Hi Chopper,
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had to endure so much physical pain. You’re a good man, and God has used you in so many ways. I’m thankful for our friendship. You’re my Barnabus J
You made a good point about having a disease, and then taking a substance that creates a new disease. I’m sorry you have to make the choices that you have to make, but it really goes toward something that we’ve been discussing in this thread, but I don’t think I ever articulated it very clear.
Substance Addiction has two parts to it. It has a physical and a mental factor to it. The physical end is very easy to describe. One repeatedly takes a substance and the body starts to depend on it. This can be anything from caffeine, cigarettes to Opiates and Amphetamines etc. Quitting a physical addiction is tough because the body will respond negatively when the substance isn’t available. It can be as minor as a headache and scale all the way up to severe flu like symptoms and in some cases, even death. Assuming one does not die from withdrawal, once withdrawal is complete, the body begins it’s healing process and your body is no longer dependent (addicted) upon the substance.
In the case of mental addiction, this can be broken into two layers. First is habit. If you do the same thing over and over, it becomes automatic. Have you ever been going somewhere and instead of turning left, you went straight because “That’s the way I go to work every day.” People who smoked will play with their fingers and put their fingers up to their mouth etc. Habits take about 3 weeks to break and after that, things get much easier with the occasional outside stimuli when you least expect it. Say that you always stood in the front of “this” door and smoked your cigarette every day. A year later, you could stand by that same door and get the urge to smoke. Habits are sometimes hard to shake.
Mental addiction falls into a completely different category and that’s what we call the disease. It’s not the physical addiction and it’s not the habitual traits. It’s a deficit of white matter in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) with a reduced density within the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). The OFC is the seat of emotions and these emotions run through the PFC for filtering. As a brain develops, the PFC matures and takes a more active role in filtering emotions through rational thought. This is why a child has temper tantrums, and those tantrums reduce as they get older. (Hopefully ha ha) These two brain deficits are developed within the womb and / or occur when a child is in adolescence as a direct result from their environment. For example, if a pregnant mother is highly stressed, she releasing cortisone into the placenta, which is absorbed into the child’s bloodstream and will reduce both white matter in the PFC and density within the OFC. Other factors such as neglect, abuse or lack of adequate bonding or nurturing with also result in brain deficiencies. The book I’m reading describes this in great detail.
People who suffer from mental addiction termed here as a disease manifest their disfunction in many ways. It could play itself out as an excessive collector, the workaholic, the sex addict and yes, even the drug addict. For the mental addict, its’ more than just a physical withdrawal and it’s more than just shaking a habit. For the addict with the disease, it’s a way of life and learning healthy coping skills to redirect that energy into something positive with minimal negative backlash.
Another way the white matter in the PFC and density in the OFC is reduced is through sustained chemical dependency / abuse, like the morphine your taking all the way down to legal substances like tobacco and alcohol. These chemicals play an active role in deteriorating the PFC and reduction in mass including the OFC. Thus, a healthy mind can deteriorate into a diseased mind through sustained abuse.
