values and support the individual in his life crisis.

Is There a Social Responsibility?

Illegal drugs are a recent health problem in our history, and I personally think that the consumption of drugs is another symptom of a sick society. In the same way our society is creating cancer, diabetes, and heart disease with chemical pollutants it is creating drug addiction with mental pollution. It is easy to become a drug addict because a lot of drugs are legal and their use is valued socially. I am referring to tobacco, alcohol, coffee, sugar, salt and pharmaceutical drugs. As far as illegal drugs are concerned, I see that young people may use them in particular, as a way to create meaning and idealism in their life. Meaning and idealism is what young people need to join a rewarding society, not terror and desire for the materialistic pursuance of their well-being.

Brain and Pleasure

Nature has associated pleasure with sex and food for survival. Pleasure is the reward nature tricks us with, so that we play her divine survival scheme through sex and food. The feeling of pleasure is mediated by the release of dopamine in the central part of the brain. All drugs act on this part of the brain and increase the release of dopamine. Some substances can increase the release of dopamine to more than 600 times the normal production and create a much higher pleasure than nature can give us. When the brain experiences this amount of pleasure it wants to go back there again and again. This is the origin of dependence and substance abuse. However, this increased release of neurotransmitter and the over stimulation of the neurons is neurotoxic. Neurons get destroyed and soon the production of dopamine decreases, leaving the addicted person depressed and unmotivated. At some point, the addicted person reaches the point of drug tolerance. Drug tolerance occurs when more drug is required to achieve the same effect. Eventually, the pleasure response dies and the addicted person continues taking drug to avoid feeling bad when she is not using. She however does not reach the high pleasurable state known at the beginning.

Health Consequences of Drug Abuse

Alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs such as painkillers, tobacco, marijuana, methamphemines, heroin, cocaine may all be overused in a compulsive manner and lead to addiction and dependence. If continued for a certain length of time, substance abuse and the search for heightened pleasure comes with tremendous consequences to health that varies with the specific substance abused. For instance, a tobacco addiction may lead to respiratory problems such as emphysema and lung cancer, while methamphetamine abuse may lead to mental disorders such as sleep disturbance, paranoia or schizophrenia.

Is Recovery Just Total Abstinence?

People can reach abstinence with drug replacement therapy. For instance, in heroin rehabilitation a legal drug such as methadone is used to replace heroin. Or nicotine and smoking can replace a less socially acceptable drinking habit. But is that real recovery? Not for us. Recovery is from inside out. Recovery is a deep process of transformation involving the body and the soul. It involves repairing the brain, nourishing the body and fixing the mind. It involves walking the spiritual path from a state of slavery to one’s desire to a state of freedom from desire.

Guidelines

Our guidelines are:

1. Fix the brain. The brain is plastic and can regenerate. Good nutrition and neurochemical rebalancing with amino acids, vitamins and minerals will minimize or eliminate drug cravings and restore normal brain function over time.
2. Avoid cross addiction. For us, true recovery is a state of non-dependency on any substance. This state of freedom relies on a healthy brain, mind, heart and body and requires a complete transformation. The cornerstone of this magical transformation is the combination of nutrition, psychotherapy and meditation. Our patients enter the path of self-discovery and start practicing their new healthy habits. We believe that a combination of nutrition, psychotherapy and spiritual counseling is necessary to achieve total healing and insure that no relapse occurs.
3. Avoid relapse. The ultimate healing is when the individual realizes the meaninglessness of pleasure seeking and comes to his inner truth. Then the hunger for excitement disappears and values such as health and happiness become a priority. This detachment from the burning desire for excitement and pleasure is the only true healing of the soul that will guarantee sobriety and self control in all circumstances. A change in values results. Each recovering addict will have to answer this question: Is pleasure seeking as a value and a priority really rewarding at the end? Or is it a dead end? Awakening to other options such as service and self-realization or just feeling good, connected and in control may be the door to freedom from the tyranny of dependency.
4. Find a meaning in life. True freedom from drugs is to forget them and leave them behind. The healing process from dependency to freedom consists of going through a personal transformation. Letting go of the old to allow the new to take place requires some courage and does not happen without grief. It is however the only way to be reborn into this new person. This new person cares for herself and other beings on the planet; she is connected with herself and has clarity of mind. When she replaced slavery by freedom she found a meaning in life. She found herself walking on a spiritual path.

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HAWAII NATURAL DRUG REHABILITATION                                       & RAW DETOXIFICATION CENTER