If you would like to submit a question or make a comment, please email Dr. Taylor at thebrain@arlenetaylor.org.
I have no idea about people in Las Vegas. I do know that alcohol and gambling is a bad combination. Estimates are that alcohol reaches your brain within 5 minutes of taking a first drink and within 10 minutes already is interfering with neuron pathways that the brain uses to communicate and process information. The brain considers alcohol a toxin and releases dopamine, the feel better chemical, to compensate. The relaxed, confident feeling dopamine provides does not last long, however, and reasoning and memory may already be impaired. By 20 minutes into drinking, the liver begins to metabolize alcohol at the rate of 1 ounce per hour. The CDC reported that due to gender biological differences, after drinking the same amount of alcohol, women tend to have higher blood alcohol levels and the effects last longer than in men. When you take in alcohol faster than the body can metabolize or dispose of it, you become intoxicated: in California that is a Blood Alcohol Level of 0.08 percent. The third-leading preventable cause of death in the US, 261 individuals die each day from alcohol-related causes including alcohol dementia and cancers. 30 deaths a day occur just from vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers. Alcohol does have long-term effects on the brain.
You question gave no indication of how you identify of “bad habit” nor the nature of the one you are trying to quit. Naturally, there are guidelines for specific types of dysfunctional behaviors. Not knowing this information, I will suggest a couple of generic strategies. First, recognize that everything begins in the brain: functional behviors and dysfunctional behaviors. Second, recovery strategies begin in the brain. Start by clearly identifying how the “bad habit” is interfering with your life and health. Trying to “quit a bad habit,” especially one that is giving your brain some type of a reward, often results in your thinking about it even more. Identify a healthier replacement behavior. Put your time, thought, and energy into building that new behavior. When you think about the old behavior, immediately point your thoughts and actions to the new replacement behavior. Seek help from professional healthcare personnel if it is an addictive behavior.
The bottom line is that actions and behaviors follow mindset and thoughts. What people tend to think about can become an action or behavior more quickly than one might realize. Stop thinking and talking about the behavior you wish to alter. Think and talk about the replacement behavior and activate willpower to help you do this.
Caffeine is the most commonly used drug worldwide. It belongs to a class of drugs known as central nervous system (CNS) stimulants, designed to treat fatigue and drowsiness. Caffeine peaks in the blood anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours after ingestion. Caffeine is able to cross the blood-brain barrier, and once in the brain it alters brain function. The FDA recommends no more than 400 mg of caffeine per day per adult. Caffeine can interfere with sleep. Its half-life is typically 5-6 hours. If you ingest 200 mg of caffeine at 2pm, 100 mg is still in your system at 7-8 pm. Oral contraceptives and pregnancy double the half-life. Caffeine’s half-life is longer in children than in adults and may be up to 30 hours in a newborn. Caffeine taken after individuals have ingested alcohol does not sober them up or make them fit to drive. It may make them more alert temporarily, but it does not reverse the poor judgment and other effects associated with alcohol.
My brain’s opinion is that it could. You may want to check the Cellular Memory Q&As for additional information. Some have used the connection between dependence on alcohol in males whose fathers were alcoholics as one example. Whether or not the sons were raised with their fathers, the boys run something like an 80% risk of becoming alcoholic in adulthood, if they choose to drink.
When the brain is deprived of the substance, activity, process, person, or other factor to which it has become accustomed it often lets its displeasure surface in the form of a craving—a conscious or subconscious demand for immediate gratification. Metaphorically compare them to a 4-year-old child whose mother has just said “no cookies before dinner,” and who has become accustomed to grabbing cookies at his/her own pleasure.
There is a pain/pleasure center in the emotional brain layer. It wants what it wants, when it wants, and in the way in wants. When you experience a craving, remind yourself that you taught your brain to use nicotine, and now you need to retrain it. That will take some time, energy, and consistency. Once you create a picture of what is happening here, your fear of cravings can diminish through understanding.
Identify factors that trigger your cravings. Think of this process as obtaining valuable insurance. The more triggers you identify, the more pre-planned strategies for dealing with them you can develop.
Expect cravings periodically, although most are temporary and short-lived. In some ways they resemble waves of the ocean as they rise, crest, and fall. Plan proactive responses and/or preventive activities for specific situations. When a craving does occur, implement one of your preplanned strategies. For example:
Validate your success as you resist the craving. Take charge of your metaphorical 4-year-old. Place the child in the passenger seat (e.g., children are not meant to drive—adults are) and drive your own bus!
It depends on the brain and on the way in which the drug interacts with it. Every action has a reaction. Each drug is designed to produce a reaction. Hopefully, the reaction is a helpful one; but even necessary medications tend to have some undesirable side effects. The reaction depends on what it does when it binds to receptor molecules on the surface of the cell and gets inside. Think of the drug as a key and the receptor molecule as a lock. The drug must find a lock that fits its key. Once inside, the drug triggers the cell in some way or other. It may release a brain chemical that will give you a reaction. It may make you sleepy or wake you up. It may trigger the Brain Reward System to release dopamine to make you feel better—that over time can turn into an addictive behavior. Some can trigger a mental disorder such as a psychosis, and some can eventually kill you. Just remember that when you make choices, every action has a reaction.
There is an old saying, “Every pathology has an ecology,” meaning that dysfunctional behaviors do not come out of a vacuum. Here is one metaphor that might help describe this phenomenon. Imagine that you are holding a glass of lemonade and someone bumps into you. You exclaim: “Hey, you made me spill my lemonade.” Is that true? Probably not. The person who bumped into you triggered a movement that resulted in you spilling something. You only spilled lemonade because that was what was inside your glass. If water had been in your glass, you would have spilled water. If chocolate milk, you would have spilled that. You would have spilled whatever was inside your glass.
Think of yourself as a “glass.” When you experience trauma or an event that could be disruptive or have a communication misunderstanding, or something triggers unhappy memories from childhood, think of yourself as having just been bumped into. What spills out is whatever is in your “glass.” If your glass contains “low levels of Emotional Intelligence (EQ),” it will spill out JOT behaviors such as Jumping to conclusions, Overreacting, and Taking things personally—behaviors that will likely give you negative outcomes that may involve “messes” that will take some doing to clean up (if they even can be cleaned up).
If your glass contains “high levels of EQ,” it will spill out behaviors that will likely avoid or minimize conflict, be reasonable, and that will result in positive outcomes. Your choice. So, no person makes you exhibit dysfunctional behaviors. The behaviors that you exhibit—that come out of your glass—are ones that were already in there.
It can take half a dozen tries before you develop sufficient skills to change this behavior on a long-term basis. Some people do better when they attend a live-in program to get a jump start on developing new skills, and/or participate in a nicotine-replacement program.
The concept is very simple: you retrain your brain to function effectively without nicotine. The process can be very difficult because your brain has become accustomed to receiving short-term rewards on a very frequent basis. Nevertheless, you can do it—a million Americans quit smoking every year!
Remember to stay on your guard! Maintain a healthy respect for the addictive process within the brain. Avoid getting cocky or smug about the gains you’ve made (e.g., half of all nicotine relapses occur within the first 2 weeks, the majority within 6 months). If you experience a temporary relapse learn from your mistakes. View it as a blip on the screen of your recovery, clean up the pieces, and get right back on the program. Picture yourself actually being successful! Your rewards will be as unique as your brain… the sky’s the limit!
Yes, that is one way of looking at it. Addictive behaviors involve a form of self-medication designed to provide you with some type of gratification. The goal of self-medication (conscious or subconscious) is to alter your own neurochemistry and provide you with some type of gratification. While self-medication has undoubtedly saved lives and prevented suicides in the short term there are solutions that have fewer deleterious side effects in the long term.
The perceived gratification or reward is typically in the form of pleasure, avoidance from boredom, or in the reduction of pain (emotional or physical). Naturally the reward can take a variety of forms and can be different for different brains. For example, self-medication can provide:
Direct self-medication can occur with a substance that binds to receptor molecules on surface of cells. In this case there is usually a physical discomfort that is experienced when a person abruptly stops self-medicating with the substance (withdrawal). Drugs tend to disrupt functions of the brain’s frontal cortex where risks and benefits are analyzed, decisions are made, and conscience and willpower are activated.
Examples of direct self-medication include:
Drug use can actually alter blood flow patterns in the brain during the initial drug exposure, triggers pleasure, and creates a desire to repeat the behavior that produces the reward (reinforcement). The drug may disrupt frontal lobe function (thinking layer) directly and/or damage crucial dopamine pathways in the midbrain (action layer), information from which is transferred to the frontal cortex through altered neurochemical pathways. Drug use can also alter the distribution and density of dopamine receptors in the frontal cortex.
Eventually drug use can result in the disruption of frontal lobe capacity related to reason and control (e.g., appears to influence the individual to overvalue the reward, undervalue the risk, and fail to learn from repeated errors. A similar pattern can be seen in other disorders not classically associated with drug use (e.g., obsessive/compulsive disorder, poor choices).
Indirect self-medication can be accomplished through behaviors or actions that trigger changes in the brain’s neurochemistry (e.g., sexual compulsions, eating disorders, gambling). The addiction is really to the person’s own internal substances. There is some anxiety when the person stops acting out but not the same type of physical discomfort experienced during withdrawal from a direct substance. Examples of indirect self-medication include:
Yes, Taylor has a DVD entitled “Freedom from Old Behaviors.”
Think of your brain as a pot of chemical stew. That’s really what it is. In the physical world you can have three pots on the stove with identical basic ingredients in each pot, and dramatically impact the way each tastes just by the seasonings you add (e.g., Minestrone, Curry, Asian).
All human beings continually self-medicate so that their brain’s chemical stew feels comfortable (or at least familiar to them). Sometimes the self-medication runs away with itself and becomes addictive behavior.
Direct self-medication: human being can achieve direct self-medication by ingesting any substance that binds to receptor molecules on surface of cells. With direct self- medication there may be a period of physical discomfort when the person abruptly stops self-medicating with the substance (withdrawal).
Many drugs used for self-medication (especially street drugs) can disrupt functions of the brain’s frontal cortex where risks and benefits are analyzed, decisions are made, and conscience and willpower are activated.
Examples of substances often used to achieve direct self-medication include:
Drug use can actually alter blood flow patterns in the brain during the initial drug exposure, triggers pleasure, and creates a desire to repeat the behavior that produces the reward (reinforcement). The drug may disrupt frontal lobe function (thinking layer) directly and/or damage crucial dopamine pathways in the midbrain (action layer), information from which is transferred to the frontal cortex through altered neurochemical pathways.
Drug use can also alter the distribution and density of dopamine receptors in the frontal cortex. Prolonged drug use can result in the disruption of frontal lobe capacity related to reason and control (e.g., appears to influence the individual to overvalue the reward, undervalue the risk, and fail to learn from repeated errors. A similar pattern can be seen in other disorders not classically associated with drug use (e.g., obsessive/compulsive disorder, poor choices).
Indirect self-medication: human beings can self-medicate indirection through a variety of behaviors or actions that trigger changes in the brain’s neurochemistry (e.g., exercise, sexual compulsions, eating disorders, gambling). The addiction is really to the person’s own internal substances that are released in the process of the behavior or action.
The individual can experience some level of anxiety if he/she ceases to exhibit the behavior or action, but this is not usually the same type of physical discomfort experienced during withdrawal from a direct substance.
Examples of internal substances released during specific behaviors/actions that are engage in to trigger indirect self-medication include:
