Author Archive

Fight Against Alcoholism

October 29th, 2022 | Blog 29th, October at 12:53 PM

Yahoo news: Matthew Perry said he attended 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, went to rehab 15 times, and underwent 14 surgeries over the course of his drug addiction.
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Hitting Rock Bottom and Losing It All- Robert Downey Jnr’s battle gainst addiction

October 29th, 2022 | Blog 29th, October at 12:53 PM

For the next few years, Downey Jr. cycled in and out of rehab for addiction in state institutions throughout California. In 1999, he was sentenced to 36 months in state prison, where he spent 12 months serving time before being paroled. He was arrested two more times within eight months before being sent to rehab for six months at Wavelengths International, one of many court-mandated addiction treatment centers he visited over the years. For Robert Downey, Jr., this period of his life was what he calls his “rock bottom,” when he reached his lowest point of addiction and lost everything. His wife left him and took their son. He was fired from his acting job on the show Ally McBeal. He was in massive debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. It was then that he decided it was time to take a year and fully address his substance abuse. It was time for recovery. Read More

Views of Anna Lembke on Addiction

October 29th, 2022 | Blog 29th, October at 11:49 AM

Views of Anna Lembke on Addiction (Anna Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.)

The pain-pleasure balancing act
One of the most exciting findings in neuroscience in the past half century or so, is that pain and pleasure are co-located, which means the same parts of the brain that process pleasure also process pain, and they work like opposite sides of a balance. So if you were to imagine that in your brain, there’s a little teeter-totter like in a kid’s playground. And that when we experience something pleasurable that teeter-totter tips to the side of pleasure and something painful it tips to the side of pain.

Dopamine-deficit states
The central sort of takeaway from the way that our brains restore homeostasis, which is not just to bring dopamine back to level baseline – because we’re always secreting a tonic baseline level of dopamine – but actually to bring it below baseline. So, that’s really the key neurobiological concept that I want people to grasp. It’s not just like you use up the dopamine you have and then you’ve run out and you’re even again. The way that the brain restores homeostasis is to go below baseline and put us in this dopamine deficit state, which is essentially akin to depression.
https://www.annalembke.com/