Bad habits:
According to leading Australian researcher David Gillespie, many of us have everyday dependencies based on the same basic biochemistry as an addiction to hard drugs. Here’s how to find out if you’re hooked.
Why can’t you quit sugar?
Addiction is not just messy drunks, cokeheads or junkies. The biochemical reality is we can become addicted to many things that are much more subtle and that are so socially acceptable, we’d happily give them to toddler. Our brains operate a biochemical reward system to make us get off our bottoms and do stuff that keeps us alive long enough to produce the next generation. Without it, we wouldn’t get out of bed, we wouldn’t eat even if food was put in front of us, we wouldn’t go to the trouble of meeting other people and certainly wouldn’t bother getting to know them well enough to have children with them. This same system keeps us safe from danger by providing us with the motivation to run away or stand and fight.
Good things
That reward system, however, can be broken. We can like things too much for our own good. I was addicted to sugar. I didn’t know I was addicted to sugar until I wasn’t. Had you asked me at the time, I would have denied it till the cows came home – and then bought a Coke instead of water
because it was more ‘fun’. When I compare the way I felt about food before to the way I feel about it now, I definitely was. Sugar pushes exactly the same biochemical buttons in our reward system as cocaine, alcohol, nicotine and many others. Just because the cravings are less intense and it has stayed under the regulatory radar doesn’t mean the biochemistry is any different or it is not addictive.
When we consume one of these substances, we ratchet up our need for reward. The brain is not evolved to deal with this. It foolishly assumes our environment is largely free from anything that can mess with its biochemistry because until very recently in evolutionary terms, that was true. To make things even more dire, in the past decade, we have invented and deployed powerfully addictive software to every person on the planet. While this software doesn’t administer a substance that breaks our reward system, it manipulates our brains into doing it.
Slow & steady
Part of the reason I didn’t think I was addicted to sugar was that I didn’t think I was eating that much of it. Then I started reading food labels. I found out that just by eating a bowl of breakfast cereal and drinking a glass of orange juice, I had consumed 20 teaspoons of sugar before I pushed back from the breakfast table. That was just the start. Barbecue sauce can be half sugar, some yoghurt has more sugar than ice-cream and there is often more sugar in low-fat mayonnaise than Coke. Knowing how much I was eating, and reading the science of exactly how it addicted me to make sure I kept eating, was the key to me stopping.
Addiction is loss of control. It is not being able to say ‘no’ when offered just one chocolate. It is settling down to a quick look at your socials and then wondering what happened to the last three hours. We may not feel like rats in a cage being manipulated to press the lever for reward, but that is the subtle art of addiction. If you want to see if you really are exercising free will, just try to stop.
Chemistry class
We learn best by doing. If you touch a hot stove or eat something foul tasting, you’ll never forget not to do that again. If you have a great icecream or great sex, you’ll not forget that’s something you should try again. That survival-enhancing, high-speed learning capability is hardwired into our brains in something called the reward pathway, although it should probably be called the reward and punishment pathway. A hormone called dopamine is critical to the operation of that pathway.
Every time we want something. Every time we think, “I’ll just have one more chocolate”. Every time we look forward to any treat. Every time a coffee or cigarette makes us feel better. Every time the thought of sex fills us with anticipation. Every time we look forward to hanging out with friends. Every time exercise makes us feel pumped. Every time our Instagram photo gets a lot of likes. And every time we experience a sharp tingle of fear or danger, dopamine is the hormone delivering the buzz. Without dopamine, we would never get out of bed. We would never eat, never reproduce and never run from danger. We would also never learn anything. Dopamine levels program our brains to detect good and bad things, and exactly how good and bad those things are, so we know how much effort to put into obtaining or avoiding them. And our dopamine system only works well within very tightly defined limits.
Change gang
I didn’t break my addiction to sugar because I was worried about addiction. I did it because I wanted to lose weight and I knew I wouldn’t cope with twin babies and the other four kids under eight in the state I was in. The motivation kept me off sugar during those crucial first weeks, when the cravings were strongest. Many women report giving up alcohol or smoking when they become pregnant. The concern for the health of their baby is a powerful incentive to get them over the hump of withdrawal.
The other key component is total abstinence. There is no successful ‘everything in moderation’ approach to breaking an addiction. Sometimes, a substitute is available to ease the path through withdrawal and sometimes it isn’t. Either way, breaking an addiction is about admitting you have an addiction, which is the hardest part. The way to see if we are addicted is to ‘stop anytime’. Throw the chocolate bar in the bin. Uninstall social media. Chuck the booze away. If you can do that and never look back, then I guess you were right, you weren’t addicted. But if you find yourself craving just one bit of chocolate or just one drink at night, you probably were. And then the next bit is easy: own the fact there is no upside to being an addict. What do you really lose by not having the next drink? Now weigh that against what you will gain. You will gain mental health. And you will gain physical health. But one of the greatest gifts not being an addict will give you is time. Suddenly you will cease planning your life around getting the next hit and have the time and focus to expand and enrich your life in new ways.
“Every time we experience a tingle of fear or danger, dopamine is delivering the buzz.” – David Gillespie