Canadian neuroscientist Marc Lewis has ruffled some scientific feathers with a new book on addiction called The Biology Of desire.
It has become popular and politically correct to label addiction as a disease.. and Mr Lewis is challenging this idea. He studied how addiction and brain sciences are colliding, and posits that understanding your brain can help any addict out of his/her abyss. he says that addiction is nota disease but a ‘state of accelerated learning’ that is helping achieve what we want, even though other parts of the brain know it’s not so good for us. he suggests that through development therapy, our brains can unlearn addiction.
Here’s Lewis’ definition of addiction. (And I suggest you have a think about how we eat as an addiction!)
“Addiction results from the motivated repetition of the same thoughts and behaviours until they become habitual. Thus, addiction develops – it is learned – but it’s learned more deeply and often more quickly, than other habits due to a narrowing tunnel of attention and attraction.”
The ‘disease’ idea, says Lewis, was used to avoid a subject’s shame. It was a convenient social adjustment rather than anything abased on fact.
He acknowledges physical addiction’s role – think nicotine in cigarettes or comparable substances elsewhere, but says that if addiction is purely physical, how can porn, gambling or video games be seen as addictions?
I was certainly impressed by his fresh look at how we view addiction. I am constantly seeing what i call addictions, but others label as ‘just life’ in the need to eat certain foods every day. I can’t help believe that all addictions have a sort of coat they were that has their society-friendly name emblazoned across it. But when we now read and know that carbs and sugar are as addictive as cocaine, where do we go from there? How do we justify the denial if this solid science?
Yes, carbs and sugar do make us more acidic. But whether it’s the acidity causing our addict-like mood swings and cravings or the actual foods is irrelevant. The important thing is that we stop eating them and go ‘cold turkey’!
