http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/brain+drugs/5521547/story.html

My brain on drugs




Tyler Anderson, National Post

"If this stuff wasn't incredibly pleasureful, people wouldn't go back to it
again and again.... But as time goes on, those good feelings ... are
overcome by all the bad things," says author Marc Lewis.
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National Post . Oct. 8, 2011 | Last Updated: Oct. 8, 2011 4:06 AM ET



In his new book, Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, a neuroscientist examines his
former life on drugs. Marc Lewis, a native Torontonian and former U of T
scientist, describes the role of brain chemicals - such as dopamine, which
fuels cravings, and serotonin, which soothes overactive neurons - in the
rise of addiction. Unusually, he illustrates the theory with episodes from
his own life as an addict, now recovered, in which he graduated from
boarding-school experiments in cough syrup, through liquor, marijuana and
acid to heroin, opium, methamphetamines and whatever he could steal. He
spoke with National Post reporter Joseph Brean:

Q You describe addiction as a process similar to learning. Do good learners
make better addicts?

A I wouldn't put it exactly like that. I don't think you have to be a
particularly good learner or a knowledgeable person who seeks to understand
things to become an addict.

In fact, maybe it's somewhat to the contrary.

It's learning, but it's corrupted learning.... It's very accelerated
learning, and it's extremely narrow, because it's the same damn thing over
and over again.

Q Why do you say the target of an addiction is half attainable?

A If the thing is a sure bet, if you know you're going to get it, then the
dopamine pump is not on very strong.

It becomes more matter of fact. It can happen in romance, or if you have
Chinese food every night....

Dopamine's got an evolutionary function, and its function is to get you to
strive for the thing that you want when it requires striving, when it
requires pushing for it, grabbing for it, reaching, that's when dopamine
operates at its peak.

Q But so many of the things people are addicted to are easily attainable,
such as alcohol.

A It's easily attainable because you can easily walk into a bar. It's not so
easy in Ontario with the LCBO hours, but what also puts barriers between you
and the object of pursuit is your own conscience, your own better judgment,
your own attempts to control yourself.

All of those things make the space between you and it, and you have to
overcome that space and say, "To hell with it, I really want it," and that's
when the dopamine really drives you forward to attain the thing you want.

Q With street drugs, it can be even harder. Does that feed the anticipation?

A Yessir, very much so. When I was into that stuff, I spent so many seconds
and minutes and hours and synapses working on how am I going to get it,
where am I going to get it, how good is it going to be, how am I going to
get the money.

All of those processes are steps toward the goal, and they're all fuelled by
dopamine, by craving, by desire. That's why you stay on the path until you
get it.

Q You compare the "delusional grandiosity" of the marijuana high to teenage
thinking. You also say that, evolutionarily, that kind of thinking benefits
teenagers, but perhaps not adults. Is addiction a failure to grow up?

A In some ways. One of the ironies is that marijuana, which they call a
gateway drug, is not addictive in the normal sense. It just isn't.... The
delusional, grandiose, "What I'm thinking is really important, relevant,
magnificent and profound," that teenage thing, yeah, it happens with pot,
but when you get into the harder drugs, like the opiates, heroin,
methamphetamine, it's not quite the same.

You're going deeper now. It's not just about how wonderful your thinking is,
it's about a rock-bottom desire for a certain kind of feeling.

Q People say they are psychologically addicted to pot, but they also talk
about being addicted to chocolate. Where is the line between addiction as
glib metaphor and as physical reality?

A Even hard drugs, like heroin and methamphetamine, you're both physically
and psychologically addicted, and I think the psychological addiction is the
worst part, because a lot of people quit - I quit many times - but why do
you go back to it? It's because you really want it. That's psychological.

So yeah, with pot, with booze, or pornography or cheesecake, you can have
that psychological addiction.... But the hard drugs are speaking directly,
chemically, to brain regions that are in charge of motivation.

Q In the book, you say drugs speak to the brain in its own language. But you
also describe what it feels like to be high, and sometimes it sounds
rapturous. Do you miss some of those moments?

A Not really. I haven't done this stuff for 30 years.... But if this stuff
wasn't incredibly attractive and pleasureful, people wouldn't go back to it
again and again.... But as time goes on, those good feelings become
integrated with, juxtaposed with, and overcome by all the bad things - the
fear of going without, the self-disgust, all the things you have to do to
get it.

Q Are those high feelings revealed as fake or false in the fullness of time?

A No, they're real. We get some of those feelings to some degree from our
normal interactions in the world. I mean, when you're in love with somebody,
and they put their arms around you and you feel like you've come home, there
are opioids bouncing around in your system, so that's real.

And when you take a needle full of heroin, you get that times 500. It's
still real. It's just very intense. But is it fake? In a way it is, but you
can never say that real experience is fake. It really feels that way.

Q Is love an addiction?

A Can be. For some people it's sex, for some people it's love, for some it's
a particular person that they're hung up on. They know it's not right for
them, but they can't give that person up.

Q You describe boarding school antisemitism as a major factor in the growth
of your addiction. How does personal psychological history play into
addiction?

A People talk about genetic predispositions to addiction, but there's not a
lot of agreement on how powerful they are. That kind of research is really
tricky, so how do you become an addictive personality?

I think a lot of it has to do with early development, and it has to do with
things that happen to you: trauma, or things that make you feel empty, or
angry at yourself, or inadequate and dysfunctional, feeling there are gaps
and holes in yourself. And then, it so happens that those things get filled
up with things, whether it's food, drugs, booze or video games. Then you
learn that that's the way to take care of these needs. And then you become
addictive.

Q Can you contrast the role of solitude and community in addiction? It
sounds so lonely, and yet you typically started on new drugs after joining
new communities, such as alcohol in high school and acid in San Francisco.

A That was particularly the case with the Heap [two men and a woman he met
in Berkeley, lovers who guided his LSD trips]. What amazing people they
were. They were beautiful people. They were physically incredibly
attractive, they were mysterious, they were magisterial, so yeah, if you
guys do heroin, I want to do heroin.

But then in later periods, for example going to the opium dens in Calcutta,
I did that by myself. I didn't care. I didn't want anyone to be with me. I
kind of enjoyed hanging out with all these Indian guys in the Chinese opium
den, sharing a little bit of camaraderie, but I was certainly very much on
my own there. Then I would walk the streets of Calcutta at night, trip out
saying hello to the street people.

It was exotic, it was adventurous, and I was happy to do it alone, so I
think it can work both ways. And when I got into the really heavy stuff in
the last few years, the stealing, it was so nasty, and unacceptable, that I
wouldn't have imagined that anyone could accompany me or be part of it. It
was very singular, just me.

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