Understanding Addiction
One part of our brain is extremely advanced (the prefrontal cortex) – this is the part that allows us to do all sorts of complex things other animals can’t, including thinking abstractly and planning ahead (executive functions). This is also the part that understands and responds to logic. This is the Tesla.
As advanced as the prefrontal cortex is, it’s less powerful than our more primal brain – the limbic system, where our urges, drives, and emotions come from.
This part of our brain cares about two things more than anything else:
Escaping pain and discomfort
Seeking out and maximizing pleasure
When our emotions spike (anger, depression, anxiety, physical pain, guilt, a craving, etc.), our dog can jump into the driver’s seat and take the wheel of our car. It thinks, “I don’t like how I’m feeling – how do I solve this problem and feel better RIGHT NOW?”
And then it gives you a strong urge towards what your brain thinks will solve the problem…right now.
Enter substances (or stress eating, video gaming, pornography, etc.). These things do tend to create emotional relief in the short term – that’s why people use them, and this is the heart of addiction. They also often create a sense of euphoria, which the dog driving the car also really likes. So your brain continually directs you towards these “solutions” over and over, because in a short-enough window of time they do seem to work.
Although these actions come with a cost, you don’t feel these costs in the moment. You feel them later – maybe the next morning, or maybe not for several days or even weeks, until the behavior really starts to pull you down.
On top of that, these costs tend to be things you can potentially rationalize away (“I’m not as bad as they are,” “nobody understands me,” “I have to do this to deal with my life,” “this helps me more than it hurts me”), or the problems start small and slowly grow in intensity over time so that you don’t realize how bad things have gotten until you’re already neck-deep in them.
And so, naturally, what does your brain tell you to do when you’re stressed out, feeling guilty, and neck-deep in problems? Well, it’s to dip back into that one thing that takes that discomfort away immediately, of course.
When your dog takes the wheel of your car, that’s when you tend to do the things that are the most self-destructive.
That’s when you yell at someone you love to release the pressure of anger, stress-eat a bunch of cookies to “feel better,” pick up a drink when you told yourself you were going to stop, or spend hours mindlessly watching videos on TikTok instead of sleeping.
The first step to changing these types of behaviors is to see and understand the cycle that leads you to do them in the first place. Once you see the pattern, you empower yourself to change it.
When does your dog take the wheel?