Addiction, a train to hell, how do you get off?: Being addicted to drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, work, or classical music records; a certain degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, or persistence can all be considered addiction.

 

 

　　Interviews with: Book Selector / Psychiatrist / Former Addict

　　Foreword to the Republication: Hoping that judicial units will provide more appropriate treatment for addicts!

 

　　The reasons why an addict becomes an addict, and the difficulties they face, are never solely about drug problems.

 

　　The Portland Hotel is a program in Canada that provides assistance and support to drug addicts. Despite controversy, it insists on providing addicts with medication for withdrawal, psychiatric medications, and HIV medications, as well as other urgently needed medical treatments, food, various daily living arrangements, and social reintegration.

 

　　Outsiders often consider this process meaningless because the people who enter and leave the hotel often reappear repeatedly until they die.

 

　　▶ Addiction comes from an attempt to improve one's life experience, which often has a dual nature.

　　However, exploring it from a scientific perspective might dispel some common misunderstandings.

 

　　Addiction is not related to identity or status. The object of addiction can be an item or a behavior. It can be workaholism, uncontrollable shopping, exercise, plastic surgery, or even collecting (the author himself is addicted to classical music records), which most people don't realize is an addiction. It can also be tobacco addiction, drug addiction, or substance addiction.

 

　　This is an element that seeks to change ordinary life. When a person is immersed in creating emotional impulses and satisfying desires instantly, that is the pleasure that addiction brings. When this behavior causes hindrance or harm and is difficult to stop, that is when addiction sets in.

 

　　But whether it's the marginalized people at the Portland Hotel struggling with various drug addictions, or ordinary people, addiction is a human problem, and drugs are not the primary cause.

 

　　A US research report indicates that a large proportion of soldiers became addicted to drugs on the battlefield due to the dual pressures of ubiquitous corpses and enemy attacks. Among those who returned home, up to 20% were addicts, but less than 1% met the criteria for addiction before deployment.

　　

　　Dr. Maté attempts to glimpse the brain's operation through brain imaging and compares the results with large-scale research to examine which genetic traits lead to addiction and how life experiences affect the brain pathways of addicts.

 

　　Whether it's shopping, driving, sex, eating, exercising, etc., whether it's innate or deliberate, the same parts of the brain are activated as in drug addicts. However, addiction is not like a virus invading the body; its origin is a complex set of neural and emotional mechanisms. Addiction is not a disease, and viewing addiction as a disease reduces it to a medical problem.

 

　　More specifically, addicts are not addicted to the object of their addiction; they are indulged in the feedback provided by dopamine and endorphins. Due to the desensitization of the brain's dopamine system and endorphin system, and the loss of normal regulation and operating circuits, they fall into an endless craving. However, the "high" feeling produced by chemical substances also causes long-term effects on the brain. This vicious cycle, with the rewritten brain, makes people like fallen hungry ghosts, driving addicts into an insatiable craving or emptiness:

 

　　● When drugs control the underdeveloped brain mechanisms of an addict, one addict described: "The self I present to the outside world is a child who has always been restrained. His behavior and brain have hardly been able to develop maturely."