Redefining Culture II
Continuation from REDEFINING CULTURE PART I
It is upsetting to look at the map of The United States colored even darker than Russia to represent the worse country in the world with alcohol and drug addictions. Now, look at the opioid crisis in charts, systematically increased year after year.
Do we have to bring the Avengers to fix the problem? Not yet. For now, we need collective help from the government and the tech companies ( Amazon- Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft) to do their share. The main hero in this movie capable of resolving the problem is ourselves.
First, let’s understand how addiction happens; this way, we know where to focus. To start, let’s study the villain of this history: “dopamine,” and how it plays the most crucial role in the brain’s process.
DEFINITIONS
The American Society of Addiction Medicine adds to this definition that addiction is a chronic brain disease involving the reward, memory, and motivation system, but that addiction affects other parts of the brain as well. It is a dysfunction within this system that causes addiction.
The ASAM definition of addiction further makes it clear that addiction is a process that can happen with both substances and behaviors that are chronically misused or overused. The process occurs because the dopamine system isn’t functioning correctly.
Dopamine: Among the brain’s many chemical messengers, few stand out as much as the neurotransmitter dopamine. Linked to love, pleasure, motivation and more, dopamine signaling plays a central role in the brain’s reward system.
Addiction exerts a long and powerful influence on the brain that manifests in three distinct ways: craving for the object of addiction, loss of control over its use, and continuing involvement with it despite adverse consequences.
Pleasure principle. The brain registers all pleasures in the same way, whether they originate with a psychoactive drug, a monetary reward, a sexual encounter, or a satisfying meal. In the brain, pleasure has a distinct signature: the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of nerve cells lying underneath the cerebral cortex.
Addictive drugs provide a shortcut to the brain’s reward system by flooding the nucleus accumbens with dopamine. The hippocampus lays down memories of this rapid sense of satisfaction, and the amygdala creates a conditioned response to certain stimuli.
THE CREATION OF ADDICTION
Let’s go back to the child playing the violent video game to illustrate the descriptions. A child usually stays for hours playing video games. Violent video games involve pressing the buttons to shoot and beat someone up. Every time they strike or hit somebody up, they are releasing the neurotransmitter dopamine in the pleasure center of the brain.
What do you think that happens inside the child’s mind? The brain produces dopamine-making him to feel good about beating and shooting someone. The hippocampus responds to the dopamine by recording memories of pleasure. Then, the amygdala creates a conditioned response to stimuli. Now the child wants to go back to the game.
Dopamine takes over
Remove the child from a violent video game. What do you think happens to his brain? Repeated exposure causes nerve cells in the nucleus and prefrontal cortex, which is concerned with planning to communicate that he wants to do it more. The feeling of the reward goes away soon after, but the child wants to get that feeling again, and again and again.
Over time the child gets used to the feeling of pleasure, but now he needs to do it more and more to get the same satisfaction to satisfy his cravings. Soon, the child goes to school and, the child cannot turn their mind on because the brain is overstimulated.
Soon, he cannot learn because their brain has a hard time feeling happy because the brain has gotten used to the feeling of pleasure. The problem now is that the child not only is rewiring a new aggressive brain but also, he is forming the addictive behavior.
Habits are well-traveled pathways
Think of this please: New thoughts, actions, and feelings carve out new pathways. Repetition and practice strengthen these pathways forming new habits. Old pathways are used less, so they weaken until eventually disappear from our brain.
With repeated and direct attention toward the desired change, we all the ability to rewire our brains to create change. It takes 21 days to form a new habit. Habits are well-traveled pathways.
Fast forward That 10 -15 years later when this child is an adult, add now, more addictive behavior enhanced by the overuse of cellular phones/social media. What do you think that happened to his brain? Either he became self-aware, he is “present” living a creative life. Alternatively, his brain has already created neural pathways, and the dopamine is in charged shaping his life.
alteration of the reward system
When the adult finds himself addressing life’s challenges, if he hasn’t decode life, the problems get him, trapping him in the cycle of addiction. Then, negative emotions such as stress, anger, fear trigger his need to find solutions to feel better, urging him to get dopamine. That is what he has carved in his brain.
Immediately, he goes in search of rapid relief: food, social media, dating apps, video games, shopping, smoking, drugs, gambling, porn, sex. His brains need to produce dopamine as registered in their memory because of the powerful feelings associated with it, altering the reward system.
The human brain adapts making less pleasurable experiences
The temporary sensation of relief from emotional pain occurs. Soon after, the feelings of unsatisfaction and culpability arise. Dopamine not only contributes to the experience of pleasure but also plays a role in learning and memory — two critical elements in the transition from liking something to becoming addicted to it.
The reward circuit in the brain includes areas involved with motivation and memory as well as with pleasure. Addictive substances and behaviors stimulate the same circuit — and then overload it.
Over time, the brain adapts in a way that makes every experience less pleasurable. Addictive drugs and behaviors provide a shortcut, flooding the brain with dopamine and other neurotransmitters. Human brains do not have a way to control the blitz.
The problems for the adult of our story have not resolved, while the cycle of addiction continues. Do some variants and multiply the same case collectively, and you have an addicted culture.
The brain produces less dopamine or eliminates dopamine receptors.
Keep in mind that addiction happens quickly. This fact argument that dopamine itself is what is addictive rather than the drugs or behaviors that cause a surge in this critical neurotransmitter. The problem becomes challenging because we are fighting against ourselves, our nature.
Do you understand now why is so hard for people to get out of addiction? Do you see now why this problem has gotten out control? We are fighting against our nature.
Addictive drugs, for example, can release two to 10 times the amount of dopamine that natural rewards do, and they do it more quickly and more reliably. In a person who becomes addicted, brain receptors become overwhelmed. The brain responds by producing less dopamine or eliminating dopamine receptors.
Next: Depression, Parkinson, and Alzheimer
As a result of these adaptations, dopamine has less impact on the brain’s reward center. People who develop an addiction typically find that, in time, the desired substance no longer gives them as much pleasure. They have to take more of it to obtain the same dopamine “high” because their brains have adapted — an effect known as tolerance.
At this point, compulsion takes over. The pleasure associated with an addictive drug or behavior subsides — and yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to recreate it (the wanting) persists. It’s as though the normal machinery of motivation is no longer functioning.
Later we have a dopamine dysfunction with consequences link to depression, Parkinson, and Alzheimer. What is next for our country if the problem escalates out of control? A population filled with mental illness.
items to consider
Technology and social media have collectively altered human pleasure Centers. The culture of addition formed years ago, is resulting today, in the culture of violence that no one seems to be able to control.
We have to be mindful that while social media overuse is affecting people in adverse ways, they offer unprecedented access to information. This information allows that collectively we get educated finding solutions to the problem.
Please be aware that the difference between the effects of violent video games and video games designed to impact the brain positively. The violent video games, later one becomes the training camps for our children. The video games that have been consciously designed has excellent information that brings improvement to our children.
Only each one of us can go inside our minds to create the thoughts, the choices that shape our reality.
hope
I have hope when I see the governments doing the right, changing things how we all it should be. I see the light when I see tech and media corporations doing their share, contributing to what we all know it should be done.
I will feel confident if this type of essential information is taking to the classrooms of America. After, spread all over the world, from children to adults to learn, so parents and the world can make educated decisions because now we are conscious of our unconscious self’s,
I am overjoyed when I think of a unified community, contemplating inside ourselves, learning how the brain/mind works, becoming aware, contributing to reverse this epidemic. One by one, we can unplug from the matrix, regaining control of our minds, our behavior, creating change, redefining culture!
In our series of REDEFINING CULTURE – PART III, we will bring the components to the solution: Addiction
