2003-04-29 - 4:06 p.m.
Reading that book, or skimming it more like, and bits I want to write down here from there plus some net sources just because I find it fascinating is all.
"...Dr. Jeffrey Schaler:
When we say a person chooses to engage in addictive behavior, we are not passing judgment on that person insofar as they are a good or bad person; what we mean to say is that they engage in certain behaviors for reasons that are important to them. These reasons may be psychological, social, emotional, cultural and existential.
Saying that a person is not in control of his or her behavior impresses me as decidedly disrespectful of their humanness. People do things and behave in certain ways for reasons; they are not things that are caused by chemicals or brains.
There is plenty of evidence to show that genes have everything to do with our physiological makeup, but that's very different from saying genes cause us to behave in certain ways. After all, we are all genetically programmed to die, but that does not mean that life is a disease.
I firmly believe that in order to be free, a person must accept responsibility for his or her behaviors. A myth perpetuated by people who believe addiction is a disease, is that you can be free if you just say a disease or gene made me do it.
I think it's important to remember that what we call addiction is not the symptom of a weak will but the expression of what I call an iron will.
In other words, it's not that the person can't change his or her behavior; we need to recognize that what they do is continue to engage in a self-destructive behavior at any cost for reasons that are important to them..."
"..There is an understandable resistance to the idea that a human relationship can be equivalent psychologically to a drug addiction. Yet it is not unreasonable to look for addiction between lovers when psychologists find the roots of drug addiction in childhood dependency needs and stunted family relationships. Chein, Winick, and other observers interpret drugs to be a kind of substitute for human ties. In this sense, addictive love is even more directly linked to what are recognized to be the sources of addiction than is drug dependency.
Almost everyone knows of people who replace romantic relationships with other kinds of escapes, including drug escapes, at least until the next relationship comes along. Immediately after or immediately before an affair, such individuals are deeply immersed in psychiatry, religion, alcohol, marijuana, and the like. Just as some addicts shift between opiate, alcohol, and barbiturate addictions, so we find others using drugs interchangeably with all-consuming systems of belief or social involvements. Consider this testimony by a member of a fanatical religious commune: "I used to do acid, chug wine. I thought it was the answer. But it didn't satisfy, just like everything else. I went to a head shrink.... Nothing ever did satisfy till I came to Jesus." He might have added, "I used to make it with chicks," for other converts are the spurned lovers who in an earlier era would have entered a convent or monastery.
I know of a man who started drinking heavily after a long-time woman friend left him. He wrote about his reactions at the time of the breakup:
"Since Linda left I mainly just lie in bed. I'm just too weak to move, and I have the chills all the time.... I've been crying a lot.... I try to calm myself by drinking the scotch my sister left here.... I feel so horrible, so dispossessed�like the real me doesn't exist anymore."
He couldn't sleep, and his heartbeat sometimes sped up frighteningly when he wasn't doing anything. These are symptoms of acute withdrawal. We know they can occur�perhaps quite often in certain groups and at certain ages�when one is deprived of a lover. Popular music sings paeans to the experience as a hallmark of true love: "When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind . . . Since you left me baby, my whole life is through." What is there about love that produces withdrawal in people we have all known, maybe even in ourselves? Can we envision a kind of love that does not bring such devastation in its wake? Let us look closely at how "love" can be an addiction, and how addictive love differs from genuine love.
Love is an ideal vehicle for addiction because it can so exclusively claim a person's consciousness. If, to serve as an addiction, something must be both reassuring and consuming, then a sexual or love relationship is perfectly suited for the task. If it must also be patterned, predictable, and isolated, then in these respects, too, a relationship can be ideally tailored to the addictive purpose. Someone who is dissatisfied with himself or his situation can discover in such a relationship the most encompassing substitute for self-contentment and the effort required to attain it..." (Peele & Brodsky: Love & Addiction)
"...Spells and incantations step aside: scientists have found a genetic elixir of love. It makes males more faithful to females and more friendly to fellow males. It could also shed light on bonding disorders such as autism.
Larry Young of Emory University in Georgia and colleagues used a virus to deliver a gene straight to the part of voles' brains responsible for rewards and addiction, the ventral pallidum. The gene made the animals' brains more receptive to the hormone vasopressin.
"Something about having more vasopressin receptors makes interacting with another individual more rewarding," says Young. The ventral pallidum, at the bottom front of vole and human brains, is believed to reinforce pleasurable experiences.
Male voles were placed in a cage with a female for 17 hours, then caged with that female and another similar female. Gene-treated voles much preferred the known female. Untreated voles, or those given the gene in a different brain region, showed no preference.
This is the first time a virus carrying a gene to the brain has changed a complex behaviour, says Stafford Lightman, a hormone specialist at Bristol University. "It's quite remarkable, and almost frightening, that you can change bonding behaviour just by changing this one receptor," he says.
Young speculates that a dearth of vasopressin receptors in the ventral pallidum could be a cause of autism, a condition that hampers people from bonding with others. "Problems with this system could be responsible for some of these social deficits," he says.
Addicted to love
Human brain-imaging research has implicated the ventral pallidum in romantic love and in drug addiction. It's not surprising that the same region might be responsible for both, Young says: "People have always thought of love as an addiction."
Experiments show that animals in cages with striped walls injected with cocaine into their ventral pallidum seek out striped walls. They associate the wall pattern with the euphoria of the drug, Young says.
"Perhaps pair bonding is a similar thing," he suggests. "When a vole mates with a female, vasopressin is released in his brain, which stimulates the ventral pallidum. He gets a reward, and associates it with that female."
Vasopressin may also be associated with anxiety. Voles given the vasopressin receptor gene in the ventral pallidum were more anxious than normal: they ventured out into the open less often.
"This helps explain something we already know: that attachments often happen after a stressful experience," says Sue Carter of the University of Illinois, Chicago, who specializes in rodent and human hormones.
"Hormones released when animals are stressed could pave the way for new relationships," she says. "Animals form social bonds when they need them."..." (ERICA KLARREICH 24/9/01)
love - the chemical reasons
"...Dr. Jeffrey Schaler:
When we say a person chooses to engage in addictive behavior, we are not passing judgment on that person insofar as they are a good or bad person; what we mean to say is that they engage in certain behaviors for reasons that are important to them. These reasons may be psychological, social, emotional, cultural and existential.
Saying that a person is not in control of his or her behavior impresses me as decidedly disrespectful of their humanness. People do things and behave in certain ways for reasons; they are not things that are caused by chemicals or brains.
There is plenty of evidence to show that genes have everything to do with our physiological makeup, but that's very different from saying genes cause us to behave in certain ways. After all, we are all genetically programmed to die, but that does not mean that life is a disease.
I firmly believe that in order to be free, a person must accept responsibility for his or her behaviors. A myth perpetuated by people who believe addiction is a disease, is that you can be free if you just say a disease or gene made me do it.
I think it's important to remember that what we call addiction is not the symptom of a weak will but the expression of what I call an iron will.
In other words, it's not that the person can't change his or her behavior; we need to recognize that what they do is continue to engage in a self-destructive behavior at any cost for reasons that are important to them..."
"..There is an understandable resistance to the idea that a human relationship can be equivalent psychologically to a drug addiction. Yet it is not unreasonable to look for addiction between lovers when psychologists find the roots of drug addiction in childhood dependency needs and stunted family relationships. Chein, Winick, and other observers interpret drugs to be a kind of substitute for human ties. In this sense, addictive love is even more directly linked to what are recognized to be the sources of addiction than is drug dependency.
Almost everyone knows of people who replace romantic relationships with other kinds of escapes, including drug escapes, at least until the next relationship comes along. Immediately after or immediately before an affair, such individuals are deeply immersed in psychiatry, religion, alcohol, marijuana, and the like. Just as some addicts shift between opiate, alcohol, and barbiturate addictions, so we find others using drugs interchangeably with all-consuming systems of belief or social involvements. Consider this testimony by a member of a fanatical religious commune: "I used to do acid, chug wine. I thought it was the answer. But it didn't satisfy, just like everything else. I went to a head shrink.... Nothing ever did satisfy till I came to Jesus." He might have added, "I used to make it with chicks," for other converts are the spurned lovers who in an earlier era would have entered a convent or monastery.
I know of a man who started drinking heavily after a long-time woman friend left him. He wrote about his reactions at the time of the breakup:
"Since Linda left I mainly just lie in bed. I'm just too weak to move, and I have the chills all the time.... I've been crying a lot.... I try to calm myself by drinking the scotch my sister left here.... I feel so horrible, so dispossessed�like the real me doesn't exist anymore."
He couldn't sleep, and his heartbeat sometimes sped up frighteningly when he wasn't doing anything. These are symptoms of acute withdrawal. We know they can occur�perhaps quite often in certain groups and at certain ages�when one is deprived of a lover. Popular music sings paeans to the experience as a hallmark of true love: "When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind . . . Since you left me baby, my whole life is through." What is there about love that produces withdrawal in people we have all known, maybe even in ourselves? Can we envision a kind of love that does not bring such devastation in its wake? Let us look closely at how "love" can be an addiction, and how addictive love differs from genuine love.
Love is an ideal vehicle for addiction because it can so exclusively claim a person's consciousness. If, to serve as an addiction, something must be both reassuring and consuming, then a sexual or love relationship is perfectly suited for the task. If it must also be patterned, predictable, and isolated, then in these respects, too, a relationship can be ideally tailored to the addictive purpose. Someone who is dissatisfied with himself or his situation can discover in such a relationship the most encompassing substitute for self-contentment and the effort required to attain it..." (Peele & Brodsky: Love & Addiction)
"...Spells and incantations step aside: scientists have found a genetic elixir of love. It makes males more faithful to females and more friendly to fellow males. It could also shed light on bonding disorders such as autism.
Larry Young of Emory University in Georgia and colleagues used a virus to deliver a gene straight to the part of voles' brains responsible for rewards and addiction, the ventral pallidum. The gene made the animals' brains more receptive to the hormone vasopressin.
"Something about having more vasopressin receptors makes interacting with another individual more rewarding," says Young. The ventral pallidum, at the bottom front of vole and human brains, is believed to reinforce pleasurable experiences.
Male voles were placed in a cage with a female for 17 hours, then caged with that female and another similar female. Gene-treated voles much preferred the known female. Untreated voles, or those given the gene in a different brain region, showed no preference.
This is the first time a virus carrying a gene to the brain has changed a complex behaviour, says Stafford Lightman, a hormone specialist at Bristol University. "It's quite remarkable, and almost frightening, that you can change bonding behaviour just by changing this one receptor," he says.
Young speculates that a dearth of vasopressin receptors in the ventral pallidum could be a cause of autism, a condition that hampers people from bonding with others. "Problems with this system could be responsible for some of these social deficits," he says.
Addicted to love
Human brain-imaging research has implicated the ventral pallidum in romantic love and in drug addiction. It's not surprising that the same region might be responsible for both, Young says: "People have always thought of love as an addiction."
Experiments show that animals in cages with striped walls injected with cocaine into their ventral pallidum seek out striped walls. They associate the wall pattern with the euphoria of the drug, Young says.
"Perhaps pair bonding is a similar thing," he suggests. "When a vole mates with a female, vasopressin is released in his brain, which stimulates the ventral pallidum. He gets a reward, and associates it with that female."
Vasopressin may also be associated with anxiety. Voles given the vasopressin receptor gene in the ventral pallidum were more anxious than normal: they ventured out into the open less often.
"This helps explain something we already know: that attachments often happen after a stressful experience," says Sue Carter of the University of Illinois, Chicago, who specializes in rodent and human hormones.
"Hormones released when animals are stressed could pave the way for new relationships," she says. "Animals form social bonds when they need them."..." (ERICA KLARREICH 24/9/01)
love - the chemical reasons
