Addicted Brains

A neuroscientist examines life on drugs.

by Marc Lewis, Ph.D.

Psychological Syndromes Aren't All Bad: The Case of ADHD

The migratory tale of a wonky gene reveals something surprising about the label "psychological disorder." Context makes all the difference. Read More

Addiction: Disease or Not?

I've been pretty convinced that the disease metaphor does nothing for our understanding of addiction. But now I'm not so sure. Read More

But instead of turning on, tuning in, and dropping out, the chemicals we prefer today help us turn off, tune out, and drop in—into a solipsistic safety zone, protected from too much reality. Read More

The Pivot Point: Once More With Feeling

You've been craving and craving, for hours, maybe for days, and now you finally allow yourself to get the thing you've been craving. Dopamine feels like desperate desire when the goal is out of reach. But it feels like a headlong rush when you're suddenly "allowed" to go get it. Read More

Uncommon Pathways to Recovery

My book is being released in the US this week, and I've been getting more and more interviews and reviews from US media. On February 18th, a New York Post article featured the book prominently, but I was taken aback when I read it. Most newspaper and magazine coverage of the book has been pretty good, despite various factual errors. Read More

The Science of Craving

Last post, I emphasized the feeling of incompleteness as the foundation of craving. But one reader saw pain relief, relief from suffering, as the fundamental draw. I think both are true. Read More

Thinking About Craving

I have been thinking a lot about craving lately. What is craving, really? What's it all about?Craving seems to amount to a fundamental sense of being incomplete. When we crave, we want something to fill us up. Read More

Ego Fatigue and the Pull of the Present

In the field of addiction research, there has been increasing recognition that ego fatigue is a serious problem for recovering addicts. But I'd say that those of us who have been addicts are the real experts. Read More

Countdown in the Rat Lab

Below is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, soon to be released in the US. The excerpt deals with ego fatigue, like the last post...(and the next one). But it doesn't get into the neuroscience—not yet. It's just a read-out of the fantasies, the self-talk, the loosening sense of self-control that all start to slip and slide as you approach the pivot point. Read More

The Pivot Point

There is something terribly interesting about the moment of giving in. That moment when the teeter-totter crosses that invisible threshold, when the momentum shifts, when you know you're going to do it, despite the hours of telling yourself you won't. It's a very distinct feeling, says a recent reader. It's a lot different from thinking about getting high. It's not thinking at all, really. Read More

Lose Half Your Brain and You Might Feel Better

Hello readers! Happy New Year and all that. I took a few weeks off for the holidays and went to visit family and friends back in Toronto. It was a time of heart-warming reconnection with people I've known for much of my life. But it was also a time of anxiety and sadness: loss, disappointment, regret -- all part of the package. Hence the topic of today's post... Read More

The Brain is Vulnerable to Hacking by Drugs

Brains and the chemicals they run on come from molecules that have been part of the evolutionary marketplace for a very long time. So the "code" that our brains use to operate (and to have fun) is easily found in nature. When we find plant compounds that contain the desired code and consume them -- we hack our own nervous systems. Read More

Dopamine for Lunch

I promised myself that I wouldn't waste people's time by blogging about what I had for lunch. But this time, it may be relevant. What I had for lunch, yesterday, was dopamine! Read More

Is Addiction the Result of Brain Evolution?

Steven Pinker (the evolutionary biologist) recently released ANOTHER book, entitled "The Better Angels of Our Nature." In it he shows how violence has declined over the last 30,000 years of human affairs. And he says that's due to the rise of competing characteristics, like cooperation, self-control, and empathy. Read More

A True Self Unveiled by Drugs? Part 2

Reader responses (here and on the blog on my website) highlight both sides of the self as experienced with dissociative drugs (DXM and ketamine). There is a sense of being centered, perhaps while in free fall and watching the world go by, and there is a sense of freedom from constraints. Read More

The True Self: Unveiled by Dissociative Drugs? Part 1

I've been talking to a young man about his drug issues, and he feels he's got a serious dilemma to unravel. Lately he's been taking dissociatives -- dextromethorphan (DXM) and ketamine -- and they get him to a place he can't seem to find without them. Read More

Corrupted Choice—Not Disease—In the Addicted Brain

You've probably heard about the controversy between the disease model of addiction and the choice model. Stanton Peele, a blogger here on the PT site, waxes eloquent on the topic. You may have even heard that it's a false dichotomy — a position I take myself. But I don't want to waste time trashing the disease model right now. Dr. Peele does that quite nicely. Read More

Talking about Drugs, Addiction, and the Brain

I recently wrote a book that recounts the story of my years of almost continuous drug taking and periods of intense addiction—interspersed with neuroscience—to help explain what was happening to me, why it was happening, and how it is that addictions are so hard to beat. The book is written from the perspective of a neuroscientist and a recovered addict. Read More

Marc Lewis, Ph.D. has been a professor of developmental psychology and neuroscience for over twenty years and recently wrote Memoirs of an Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines his Former Life on Drugs.

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