This is intense and unsettling in a really effective way. The idea of “pleasant discomfort” contrasted with how clearly her mind and body are breaking down makes it hard to look away. The repetition of the button and the dial feels almost compulsive, like she knows it is destroying her but cannot stop herself.
I’m curious, when you wrote this, were you thinking of the device more as an addiction she chooses, or as something that has already taken control of her beyond choice?
It's something that she could not have chosen, and indeed, did not even know there was a choice to be made. That's one of the remarkable things about this case. We're all familiar with the idea that certain drugs have addictive potential, but here she was searching for something without addictive potential, and yet it became one even more profound than any drug.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on the sobriety. You've managed to battle something that few people have the strength to fight and won so far. Hold your head high friend.
However I don’t understand why you pivot to addiction after explaining this woman’s case. It seems unlikely that people would be prone to being addicted to painful experiences in this way? Even with the people who are super addicted to trank to the point where their skin falls off, they say that they only do it because if they don’t the withdrawals are terrible. The same is true for a lot of herion addicts. The motivation to not stop often comes from the physiological pain of stopping.
Her story is very dark but it also makes sense that something that went wrong in the way her brain was stimulated by the electricity. However, drugs don’t do this, nor do other things you can be addicted to. I would imagine that the actual physiology of addiction is extremely different from this woman’s story.
If you take a look at the rats at the end, that’s part of why. The rats were able to be made addicted to the electric shock rod through one of the systems that is activated by drug addiction. There’s definitely two aspects: first is the anticipatory activation of the mesolimbic pathway, predicting a rewarding experience. What likely was happening with the woman was the predictive reward pathway was being blasted by the electrode, which would explain why it seemed “erotic”, which is steeped in anticipation. It was definitely way, way, way more powerful than any drug could be. Indeed the rats in Berridge’s study would ignore cocaine and prefer the direct laser. However, that’s just a matter of amplitude: the same system is sent over the top with drugs of addiction. It still triggers extreme wanting/craving loops, though not as extreme (at least not usually to the point of not eating)
The second, however, is definitely the desire to avoid devastating withdrawal. I didn’t really talk about withdrawal so much in this case, because my focus was on the anticipatory reward system: it’s why drug cues work; the cues trigger anticipation, or “wanting”. With the electrodes and indeed the rats, it was a kind of “wanting re-enforcing wanting” because there wasn’t even a need for a cue, it was just directly stimulating the wanting circuitry, never achieving satiety.
Got ittt I think when you started talking about the hypothalamus or something that’s when I got lost lol. That makes more sense. You’re talking about how intense the slavery to the “wanting loop” is, and in extreme cases through direct stimulation, it can actually drive people to do harmful things to themselves. So even in normal conditions this wanting loop drives a lot of addictive behavior.
That makes sense. However it also makes me wonder about distress because I only really crave drugs when I’m distressed. it. The “wanting” has never been that strong for me, and I used to be a really bad addict when I was young and going through stuff. Even then I went cold turkey because I decided I hated being high all the time, and I was *still* undergoing a distressing situation.
I think maybe also because I didn’t actually like being high all that much I also never really affected my receptors to the point of damage, or at least significant damage. I have a friend who got super addicted to MDMA and was snorting 7g a night with a friend. Which is really EXCESSIVE. Now he is homeless…it’s sad, he can’t control himself enough to hold down a job. He also was prescribed adderal as a 7 year old, and adderal is neurotoxic because of dopamine by products (L-dopa). So I think he was just unfortunately set out to fail.
But idk it’s interesting to consider what actually makes someone more resilient against addiction versus not.
Haha thank you!! Yeah I feel blessed. I’m not sure what made me so resilient to addiction. The grace of God, in some way or another. Most of my friends from my addiction period are still using.
Thank you ma'am, yes that's correct haha. Sorry I can sometimes get a bit lost in the language of things and my writing doesn't always self-explain very well.
There's a lot of really interesting stuff to unpack here, if you're ok with it. So you're absolutely right, distress and withdrawal is a devastating thing. However, those feelings can come about through wanting things we can't have. A large part of the experience of withdrawal is this wanting which can't be sated, as well as the imbalance of neurochemicals due to homeostasis mechanisms having modified those levels when the drug was in the system now suddenly being out of whack. However, I've never seen anything like what happened with that lady's glucose levels in her brain when unstimulated: she was basically in dementia without stimulation, and this was after 6 months of no stimulation too. That is a really, really long withdrawal.
Jeeeeeeesus that's a lot of MDMA. I'm sorry about your friend, that's awful. However it's unlikely the adderall had anything to do with that. The thing about ADHD is that we tend to be prone to addiction as well, just out of the box. Adderall doesn't have any L-DOPA or produce it, it merely acts on the dopamine transporters at the synaptic junction, slowing down the recycling process so that more dopamine stays in the synapse for longer. However, regularly over-dosing something like adderall can certainly be neurotoxic, via various mechanisms.
I looked into this a while ago in 2020 (specifically when I was concerned for my friends), but adderall actually does cause harm in a way that alternatives do not because addreal blocks the reuptake synapse. Dopamine by products… maybe not ldopa now that I think of it because that is a dopamine *precursor*… are actually neurotoxic, but the MAO enzyme can break it down safely when there is not an excess of dopamine in the synapse. These byproducts cause oxidative stress.
It’s fusterating because there’s not a ton of knowledge on it for the people who are on the drugs, and so many people put their kids oj them thinking “it’s just medicine.”
Wanting in regards to when someone has a physical addiction makes a lot of sense to me also because receptors are dying off but it’s interesting to me that my “wanting” doesn’t really ever get triggered ever, unless I experience distress. Maybe I hijacked my brain by teaching it to “cue” wanting loops because my main cause of addiction was just wanting to feel safe when I was enduring a lot of situations that felt very unsafe.
Yep you’re absolutely correct. In both cases, levodopa and NDRI, it’s excess which can result in those effects. Levodopa is indeed a dopamine precursor, and interestingly enough, dopamine is a noradrenaline precursor as well, and we used to think that’s all it was - that it had no other function in the brain - until some research came out showing that dopamine wasn’t all being converted into adrenaline and that there was actually a lot of dopamine clustered in specific locations in the brain. I really need to finish writing my History of Dopamine book, so many interesting stories to tell!
Oh that’s really interesting. I think I read that from your article on dopamine (titled something about peas I think??? I read it a long time ago lol).
You have a whole lot of potential as a writer. Keep going. Keep pushing yourself. Take in some literature widely across authors and genres to keep developing your voice. Pick 6 great, classic authors you’ve always wanted to explore and take them all in at once. Let their voices and styles and ideas just blend into your own and then you make it all your own. ✌️
Well researched. I'm familiar with this case and the classical neuroscience studies. It is paradoxical only until one steps outside structured thinking and starts looking at things in a different light.
Put me in mind of THHGTTG Fit 11.
Scroll down to Scene 6 and start at the Narrator's link just before it.
I couldn't find the audio version so the script will have to do. But if you can find it, the actors (computeach) voice is delicious as their button gets pressed.
Thank you kindly. I originally started this substack 3 years ago specifically to deliver this kind of message, though I never really had the right words to explain it. I'm glad it hit home. I completely agree that treating addiction as a willpower issue has made things so very much worse. Catastrophically worse. When people think it's just a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, they don't comprehend the chains that bind people long after the pleasure - if there ever was any - is gone.
This is intense and unsettling in a really effective way. The idea of “pleasant discomfort” contrasted with how clearly her mind and body are breaking down makes it hard to look away. The repetition of the button and the dial feels almost compulsive, like she knows it is destroying her but cannot stop herself.
I’m curious, when you wrote this, were you thinking of the device more as an addiction she chooses, or as something that has already taken control of her beyond choice?
It's something that she could not have chosen, and indeed, did not even know there was a choice to be made. That's one of the remarkable things about this case. We're all familiar with the idea that certain drugs have addictive potential, but here she was searching for something without addictive potential, and yet it became one even more profound than any drug.
I love finding stories like this one out. Truly fascinating stuff! 🔥
Thank you for this. I’ve battled addiction for years (currently sober). I always enjoy gaining more knowledge about it.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on the sobriety. You've managed to battle something that few people have the strength to fight and won so far. Hold your head high friend.
thank you. It’s not easy for me to hold my head up high, I’ve had battles with pride and ego, too.
But I’m doing better, I could be worse so I have a lot of gratitude from that.
And it is a battle.
Really interesting case study.
However I don’t understand why you pivot to addiction after explaining this woman’s case. It seems unlikely that people would be prone to being addicted to painful experiences in this way? Even with the people who are super addicted to trank to the point where their skin falls off, they say that they only do it because if they don’t the withdrawals are terrible. The same is true for a lot of herion addicts. The motivation to not stop often comes from the physiological pain of stopping.
Her story is very dark but it also makes sense that something that went wrong in the way her brain was stimulated by the electricity. However, drugs don’t do this, nor do other things you can be addicted to. I would imagine that the actual physiology of addiction is extremely different from this woman’s story.
If you take a look at the rats at the end, that’s part of why. The rats were able to be made addicted to the electric shock rod through one of the systems that is activated by drug addiction. There’s definitely two aspects: first is the anticipatory activation of the mesolimbic pathway, predicting a rewarding experience. What likely was happening with the woman was the predictive reward pathway was being blasted by the electrode, which would explain why it seemed “erotic”, which is steeped in anticipation. It was definitely way, way, way more powerful than any drug could be. Indeed the rats in Berridge’s study would ignore cocaine and prefer the direct laser. However, that’s just a matter of amplitude: the same system is sent over the top with drugs of addiction. It still triggers extreme wanting/craving loops, though not as extreme (at least not usually to the point of not eating)
The second, however, is definitely the desire to avoid devastating withdrawal. I didn’t really talk about withdrawal so much in this case, because my focus was on the anticipatory reward system: it’s why drug cues work; the cues trigger anticipation, or “wanting”. With the electrodes and indeed the rats, it was a kind of “wanting re-enforcing wanting” because there wasn’t even a need for a cue, it was just directly stimulating the wanting circuitry, never achieving satiety.
Got ittt I think when you started talking about the hypothalamus or something that’s when I got lost lol. That makes more sense. You’re talking about how intense the slavery to the “wanting loop” is, and in extreme cases through direct stimulation, it can actually drive people to do harmful things to themselves. So even in normal conditions this wanting loop drives a lot of addictive behavior.
That makes sense. However it also makes me wonder about distress because I only really crave drugs when I’m distressed. it. The “wanting” has never been that strong for me, and I used to be a really bad addict when I was young and going through stuff. Even then I went cold turkey because I decided I hated being high all the time, and I was *still* undergoing a distressing situation.
I think maybe also because I didn’t actually like being high all that much I also never really affected my receptors to the point of damage, or at least significant damage. I have a friend who got super addicted to MDMA and was snorting 7g a night with a friend. Which is really EXCESSIVE. Now he is homeless…it’s sad, he can’t control himself enough to hold down a job. He also was prescribed adderal as a 7 year old, and adderal is neurotoxic because of dopamine by products (L-dopa). So I think he was just unfortunately set out to fail.
But idk it’s interesting to consider what actually makes someone more resilient against addiction versus not.
By the way, well done on kicking the habits. You've conquered something that for most people is wildly difficult. You frikkin rock!
Haha thank you!! Yeah I feel blessed. I’m not sure what made me so resilient to addiction. The grace of God, in some way or another. Most of my friends from my addiction period are still using.
You are definitely blessed my friend, many times over!
Thank you ma'am, yes that's correct haha. Sorry I can sometimes get a bit lost in the language of things and my writing doesn't always self-explain very well.
There's a lot of really interesting stuff to unpack here, if you're ok with it. So you're absolutely right, distress and withdrawal is a devastating thing. However, those feelings can come about through wanting things we can't have. A large part of the experience of withdrawal is this wanting which can't be sated, as well as the imbalance of neurochemicals due to homeostasis mechanisms having modified those levels when the drug was in the system now suddenly being out of whack. However, I've never seen anything like what happened with that lady's glucose levels in her brain when unstimulated: she was basically in dementia without stimulation, and this was after 6 months of no stimulation too. That is a really, really long withdrawal.
Jeeeeeeesus that's a lot of MDMA. I'm sorry about your friend, that's awful. However it's unlikely the adderall had anything to do with that. The thing about ADHD is that we tend to be prone to addiction as well, just out of the box. Adderall doesn't have any L-DOPA or produce it, it merely acts on the dopamine transporters at the synaptic junction, slowing down the recycling process so that more dopamine stays in the synapse for longer. However, regularly over-dosing something like adderall can certainly be neurotoxic, via various mechanisms.
I looked into this a while ago in 2020 (specifically when I was concerned for my friends), but adderall actually does cause harm in a way that alternatives do not because addreal blocks the reuptake synapse. Dopamine by products… maybe not ldopa now that I think of it because that is a dopamine *precursor*… are actually neurotoxic, but the MAO enzyme can break it down safely when there is not an excess of dopamine in the synapse. These byproducts cause oxidative stress.
It’s fusterating because there’s not a ton of knowledge on it for the people who are on the drugs, and so many people put their kids oj them thinking “it’s just medicine.”
Wanting in regards to when someone has a physical addiction makes a lot of sense to me also because receptors are dying off but it’s interesting to me that my “wanting” doesn’t really ever get triggered ever, unless I experience distress. Maybe I hijacked my brain by teaching it to “cue” wanting loops because my main cause of addiction was just wanting to feel safe when I was enduring a lot of situations that felt very unsafe.
Yep you’re absolutely correct. In both cases, levodopa and NDRI, it’s excess which can result in those effects. Levodopa is indeed a dopamine precursor, and interestingly enough, dopamine is a noradrenaline precursor as well, and we used to think that’s all it was - that it had no other function in the brain - until some research came out showing that dopamine wasn’t all being converted into adrenaline and that there was actually a lot of dopamine clustered in specific locations in the brain. I really need to finish writing my History of Dopamine book, so many interesting stories to tell!
Oh that’s really interesting. I think I read that from your article on dopamine (titled something about peas I think??? I read it a long time ago lol).
Also I would totally read that book.
Very well done. Thank you.
Thank you sir! That means a lot to me <3
You have a whole lot of potential as a writer. Keep going. Keep pushing yourself. Take in some literature widely across authors and genres to keep developing your voice. Pick 6 great, classic authors you’ve always wanted to explore and take them all in at once. Let their voices and styles and ideas just blend into your own and then you make it all your own. ✌️
Be sure and put James Joyce into the mix.
Well researched. I'm familiar with this case and the classical neuroscience studies. It is paradoxical only until one steps outside structured thinking and starts looking at things in a different light.
Put me in mind of THHGTTG Fit 11.
Scroll down to Scene 6 and start at the Narrator's link just before it.
I couldn't find the audio version so the script will have to do. But if you can find it, the actors (computeach) voice is delicious as their button gets pressed.
https://www.clivebanks.co.uk/THHGTTG/THHGTTGradio11.htm
I love HHGTTG so much haha.
Thank you kindly. I originally started this substack 3 years ago specifically to deliver this kind of message, though I never really had the right words to explain it. I'm glad it hit home. I completely agree that treating addiction as a willpower issue has made things so very much worse. Catastrophically worse. When people think it's just a hedonistic pursuit of pleasure, they don't comprehend the chains that bind people long after the pleasure - if there ever was any - is gone.