TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: Pain Pleasure and Survival Mode

CHAPTER 2: Food, Sex and Craving

CHAPTER 3: "Less than" and Addiction

CHAPTER 4: Parenting and Addiction

CHAPTER 5: Disconnection and Addiction

CHAPTER 6: Mind-Body Effects

CHAPTER 7: Addiction "Alters" and the Addiction Persona

CHAPTER 8: Relationship Dramas

CHAPTER 9: Belief Systems and Personal "Stories"

CHAPTER 10: Taking Accountability

CHAPTER 11: Intervention and Spontaneous Recovery

CHAPTER 12: Triggers and "Neural Antibodies"

CHAPTER 13: Play, Dreaming and Self-discovery

CHAPTER 14: The Now/Homeostasis Continuum

CHAPTER 15: Higher Levels of Homeostasis

CONCLUSION

BACKGROUND & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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ICONS ON THE COVER

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about addiction and how to overcome it. But addiction, as you will see throughout this book, is hardly confined to drug addicts, alcoholics, or compulsive gamblers. It is deeply embedded in the behavior of nearly everyone who lives in the modern world. Addictions are like parasites that sneak into the most powerful circuits in the brain–those that govern our basic survival instincts—and, by hijacking those circuits and manipulating their core biochemistry, profoundly influence, and even dictate, our thoughts and behavior.

Many people think addiction means being unable to resist something that provides overwhelming pleasure. But in this book we will suggest almost exactly the opposite: being addicted means being unconsciously attached to, unconsciously driven towards, pain and distress. In our view, the simplest types of addictions are the so-called "neuroses" in which people become stuck in loops of negative emotion like obsessive anxiety or worry. The reason we suggest that "neurotic" people become stuck in loops of negative emotion is that they are literally addicted to those emotions. The reason so many of us find it so difficult to change self-destructive and self-defeating patterns is that these patterns are addictions. The brain receives a similar, although typically less intense, biochemical reward from worrying as it does from drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine, and the habit is similarly difficult to break.

Like all addictions, an "emotional" addiction to worry or anxiety is driven primarily by the stress or "fight-or-flight" response. Any heightened emotional state or experience of stress will activate such a response and trigger the release of stress hormones. Researchers have found that stress hormones such as cortisol have effects in the brain that are almost identical to the effects of addictive drugs like cocaine. And since stress triggers the release of hormones that have very similar effects to addictive drugs, it follows that anything we perceive as being stressful, including anything that creates emotional pain, can potentially become addictive. (1)

Consciously, most of us believe that we do our best to avoid anything stressful, painful, or unpleasant, and this is probably very often the case. But all of us know someone who seems to do quite the opposite—perhaps unwittingly, they seem to do what they can to make themselves miserable. They worry excessively even though worrying never helps their situation; they become extremely anxious about something relatively unimportant; they consistently get into relationships that everyone knows will only bring them pain; and when they encounter something likely to bring them a measure of joy or happiness, they find a way to sabotage it. This kind of behavior is, of course, far easier to detect in others than in ourselves. But the perhaps disconcerting reality is that almost all of us do some version of the same thing. We often have clever justifications for even our most self-defeating habits, but to a clear-eyed observer, or an astute psychotherapist, it couldn't be more obvious that most of us engineer painful situations and create pain within ourselves for no good reason. There seems to be a driving force underlying that part of ourselves that reason does not easily appeal to. And that force, we are suggesting, is biochemical addiction.

Any heightened emotional state, whether pleasant or unpleasant, can potentially become addictive. No such state is intrinsically addictive. But because these states all produce chemicals that are rewarding to the brain, they are all prone to addiction, and any of us can potentially succumb to such addictions if we are emotionally or physically out of balance. Occasionally recalling a painful romantic affair that ended ten years ago, for instance, could well be part of healthy emotional processing. But to re-engage those memories and relive that pain several times a day for days or weeks or months at a time almost certainly indicates addiction—it's the unconscious brain's subtle way of creating an emotionally-stimulating thought just to get a biochemical reward or "drug payoff."

We also believe that addiction is wholly responsible for what psychologists and philosophers have long called the, "false self." The false self is the self that we believe ourselves to be, or think we need to be; but, in reality, it is merely an inauthentic veil that covers and disguises the True Self, the only authentic source of love, aliveness and wholeness. The ultimate goal of all psychotherapy, and of all emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing, as the psychologist Carl Jung said, is the dissolution of the false self and the discovery of the True Self. (2)

The model we will present suggests that a person's false self is the collective expression, the sum total, of his or her specific addictions. We refer to the false self as the "addiction persona." We believe that addictive behaviors are connected to one another in an associative neural network within the brain, and that this linkage explains why one type of addictive pattern–such as an emotional addiction to anxiety–often triggers the expression of another type of addictive pattern–such as the abuse of alcohol. Because of these associations, the addiction persona acts as a recognizable and distinct entity, or "self" that becomes manifested as the false self. The True Self, we further suggest, is the self without addictions.

In our view, the True Self is an expression of the ancient biological drive to achieve and maintain balance, or homeostasis. Human beings experience homeostasis as a feeling of peace or well-being, or as a sense of emotional and physical balance. The drive to homeostasis, which is a fundamental principle in biology, is probably the most powerful force in all living things. In simple organisms, the homeostatic drive acts at a cellular level to automatically restore the proper balance of minerals and nutrients within each cell. But in humans, the homeostatic drive also involves complex emotional states and the decisions that those states influence and inform. The True Self, we suggest, is the force that maintains homeostasis both at these higher emotional levels, and also at the lower cellular levels.

All addictions, we believe, dysfunctionally drive a person away from biochemical and psychological balance. When people act out of the True Self, therefore, they make decisions that tend to bring them into psychological and physical balance, or homeostasis; and when people act out of the false self, or the addiction persona, they make decisions that tend to drive them out of balance.

All types of addiction—whether they are emotional, behavioral or substance addictions—can be identified and resolved using our system. Because our approach deals directly, we believe, with the root cause of all psychological dysfunction, the process is both shorter and more transformative than traditional psychotherapy. And since all addictions, including drug addiction, have the same fundamental dynamics, overcoming one addiction makes it far easier to overcome others. As each addiction is resolved using our method, as each person becomes more and more conscious of dysfunctional drives that were previously unconscious, the structure of the false self is further weakened.

Our view of addiction is very similar to what Buddhists call "attachment." Buddhists similarly believe that anyone who can overcome his or her attachments will achieve enlightenment, the equivalent of living out of the True Self. (3) But despite its undeniable power, the Buddhist path to enlightenment often seems mysterious and opaque, and many people, perhaps Westerners in particular, seem to have great difficulty in truly following that path. Carl Jung, for example, believed that Buddhism is essentially inaccessible to Westerners, that most Westerners simply do not have the cultural or historical frame of reference to appreciate Buddhism at a deep level. (4)

Our own method for overcoming addictions—or attachments—is highly accessible to Westerners, and indeed is founded on Western science. Thus our method, in addition to being a novel form of psychotherapy, also represents a new path to spiritual enlightenment. Our approach contains many elements of the Buddhist sensibility, but merges that sensibility with Western neuroscience and psychology. The model we will describe therefore uses biochemical addiction as a connecting point not only between classical psychology and modern neuroscience, but also between Western science and Eastern spirituality.

The first six chapters of this book provide a solid foundation in the theoretical basis for The Answer Model. Since our book The Answer Model Theory explains the scientific underpinnings of the model in detail, our goal in the current book is to present only the science that is necessary for understanding and benefiting from the healing method. These first chapters show how addictions of all types operate by sending people inappropriately and dysfunctionally into various states of "survival mode." Addiction, in other words, sends us into survival mode when our survival is not particularly at risk. The dynamic begins as an over-protective, hair-trigger impulse to defend our survival against threats. But because of the substantial biochemical rewards that survival-mode states always supply, such states can easily begin to exert a dysfunctional, magnetic pull on us.

We will also present a detailed model that we believe explains the vast majority of the "mind-body" effects that have long been known to psychotherapists, and that have recently been receiving more attention from neuroscientists. We'll show that when the mind is thrown into a survival-mode state as a consequence of the addictive drive, the body will also be thrown into survival mode in various respects. We believe that this addiction-driven triggering of the body into different versions of survival mode explains, directly or indirectly, the great majority of physical illnesses in modern life.

Chapters 7-10 describe higher-level effects of addiction. We'll discuss, for example, how addictive dynamics often cause us to choose romantic partners who supply us with dysfunctional biochemical payoffs that result from relationship "dramas." We'll also talk about dysfunctional belief systems, one of the most all-embracing forms of addiction.

Chapters 11 and 12 will discuss the critical role of intervention in overcoming addiction, and the role of internal and external triggers in activating dysfunctional neural networks in our brains. These networks can be interrupted and ultimately broken down by the use of what we call "neural antibodies." Because addiction is fundamentally irrational, it always relies on illusions and lies for its sustenance. Neural antibodies primarily act to reinforce the truth about our circumstances and how we respond to those circumstances. Once you've built effective and stable neural antibodies, they will protect you from addiction and help break down the neural networks that have been perpetuating addiction in your life. As these dysfunctional networks begin to weaken, they can be replaced by healthier, more functional networks.

Chapter 13 shows how addiction corrupts dreaming and various types of play. Chapters 14 and 15, the final chapters of the book, connect our model of addiction, and the basic biological principle of homeostasis, to the highest spiritual pursuits, principles, and experiences. We'll show how the homeostatic drive creates a clear path for achieving spiritual enlightenment. We'll also suggest that the drive to homeostasis represents a powerful force that has been alluded to in all the major spiritual and religious traditions. Finally, we'll see how the principle of homeostasis, when combined with the knowledge of how the addiction persona and the True Self operate, creates an inexorable momentum towards homeostasis for all of us.

Addictive behavior is not something biological evolution prepared us for. It is rather a consequence of unnatural circumstances that have, for the most part, existed only since the invention of agriculture about twelve thousand years ago, when our ancestors began to leave behind the hunter-gatherer lifestyles that human beings are most naturally adapted for. These new circumstances, and the dysfunctional, addictive drives they have given rise to, have thrown most people badly out of balance. Only consciousness of how addiction operates, we believe, can bring modern men and women, and ultimately modern life itself, back into balance. In this book we will try to give you that consciousness, so that, if you wish to, you can overcome your own addictive patterns. If you want to hang on to some of your addictions, that's always something you can choose. Just be aware that, despite appearances, despite the illusion, when you choose addiction, you're always choosing pain.

In a real sense, addictions are never consciously "chosen" at all, but are rather fallen into unconsciously, or at best half-consciously. Whenever we compulsively behave in ways that are unnecessarily destructive to ourselves and to others, we always do so out of addiction. Addiction is what imprisons us, and addiction is what we need to be liberated from if we are to be truly free.

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ENDNOTES INTRODUCTION

(1) Koob, G. F. 2008. A Role for Brain Stress Systems in Addiction. Neuron 59, 11-34; Piazza, P. V., & Le Maol, M. 1997. Glucocorticoids as a Biological Substrate of Reward: Physiological and Pathophysiological Implications. Brain Research Reviews 25, 359-372; Montgomery, J. & Ritchey, T. 2008. The Answer Model Theory. Santa Monica, CA: TAM Books.

(2): Jung, C. G. 1966. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

(3): Suzuki, D. T. 1960. Manual of Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press; Rahula, W. 1959. What the Buddha Taught. New York: Grove Press

(4): Suzuki, D. T. 1964. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Weidenfeld

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CHAPTER 1:
PAIN, PLEASURE AND SURVIVAL MODE

Human beings, like all living things, are built for survival. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were sculpted and engineered by evolution to serve one overriding purpose: surviving and reproducing so that their genes could be successfully passed on to their offspring. The genes we carry within the cells of our own brains and bodies were left to us by those ancestors, and if those hunter-gatherers had lacked that all-embracing focus on survival, they themselves would not have survived and reproduced, and their genes would not be the ones we would be carrying today.

The will to survive permeates every aspect of the brain's normal operation. When our survival is particularly at risk, our brains shift, often dramatically, into high-alert, hyper-aroused states of what could be called "survival mode." The most overt state of survival mode is a sense of fear, or terror, that may be triggered, for instance, when we're directly threatened with physical attack or annihilation. But many other more subtle states of survival mode are equally common and important. As we'll see in the next chapter, strong sexual desire often becomes a state of survival mode. So does the emotion of anger, or the feeling of being somehow "less than" other people, a particularly common feeling in modern life that is a critical driving force in most addictions.

Hunger for food is often also a state of survival mode. If we don't eat, of course we won't survive. The feeling of hunger creates an intense, pervasive drive to find food, and the drive becomes more and more insistent as the nutrients in our bodies and brains are used up without being replenished. Once the state or feeling of hunger has driven us to find food and satisfy that burning need for nourishment, we're biologically driven, like all other animals, to settle back into a more peaceful, balanced state called homeostasis. After a hungry domestic cat has eaten, for example, it will often happily wash itself and then stretch its body out comfortably, perhaps on the couch, with a blissful and beatific look on its face. This is a cat in homeostasis. Since it feels no pressing needs and senses no imminent threats, there is no need to be in a state of survival mode. You may never guess it from the way many people live, but we human beings also evolved, at least in general, to be in a stressed-out, hyper-alert state only when to be in such a state is critical for our survival.

Addictions of all types occur when the brain gets tricked into thinking that there is a survival emergency when no such emergency exists. Addictive drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine actually create many of their effects in the brain by triggering a massive stress response and creating a powerful, although usually unconscious, state of survival mode. (5) Similarly, when you're under the spell of a non-substance addiction, or of any type of behavioral or emotional "drug" you get thrown into a survival-mode state like anxiety for no compelling or objectively persuasive reason. The longer you remain in the state of survival mode, the more the part of the brain that drives this impulse is hesitant to allow you to leave the state because then, it believes, you will be in even more danger. An additional force that tends to draw you back in the survival-mode state, and often keep you there, is the substantial biochemical rewards that such states supply, as we'll see in more detail later. All forms of addiction, whether they are emotional, behavioral, or substance addictions, keep the brain and body in a nearly perpetual state of survival mode—the polar opposite of the more peaceful, balanced state of homeostasis.

One hallmark of the survival-mode states that all addictions utilize is the activation of a stress or "fight-or-flight" response. The stress response is evolutionarily extremely ancient, and is almost identical in all mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Two of the main products of the stress response, adrenaline and cortisol, prepare the body and brain for "fight-or-flight" by, among other effects, increasing blood pressure and widening arteries so that enough blood can flow to the major muscle groups that are critical in any emergency response. The terms "fight-or-flight" and "stress" however, are highly misleading labels for this response. Sexual desire, for example, activates all the components of the so-called "stress" response—but sexual desire is hardly what we would typically think of as an emergency or "fight-or-flight" situation. (6)

The stress response could more appropriately be called the "survival" response, because it apparently evolved to be activated under circumstances that are critical to our survival. The reason sexual desire activates the stress response is that such desire is critical for reproduction, which, in an evolutionary sense, amounts to genetic survival—the survival of the genes that our offspring are vehicles for. As is the case for any organism, our foremost biological objective is to pass our genes on to the next generation. The stress response is triggered whenever our brains decide that our survival or reproductive prospects demand that we act.

Two other brain chemicals that are released as part of the stress response are beta-endorphin and dopamine. Many studies have shown that beta-endorphin is the primary pleasure chemical in the brain–that is, when beta-endorphin is released into our brains, we often experience a feeling of pleasure or euphoria. Although it was long thought that dopamine was the main pleasure chemical in the brain–a claim that is still often heard–the evidence is now overwhelming that this is not, in fact, the case. Instead, what dopamine appears to do is create a "drive state" in the brain that motivates us to move towards whatever we need for survival, such as food. When we crave or desire anything, dopamine release in the brain appears, at least in large part, to create that feeling of desire—a feeling that will often lead to action geared towards pursuing or acquiring the object of desire. But when delectable food, for example, is found and then actually eaten, the pleasure and satisfaction that we feel from eating arises from the release of endorphin in the brain.

Why would endorphin, the primary pleasure chemical in the brain, be released as part of the stress response? At first this seems to make no sense. When the stress response is activated, it often indicates that we're fearing for our lives or are otherwise severely stressed, rather than feeling pleasure. But the apparent reason that endorphins evolved to be part of the stress response is that endorphins, in addition to being pleasure chemicals, are also potent analgesics, or painkillers. (7) Endorphins are opiates that are very closely related chemically to morphine and codeine, and are therefore very handy to have around in an emergency.

Whenever we think about our own evolution, about why our brains and bodies are built the way they are, we always need to remember that for millions of years humans and pre-humans evolved exclusively as hunter-gatherers, surviving only by hunting animals and gathering wild foods, such as fruits, vegetables, roots, and nuts. It was only when agriculture and animal husbandry methods were invented and began to spread about twelve thousand years ago that any other lifestyle became possible for us. And although there has been some evolution in the past twelve thousand years—such as the spread of a genetic mutation that allowed people to digest milk as adults—all of the known genetic changes that have appeared during this time appear to have been relatively minor and superficial. So our brains and bodies are almost exclusively designed for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, although only a tiny percentage of human beings still live, in scattered pockets of the world, as hunter-gatherers.

For a wild animal—or human hunter-gatherer—any physical injury usually represents a true survival threat. Any animal with an injury in the wild becomes highly vulnerable to attack from predators, for example. Endorphins apparently evolved as part of the stress response because they kill the pain from a wound so that the sensation of pain won't be a distraction during an emergency. So if one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were, for instance, attacked by a mountain lion, his primary goal and concern would be to either fight the animal off or escape so that he could survive. Feeling the intense pain from a serious wound would make it far more difficult for him to focus on fighting or escaping to safety. Once the emergency was over, however, and he was no longer under threat, the stress response would subside, endorphin levels would decrease, and he would finally begin to feel the pain from his injury. Then he would be driven to tend to his wounds in whatever way he could.

If endorphin is released during a stress response and is also the brain's primary pleasure chemical, why don't we feel pleasure when we're anxious, in pain, or otherwise severely stressed? There are likely to be a number of reasons for this. But the main explanation is probably that, even though we may not exactly derive a feeling of "pleasure" from the stress response, we do indeed appear to derive a reward from the endorphin release that is part of the stress response, although the reward is primarily unconscious.

What we always need to keep in mind about the brain's "pleasure center" or reward system—the neural system that provides us with a feeling of reward, or pleasure—is that the core of it lies in a deep, primitive region of the brain. The primary components of the reward system are two regions, called the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area. They are buried like two large seeds beneath the cerebral cortex, which covers the brain like a thick, folded sheet (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Two of the key reward areas in the brain are the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area.

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Neuroscientists refer to brain areas lying beneath the cortex as being "subcortical." Because the cerebral cortex is the seat of consciousness, or awareness, whenever we're conscious or aware of certain perceptions, thoughts, or actions, this consciousness generally arises from activity in the cerebral cortex. Anything that happens sub-cortically, or beneath the cortex, on the other hand, seems to almost always be unconscious–it occurs outside of our awareness. If the "pleasure centers" are being activated and rewarded, and they then in turn signal areas in the cerebral cortex about the reward, we may become conscious of the reward and experience a feeling of pleasure. But if the core reward areas don't send a signal to the higher brain regions in the cerebral cortex, we may remain entirely unconscious that we've received a reward at all.

Studies have shown, for example, that people who have drinks that are secretly laced with small amounts of methamphetamine, often strongly prefer this drink to another similar drink without the methamphetamine. (8) But these people are usually entirely unconscious of the rewarding effects they are receiving from the drug-laced drink. In other words, because these people preferentially seek out this particular drink, they are clearly deriving some sort of reward from the methamphetamine, but at the same time they are not conscious or aware that they are receiving such a reward. We believe that whenever a stress response is activated, people similarly receive a reward from the dopamine and endorphin that are released as part of the response, but that they are typically unconscious or unaware of the reward. Furthermore, we believe that many people unconsciously seek out the biochemical rewards that stressful states will always supply. (9)

Even calling these reward areas "pleasure centers" turns out to be highly misleading. Reward areas in the brain began to be called "pleasure centers" partly because brain imaging studies showed that these areas are activated by various pleasurable activities. When we eat, laugh, have sex, stare at beautiful faces, listen to good music, or are given money, for instance, a number of reward areas in the brain become strongly activated (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Brain imaging studies have shown that various pleasurable activities and behaviors—such as eating, having sex, looking at beautiful faces, receiving money, and listening to especially pleasing music—activate reward areas in the brain and release beta-endorphin.

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But researchers have also found more recently that these same reward areas—the so-called "pleasure centers"—are also activated during various painful and distressing states (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Many brain-imaging studies have also shown that various types of pain and distress also activate reward areas in the brain and release endorphins. Examples include: sustained pain in a jaw muscle, burns, electric shocks, painful thoughts from the past, and mutilating or "cutting" oneself.

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One brain imaging study, for example, showed that sustained pain in a jaw muscle activates various reward areas and also triggers the release of substantial amounts of endorphin in these areas. Burns and electric shocks produce increases in endorphin in reward areas that can be comparable to receiving a high dose of morphine. It has also been known for at least two decades that large amounts of endorphin are released into the brain and body when self-mutilating "cutters" cut themselves.

Furthermore, it isn't only physical pain or distress that triggers a stress response and endorphin release in reward areas, but also emotional pain and distress. Emotional pain and physical pain actually create very similar responses in the brain, and various studies have shown that the experience of emotional pain, just like the experience of physical pain, activates reward areas and triggers the release of endorphins into the brain. When people with severe depression are told to think of an emotionally painful thought, for example, the thought itself can release large quantities of endorphin into their brains. When war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder are shown films with reenactments of war scenes that trigger their own war traumas, many of them have powerful emotional responses—clearly representing survival-mode states—that release endorphin at very high levels. (10)

Dopamine, the neurotransmitter of desire or craving, is also released during a stress response, probably for at least two reasons. Although dopamine creates a "drive state" in the brain that compels us to move towards food, for example, it also provides a drive state that compels us to move away from danger—such as a prowling mountain lion. Dopamine also plays a critical role in initiating the muscle movements that are pivotal in any emergency response. Enormous amounts of dopamine are released into reward areas of the brain during survival-mode states like anxiety. In the most extreme cases, the dopamine levels triggered by anxiety can be equivalent to the amounts of dopamine released after taking powerful stimulants such as methamphetamine.

Dopamine and endorphin, in addition to being released by painful or stressful states, are also thought to be the two most important neurochemicals involved in drug addiction and alcoholism. Addictive drugs dramatically raise dopamine levels in the brain–often to about ten times their normal levels—and also typically trigger a substantial release of endorphins, especially during the first few uses of the drug. Like painful and distressing states, addictive drugs throw the brain, in effect, into survival mode. And so pain, distress, and addictive drugs all release dopamine and endorphin into the brain as a consequence of states of survival mode.

If the dopamine and endorphin levels in our brains decline below a certain point, we feel terrible. We may lack the motivation to eat. We may lose our sex drive or even have trouble getting up out of bed. These brain chemicals, however, can not only be derived from survival-mode states, but also from healthy, homeostatic states—from sensual touch, physical exercise, healthy social connection, or from making love, eating healthy food, or simply being fully and vitally alive. But many people still find themselves repeatedly slipping into painful, stressful non-homeostatic states and getting their dopamine and endorphin payoffs by self-abusively lingering in those states. It's almost as if some people make an unconscious decision that being happy and fulfilled is an option that simply is not available to them—they won't be able to have fulfilling relationships, or a healthy, satisfying life in general, and so they will have to get their payoffs from pain, distress, and misery.

We can therefore get our dopamine and endorphin payoffs in two general ways: either from states of homeostasis or states of survival mode. Payoffs that arise from homeostasis and payoffs that arise from states of survival mode affect the brain very differently, however. When we're receiving "drug" payoffs from any state of survival mode, we become out of balance. The brain's biochemistry spikes past the normal, balanced state, and then will inevitably drop, or crash, far beneath that balanced state sometime later. Being in homeostasis never leads to such a rebound. Deep meditation, for example, which is probably the purest state of homeostasis we have access to, will never cause a rebound effect in the brain.

You could think of the difference between healthy payoffs and "drug" payoffs as being comparable to eating a balanced, complete meal, perhaps lean protein with some fruits and vegetables, and sitting down at the table and eating a handful of chocolate bars. In both cases you're eating and receiving biochemical rewards from the act of eating.

But in the latter case, the chocolate and sugar will cause various aspects of your brain's biochemistry to spike and become distinctly out of balance. All addictive payoffs are like that. They cause your brain's biochemistry to surge, and that creates an imbalance that will keep you swaying back and forth on a pendulum—a boom and then a bust, a spike and then a crash. Healthy, homeostatic payoffs, on the other hand, will help keep you in a relatively steady, balanced state—physically, biochemically, and emotionally.

We believe that the only reason physically or emotionally self-destructive behaviors exist at all is that they supply a covert biochemical reward, primarily in the form of endorphin. In any behavioral, psychological, or emotional dysfunction, out-of-balance, survival-mode states such as anxiety or emotional pain are used–just like a drug–to derive a biochemical payoff. Thus nearly all psychological dysfunctions in human beings are ultimately due to the somewhat perverse fact that endorphin is released not only when we feel pleasure, but also when we experience pain.

The human psyche is thus typically fractured by two primary "pulls" or magnetic forces (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The human psyche is pulled in opposing directions by two "magnetic" forces: one arising from the True Self, which supplies healthy payoffs from various homeostatic states; and another arising from the false self, which supplies unhealthy or "drug" payoffs from out-of-balance states such as excessive craving, anxiety, anger or emotional pain.

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The central force comes from what we call the True Self, which can be seen as the center of the psyche. The magnetic pull from the True Self arises because of payoffs that are released by healthy, homeostatic states, such as love, emotional connection, healthy eating, or healthy sex. These are states in which we are clearly not in survival mode–we don't feel our survival to be at risk and are enjoying ourselves, receiving copious amounts of healthy endorphin payoffs. The opposing force—which arises from the false self, or the addiction persona—provides biochemical payoffs from non-homeostatic, out-of-balance, survival-mode states, such as unnecessary pain or anxiety.

The competing payoffs from the false self and the True Self create a split in the psyche. While the false self, the addiction persona, unconsciously pursues survival-mode states to derive unhealthy "drug" payoffs, the True Self pursues pleasurable, homeostatic, non-survival-mode states to derive healthy biochemical payoffs. The biochemical payoffs released by survival-mode states ultimately underlie, we believe, nearly all unnecessary human misery and suffering. All addiction, all dysfunction, comes from compulsively deriving biochemical payoffs from painful, distressing, out-of-balance states. In the chapters that follow, we'll show how the false self, or addiction persona, is constructed by using these basic building blocks of addiction.

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ENDNOTES CHAPTER 1

(5): Koob, G. F. 2008. A Role for Brain Stress Systems in Addiction. Neuron 59, 11-34; Montgomery, J. & Ritchey, T. 2008. The Answer Model Theory. Santa Monica, CA: TAM Books

(6): Nesse, R. M., & Young, E. A. 2000. Evolutionary Origins and Functions of the Stress Response. Encyclopedia of Stress 2, 79-84

(7): Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.) 1991. Principles of Neural Science, Third Edition. New York: Elsevier pp. 397-398

(8): Hart, C. L., Ward, A. S., Haney, M., Foltin, R. W., & Fischman, M. W. 2001. Methamphetamine Self-administration by Humans. Psychopharmacology 157, 75-81

(9): Montgomery, J. & Ritchey, T. 2008. The Answer Model Theory. Santa Monica, CA: TAM Books. pp. 9-12

(10): Pitman, R. K., van der Kolk, B. A., Orr, S. P., & Greenberg, M. S. 1990. Naloxone-reversible Analgesic Response to Combat-related Stimuli in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A pilot study. Arch General Psychiatry 47(6), 541-544

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CHAPTER 2:
FOOD, SEX AND CRAVING

While it may be a challenge to see how anxiety or worry could possibly be rewarding, everyone knows that eating and having sex can make us feel very good. And there's really no reason why eating and sex shouldn't be completely pleasurable, why they can't be almost entirely free of conflict, guilt, or regret. But primarily because of the highly unnatural conditions that surround food and sex in modern life, many people relate to them in ways that are out of balance and, in our terminology, clearly addictive.

Pornography, for example, is something we are simply not well equipped biologically to deal with. Nothing in our evolutionary heritage prepares us for the barrage and potpourri of highly stimulating images, often specifically catered to our own unique tastes and desires that pornography presents us with. Hence it's very easy for pornography to throw some people out of balance—to lead them to spend hours watching it, at the expense of the rest of their lives, and then to either regret that lost time, or feel shame about it, or have it drive them into poor decisions with real-life sexual partners.

Addiction operates in two main ways. It derives biochemical payoffs simply by creating or perpetuating inherently unpleasant, distressing states, such as anxiety, and then generating dysfunctional payoffs directly from those states. It also, however, takes activities or behaviors that are inherently pleasant, that could otherwise be almost entirely pleasurable, and contaminates them by introducing unnecessary pain, distress, and states of survival mode. This latter dynamic is what happens in any food or sex addiction.

The key step in food and sex addiction is compulsive craving or desire. Various studies have shown that the feeling of craving—just the thought of craving something or someone—triggers, just like an addictive drug, the release of both dopamine and beta-endorphin in the brain. So the feeling of craving can potentially be used, although typically unconsciously, to derive a drug payoff. Engaging in a sexual fantasy, for instance—just the act of creating arousing images in one's imagination—will generate significant biochemical payoffs. Instead of taking a hit from a crack pipe, you can work yourself into a frenzied state of craving and just let the self-generated endorphin payoffs percolate through your brain.

A sex addict, for example, will get an extended drug payoff from obsessing, often for hours or days, about a particular fantasy. But the vast majority of the time, the actual sex act, whatever it might be, will be a disappointment. When any of us persist in obsessing about some intense desire, sexual or otherwise, we need to somehow justify the obsession, and typically that justification involves over-valuation of the object of desire. Consequently, if and when we attain that desired object, it will inevitably fall short of the illusion we've created to justify the craving. Part of the reason this pattern is so common is that if extended craving is the lead-in to any act, the craving for the act will almost always provide more drug payoffs than the act itself. In a similar sense, the anticipation artfully created in a Hitchcock movie will generate more tension and drama, and release more adrenaline in the viewer, than just showing the murder and moving on to another scene. Many substance abusers will tell you that the highest high they experience is often the high they get before they take their drug. It's the craving, the drama, imagining the buy, planning the buy, going to the buy spot, that often provides the biggest drug hit.

An intense craving or obsession sends a signal to the brain that you really need something, and when you need or want something that badly, the unconscious mind interprets the object of your desire as a survival need. Consequently, any intense craving will throw us into survival mode. If a hunter-gatherer is obsessed about something, it will usually be about something critical to survival, such as a game animal that he or she needs as food. But in the modern world, we may, for example, meet a potential romantic partner and begin to think about that person obsessively. When we obsess about someone in this way, usually it's because this particular person throws us into some sort of survival-mode state—they disconnect us, remind us of early dysfunctional relationships, early traumas, they trigger some strong need in us, make us feel vulnerable and "less than." We need them and their attention—we have to have it or we're going to die! That's the message that obsession sends to the brain's survival centers. And the brain responds by throwing us into survival mode.

The compulsive nature of this kind of obsession, as with all addiction, comes about because the state of survival mode has such a strong magnetic pull. It keeps pulling us back, as if our survival really were at risk, and as if the continual emergency situation required our complete, obsessive focus and attention. When the dynamic reaches its most fevered and dysfunctional pitch, we allow ourselves to be inappropriately thrown into survival mode for one primary reason: to receive the drug payoff that all survival-mode states supply.

Being obsessed with a potential romantic partner is not peaceful or even necessarily very pleasant, but it sure beats being depressed and hopeless. Obsession however, like all addiction, only creates the illusion of vitality and aliveness. In all likelihood, we're obsessing about something that we're projecting onto the other person, something that isn't even real—we're obsessing about an illusion. That illusion further feeds the obsession and then the obsession requires the illusion to sustain itself. This is the hall of mirrors that every type of addiction draws us into.

Another truly insidious consequence of excessive craving is that it frequently leads us into very poor choices. These choices are "non-homeostatic" choices, in that they arise from a false state of survival mode and end up driving us even further out of balance, further away from homeostasis. After lingering in that state of craving for hours or days, we may end up making regrettable choices like eating a gallon of ice cream or sleeping with our best friend's spouse. Then after we commit the unfortunate act, we'll typically experience negative emotions like guilt, shame, and regret. Guilt, regret and shame are all different versions of emotional pain, and emotional pain releases endorphin into the brain. Thus the dysfunctional, non-homeostatic, payoffs begin to multiply—not only do we get them from the excessive craving, but from the negative emotional states that we feel after we've made the poor decision that the excessive craving drove us to. This is the cycle of all addiction—swinging from one out-of-balance state to another.

Contrast the previous scenario with a healthier, more functional one. You meet someone you really like and are immediately attracted to. You get to know them, you talk about your lives and experiences and feelings, and begin to develop an authentic emotional connection, which adds to the physical attraction. You develop true feelings for this person, but you don't idealize them—you don't create unwarranted fantasies in your mind, you just stay connected to what you actually feel about them. At some point, one that feels just right, the two of you end up making love, and it feels great, it feels satisfying physically, emotionally, and spiritually. There is no regret, no shame, no guilt. The decision to have sex was well considered, and it wasn't motivated by an over-driven craving artificially heightened by an illusory fantasy about the other person. This is a homeostatic relationship to sex—it is sex that is not driven by an artificial state of survival mode.

In a similar sense, there's also no reason that any of us should have any negative feelings about food and our relationship to it. In practice, of course, it can be very tricky. But we can have a purely homeostatic relationship to food, and to anything else, by simply being aware of how addictive dynamics operate.

Anorexia, for example, is essentially a chronic state of starvation, or physical hunger. Such a state of hunger will activate the stress response and trigger the release of dopamine and endorphin in the brain. In addition to chronic hunger, anorexics will almost always create a‚"drama‚"surrounding the decisions about whether or not they should eat, what they should eat, and about the fear of what they might look like after they eat. Any emotional "drama‚" will also stimulate the stress response and trigger the release of dopamine and endorphin in the brain. Thus the anorexic, like any other addict, or any other neurotic, becomes thrown further out of balance by continually deriving dysfunctional, non-homeostatic payoffs. (11)

Binge eaters will typically marinate in their craving for particular foods for hours or even days. As with all addiction, part of the driving force is the presence of unnatural conditions we're not well prepared for biologically. Such conditions can often trigger us into unhealthy patterns. In this case, the unnatural condition is the dizzying and alluring array of stimulating food items that are almost always available to us in modern life, and that frequently have unnatural effects on our biochemistry, sending us profoundly out of balance. But cravings for food are also often driven simply by an unconscious desire to receive a biochemical payoff from the craving itself—a desire to use the feeling of craving as a drug. At some point the excessive craving may throw you so far out of balance that you succumb to it—you eat the entire gallon of ice cream. Then you feel physically ill, ashamed, regretful—and receive more dysfunctional payoffs, and are thrown even further out of balance.

Not uncommonly a binge eater is also bulimic. The ride on the pendulum in this case would typically begin with uncontrolled, compulsive eating, which was probably prepared by hours of extreme craving. This manic bout of eating will be followed by purging—which is physically highly distressing and unbalancing—and then by the feelings of shame that will almost always accompany this pattern. At some point later, the shame will eventually shift back into an intense craving, which will lead to more uncontrolled eating, and the continuation of the cycle. This is the pendulum of non-homeostasis, the rhythm of all addiction. And the further any of us go into out-of-balance, survival-mode states, the harder it becomes to come back into a balanced state of homeostasis, so we can derive biochemical payoffs in healthy ways. Thus the addictive cycle is perpetuated.

Another version of this same boom and bust pattern–the exciting, overly-stimulating, and usually poorly-advised eating and sex that's often followed by regret and shame—is seen with chronic anxiety. Anxiety and depression are almost always co-morbid—that is, a person who suffers from chronic anxiety will also almost always suffer from chronic depression. (12) A person with chronic anxiety is continually triggered into the survival-mode state of anxiety, usually for reasons that are not the slightest bit life-threatening. The state of anxiety then triggers the release of stress hormones that will provide a drug payoff to the brain. And the lingering state of anxiety itself will then continue to trick the brain into thinking that a true survival emergency really does exist. The perception by the brain that a state of emergency exists will therefore tend to reinforce the state of anxiety, thus delivering more drug payoffs, and thus perpetuating the whole cycle.

You may be worried, for example, that a large asteroid is at some point–some point very soon, perhaps–going to hit your neighborhood. And, who knows, you could be right. But is there any point in worrying about it? No. Still, the worry creates anxiety, which triggers a stress response and delivers a drug payoff. Now you're in a very anxious state, literally fearing for your survival and that of your family. Maybe this particular worry becomes too silly to worry about anymore. But, alas, there are plenty of other worries that can take its place, many of them with at least somewhat plausible justifications. Maybe your house will be destroyed by a fire. Maybe your children will be kidnapped. There's always something you could be anxious about.

The anxiety may cause you to act in ways that makes whatever you're anxious about less likely to happen—like clearing brush around your house to reduce the fire risk. That's a very functional response to the anxiety. But after you've cleared the brush, and taken other reasonable preventative actions, there's really no point in worrying anymore. What we're suggesting is that the underlying reason for the anxiety, in almost all cases, is simply the drive to get a hit of a drug. It's an unconscious way of putting your mouth on the crack pipe of anxiety and inhaling.

But no one can remain in a constant state of anxiety forever. Driving the stress system so intensely for long periods would begin to do enormous damage to both the brain and the body, and eventually would kill you. If meth addicts went on drug binges continuously and indefinitely, they wouldn't survive for very long. Maybe you've been almost continuously anxious for three weeks straight, using your false, and perhaps frankly absurd, justifications for all the anxiety you've been creating in your life. You've been getting the anxiety drug for three weeks. But at some point you have to stop.

And what happens when you stop?

In effect, you withdraw the drug from your system, just like a substance abuser who temporarily stops using methamphetamine or cocaine. Your previously over-driven stress system will now suddenly be driven only moderately. But during the previous anxiety binge, your brain had adjusted to the drug being delivered at very high levels almost constantly. So when your anxiety levels finally begin to decrease, a form of "drug withdrawal" will set in. The symptoms of depression are actually almost identical to the symptoms of drug withdrawal, and the sudden withdrawal of any drug will typically trigger depression. We believe that in the great majority of cases, that's what depression amounts to—the consequence of withdrawing dysfunctional biochemical payoffs that have been released by states of survival mode.

This isn't to say however, that you won't be receiving dysfunctional payoffs from the depressed state, because you will. One almost universal feature of depression is the almost constant reinforcement of emotionally painful thoughts. Depressed people are particularly prone to ruminating about painful events in the past, going over and over those events in their minds, obsessively recycling their feelings of shame, anger and regret. And as we've seen, painful thoughts will produce biochemical payoffs, particularly endorphin, in the brain.

We believe that all psychological dysfunctions follow this same pattern. You're typically hoisted up onto one end of the pendulum of non-homeostasis (Figure 5) by using some sort of stimulant.

Figure 5: The pendulum of non-homeostasis suggests that a back-and-forth emotional and physiological pattern underlies all psychological dysfunctions. All the emotional states on the right side of the pendulum act as stimulants or "uppers‚" and all the emotional states on the left side of the pendulum act as depressants or "downers". When people are stuck on this pendulum, they swing from one out-of-balance, survival-mode state to another rather than remaining in homeostasis. This figure, for completeness, shows additional types of addictive patterns and conditions that will be discussed later in this book. These patterns are also discussed in more detail in The Answer Model Theory.

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It could be a literal drug stimulant, such as methamphetamine, or it could be anxiety or anger, or excessive craving for food or sex, which act operationally in the brain as "emotional" stimulants. When the stimulant, or "upper‚" is withdrawn, it will create a depressed state and lead to a swing to the other side of the pendulum. The dysfunctional payoffs from the depressed end of the pendulum are more comparable to "downers" or depressants, and are typically released from painful thoughts that are obsessively repeated and recycled. We believe that this same basic dysfunctional pattern drives all psychological dysfunctions.

How does addiction hold us in such a potent grip while it does such awful things to us? By playing on our survival instincts, by tricking us into thinking that our survival is at risk when it is not. Addiction holds a toy gun to our heads and we play along as if the gun were real. Then addiction can have its way with us. Once we're afraid, addiction can keep holding the button of our fear while it creates whatever illusion is necessary to allow it access to the drugs that it seeks.

Addiction is wily and it is cruel. But there's nothing real about it. Although addiction manifests as if it were a parasite, it is a parasite with no bodily form and no real intention. Addiction is a blind weaver of illusion, an unnatural pattern that tends to become activated when we're placed in circumstances that we're not biologically prepared for. Addiction can be visualized, for simplicity, as a separate self, or even as devil or demon. But in reality it is only a trick of the brain. It ultimately arises from a simple evolutionary quirk that at some point in the distant past allowed endorphins to be released by pain. With the consciousness of how unnatural environments affect us, however, and with the knowledge of how the patterns that cause us so much pain are activated, we can overcome any addiction.

Whatever keeps us unnecessarily out of balance promotes addiction and dysfunction, and whatever keeps us in balance, in homeostasis, promotes health and well-being. It's really that simple. Does it sound boring to be "balanced" and "healthy"? It isn't. Being balanced provides true excitement, an excitement about being alive and about being connected to yourself, to the people you love, and to your true intentions in this world. An out-of-balance excitement is driven by a false intensity—it is exaggerated‚"pushed"‚ "claimed‚" just to get more adrenaline, more stress hormones, more drug. And when you push it too far in one direction, there will inevitably be a crash in the other direction. It's a basic law of the brain's biochemistry.

Any exaggerated intensity will activate an intense stress response, which will generate a lot of dopamine, for example. The brain responds to the increased dopamine by reducing the number of dopamine receptors, lest all the electricity generated by the pairing of dopamine with its receptor become toxic to the brain and potentially kill brain cells. Then, when the emotional intensity and stress response come back down, as they inevitably will–because anything too prolonged would be lethal—the dopamine levels will come down also. But the dopamine receptor levels will still be low from the excitement binge. (13) So until the brain can adjust and make more dopamine receptors, there will be low amounts of dopamine transmission—low amounts of the activity generated by dopamine binding to its receptor. And that will mean low energy, listlessness, an unnaturally muted desire to live, to experience. It's an out-of-balance state on the other side of the pendulum, the depressed end that necessarily must accompany the out-of-balance state on the other end, the manic or over-stimulated side. So this pattern is simply inescapable once the drug stimulant has been introduced.

Addiction hoists us onto that pendulum, and the ride always leads to more pain. Homeostasis is a smooth orbit, with plenty of excitement as well, but excitement that is real, that is organic, that comes out of and serves the wholeness of the self. When desire, for example, is authentic, when it's felt in the moment and is not exaggerated by an illusion, there's no reason to think that it's at all unhealthy. But addiction becomes disconnected in that it takes part of us and exaggerates it, stretches it, uses it to make us dizzy and disoriented. If you have a naturally high libido or sex drive, for example, the addiction persona will try to take that high libido and make a sex addiction out of it. The sex addiction will then take you on that pendulum, with the inevitable wild swings and the renewed, and often more intense, feeling of the "void" the emptiness, the deep hurt. A charge that is generated in such an unbalanced way will have a counter-charge, a swing back of the pendulum. The void is due to the disconnection that addiction feeds on and then consequently worsens. Addiction pulls you apart; it disconnects you from yourself.

On the other hand, picture an authentic, peak experience. You've trained for years as an athlete, or a musician, and during a competition or performance, you reach a state of "flow‚" where you're doing what you've been highly trained to do, and don't care what anyone thinks of you; you're just alive, in the moment, intensely and effortlessly focused on what you're doing. You have that exquisite feeling of joy and bliss and aliveness, of fulfilling all of your potential in that moment. You're serving a purpose, pursuing a passion, making a difference in other people's lives. Or you may feel a moment of deep connection with a romantic partner, or an intense moment of creativity, when you think of something original, or find a way to express something you've felt but have never been able to express before. Maybe you just have a random moment where you feel intensely alive and deeply at peace, deeply happy.

The True Self, which arises from the homeostatic drive, is naturally driven towards states of flow, towards purpose, meaning, connectedness, and present moment awareness. But if that drive is blocked or thwarted, the addictive drive tries to mimic it. Unlike addictive patterns, authentic states of flow typically have no negative repercussions at all. Quite the opposite. They not only create intense sensations in the moment, but also memories and experiences that will sustain you in the future, when you've fallen out of balance, when you don't feel so hopeful, peaceful, or vitally alive. They are connected to the deepest parts of you.

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