The key to nonaddiction is maturity. Winick’s discovery that heroin addiction is often an artificial extension of adolescence, an evasion of adult responsibility, offers us a sound insight about addiction of all kinds. 

Stanton Peele. Love and Addiction (p. 243). Broadrow Publications.

Viewing addiction as merely a function of molecular chemistry on the human nervous system is extremely limiting. This perspective exists at the physical/structural level and ignores the psychological and spiritual perspectives. In the previous chapter we explored the physiological/functional divide between mid and forebrains and the role of language as a tool for integrating these attributes into a holistic view of the self. This chapter builds on this concept and introduces a holarchic model which describes the eight levels of human central nervous system development. Rather than dividing the brain into different functional units which perform discrete tasks this approach explores the changes that transpire from neural growth, cell migration, myelination, synapse formation and learning. These occur progressively throughout the developing brain from the day we are born until the day we die.  

Research has shown that the development of the human consciousness unfolds through several phases extending from the sensory-motor states of infant-hood to a condition of maturity that includes and enfolds all previous phases. The mature individual exhibits features from each of these developmental phases and, in fact, cannot exist in isolation from the synthesis of all preceding stages. The simplicity afforded by the limbic/pre-frontal dichotomy in its role in regulating behaviour is part of this, but in the context of addiction we need to move beyond this and consider the phases of developmental psychology. The limbic brain contributes attributes such as pleasure-seeking behaviour, aggression and fear to the human condition, but this is its function in all humans. My goal in this book is to identify why this process goes off the rails for some of us and not others.  

Describing these phases of development is simplified using Arthur Koestler’s concept of the holon. A holon, simply put, is something that is both a whole and a part. Clear examples of this idea can be found in the field of molecular physics. An atom is composed of a nucleus and an electron cloud. The nucleus is formed from a balanced distribution of neutrons and protons. The nucleus is a discrete entity but it is built using several sub-components. Each of these, in turn, are formed from quarks. The quark, proton, neutron, nucleus and electron clouds are components that constitute an atom. The atom is a thing which includes and enfolds all of these underlying components. If the nucleus ceased to exist so would the atom. If the proton ceased to exist so would the nucleus and the atom. If the quark should disappear so would proton, neutron, electron and atom. Physiologically speaking we could extend this holarchy upward through the molecule, cell and member to form an entire human body. The body could not exist without the concept of a member. It’s true that some members can be removed without affecting the body’s existence, but if the concept of the member ceased to exist the body would disappear.  

This holarchy concept can be applied to any ordered system. At each level we find a measure of strength, utility or influence on the resulting whole that increases as the levels progress. Take the rope for example: 

The rope is a holon with four levels. At the most basic level is the fibre. These are grouped together into treads with a diameter of approximately two millimetres. Threads are twisted around each other to form strands, with a diameter of roughly ten millimetres, and strands combine to form the rope. From the strength/influence perspective the fibre has very little intrinsic value. You might be able to lift a few grams of material with it before it brakes. The thread contains many fibres and inherits the combined strength of each one allowing you to lift several hundred grams. The rope, however, might support and object weighing a tonne. The fibre has very little contribution to make to the task of lifting weight, but it has enormous extrinsic value. If the concept of the fibre ceased to exist so would the rope. This is an integral view of the rope concept – each level in its anatomy includes and transcends the previous levels. So it is with the levels of conscious existence – the strength of the individual as a conscious entity depends on the extent to which the previous levels have been integrated into the whole. 

In the previous chapter we considered the limitations of denying what might be considered the more base attributes of consciousness. We also identified the strength that comes from naming these attributes and including them as foundation principles for the development of a healthy psyche. In contrast to this, in his book “A Brief History of Everything” Ken Wilbur describes an eight-level ladder of consciousness development that starts with the sensory-physical infant dimension and progresses to the level of spiritual transcendence. While this is based on the same concept of shadow integration presented in the previous chapter it embodies a perspective with a much higher resolution. Using Wilbur’s model we are no longer limited to a dark/light (monochrome) view of consciousness, but one that exhibits various hues.  

In the early part of the 20^th century two great minds featured prominently in this discussion – Sigmund Freud and his protégé Karl Jung. These individuals believed that the key to understanding the pathologies of the present lay in the experiences of the past. Some (most notably Czech Psychologist Stanislav Grof) drew on Christian tradition in the construction of their hypotheses. In Matthew 18:2-4 Jesus spoke these words: 

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 

While I take this as an exhortation to acknowledge our complete child-like dependence on God and the humility and surrender that such a perspective affords, others see it as an indicator that true spirituality and healthy psychological functioning can only be attained by returning to the depths of our nascent existence. This space includes three components – the perinatal, the personal and the transpersonal, the transpersonal (which correlates roughly with Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious) being the deepest. This depth psychology approach underpins the work of Freud, Jung and Grof. Grof’s model described in “Realms of the Human Unconscious” focuses largely on the perinatal where he believes that memories from before and after birth, and especially the birth experience itself, hold the key to healthy spiritual development. From this perspective spirituality takes root before birth and progresses through the personal before making a U-turn back to the transpersonal. While returning to the vertex of the U corresponding to the transpersonal (which inhabits the same psychological space as the perinatal) could be construed as indicating a complete regression, Grof represents the U as a spiral, the transpersonal vertex being higher than the perinatal, indicating a more mature perspective. From this higher vantage point the attributes of consciousness that were implicit shortly before and after birth can be reassessed through the lens of life experience. 

While largely adhering to the views of Jung, Wilbur identifies in these ideas what he labels the pre-trans fallacy. To Wilbur spiritual development is progressive rather than regressive. We move ever upward from the perinatal to the transpersonal. Wilbur represents this process as a ladder with eight rungs, but admits it could also be portrayed as the progressive layers of an onion, or the segments of a Russian doll where each layer envelops and includes the previous ones. This height psychology approach is gaining increased acceptance in the scientific community.  

One integral technology that draws on, and extends, all of these ideas is Spiral Dynamic Theory (SDT). Rather than viewing neural development as a simple U-shaped spiral that begins and ends at the same conceptual space SDT combines Wilbur’s idea of the ladder with the spiral. In SDT terms we are constantly advancing in our development and understanding of ourselves, the social and cultural environment in which we exist and how the self relates to these environments. Our conscious development consists of a series of curves in the spiral, first progressing to new territory and then curving back to view our old stomping grounds from a higher perspective. The upward curve into new territory provides the developmental fodder our minds crave. We chew on it and ingest it but we cannot digest it without curving back and integrating it into the self through a process of re-assessment. This is the process of maturation or growing up. 

Don Beck developed the ideas underlying SDT, expanding on the work of Clare Graves, during the last quarter of the 20^th century. He introduced the colour coding system shown in figure ? to better facilitate communication, allowing the complex collections of attributes associated with each phase to be condensed, labelled and discussed as a single colour. Far from being merely theoretical in nature, SDT found its first major practical application in averting the civil war brewing in South Africa in the early 1990’s. During this period Beck traveled to South Africa from Texas 64 times, meeting with power brokers from all sides. He bore the message that to avert conflict within any society, or between societies, there needs to be an acceptance (integration) of all previous levels in the development of consciousness. This view corresponds with the Integrator-Systemic or yellow level, which embraces the role that all preceding levels play in constructing the bio-psycho-social edifice. As with the atom’s reliance on the Quark and sub-atomic particle for its existence so the yellow cannot exist without an integration of all preceding colours. Beck’s work in South Africa brought an end to Apartheid in 1994.  

The role of this integrative process is as important to the individual as it is to the nation-state, and the conflict that exists between the competing value systems within the individual often predisposes them to addiction. On the societal level Beck addressed this in his doctoral dissertation which explored the conditions leading up to the American Civil War. During that period American society as a whole was addicted to the way of life afforded by a vassal class. As the North had abandoned this narcissistic view, which put the needs of the self before the needs of others, so conflict arose with the south. The result is a subject for the history books, but the addict experiences a similar type of warfare every day. It might be hard to see how a single person can play the role of both parties in such a conflict but, according to Wilbur, traumatic events at any step in our development can carve off parts of our consciousness. These parts continue to exist at the level of development where the trauma occurred and become little “subjects” – separate streams of consciousness that share our own instinct for self-preservation. These subjects don’t want to die, but it’s hard for us to move ahead with our lives while they still maintain their separateness.  

The existence of these subjects is an energy drain. If we view the amount of developmental energy we are allotted at birth as a collection of 100 units it’s possible that something may occur at the red level which prevents its full integration. This will carve off a conscious subject that potentially consumes 10 units of developmental energy on a continual basis until it is integrated back into the self. If such a situation persists, the individual retains only 90 units with which to power the remainder of the climb. The subject which continues to drain energy is, as it were, connected to the self by a bungee cord. The forward motion of the self is restrained by this elastic effect so that progression to each successive level in the spiral is retarded.  

Add to this the fact that movement from one level to the succeeding level is analogous to a state change in physical matter and another problem becomes evident. Large amounts of heat energy are required to change water from a liquid to a gas (steam). Likewise, a subset of our units of developmental energy are consumed when progressing between successive levels of the spiral. If 10 of those units are tied up by a subject at the red level only 90 units of energy remain to power the remainder of the climb. This energy can only be released if the red-level subject is integrated back into the self at which time it becomes available, once again, to power upward motion. 

In cognitive terms humans tend to compartmentalize. We identify ideas and perspectives and classify them as compatible or incompatible with our self-concept and system of values. Often the distinction is made on moral grounds. We tag the ideas of God, family, purity, joy and peace with positive attributes while denying the influence of greed, sensuality, violence and anger in our lives. We are averse to situations where these competing influences come into contact. We put one set of influences in a box labelled “good” and another in a box flagged “bad”, and hope they never come into contact. The juxtaposition of polar opposites such as peace/violence and purity/sensuality repel us, and when they do interact, we experience shame. If we are supposed to embody the attributes of the “good” box and shun those of the “bad” how can we be comfortable embracing the reality of both expressed in our lives? An honest assessment of the situation would convince us that we do, in fact, embody both sets of influences, but for the sake of our own self-perception, and to project an image of respectability to others, we hide the contents of our bad box in the furthest recesses of our mind where they wreak havoc. These influences are manifestations of what psychologist Karl Jung termed “The Shadow” – the embodiment of our dark side. 

We could describe this shadow in terms of brain chemistry, brain morphology or higher brain function but ultimately these three form a holarchy which would collapse in the absence of any one component. A good starting point for discussion, however, is the contrast between the propensities of the Limbic System and Prefrontal Cortex. 

Season 1 episode 5 of Star Trek the Original Series (The Enemy Within) illustrates this distinction quite well. Kirk is beamed up from the surface of a planet and arrives on the Enterprise as two different individuals. Their arrival is offset by a few seconds, so nobody is in the transporter room when Kirk #2 arrives and he is able to blend into the normal buzz of ships operations unnoticed. This situation doesn’t last long, however, as Kirk #2 tries to sexually assault a female crew member and receives some nasty scratches on his face. Meanwhile Spock has noticed that Kirk #1 is acting strangely. He seems listless, unmotivated and is unable to remember basic operating protocols. Eventually the dichotomy between the two Kirks becomes common knowledge among the ship’s crew and, after some analysis, Dr. McCoy identifies the following attributes of the two: 

Kirk #1 

• Love 
• Compassion 
• Intelligence 
• Self-control 

Kirk #2 

• Aggression 
• Decisiveness 
• Passion 
• Guile 

What we see in these characteristics are the basic attributes of the Pre-Frontal Cortex and Limbic System respectively. Kirk #1 was completely incapable of performing his leadership role as Captain while Kirk #2 roamed the ship’s halls like a wild animal assaulting security details and officers alike, including Kirk #1. The solution, proposed by Spock and Scotty, was to reverse the polarity of the transporter and put both Kirks back through in the hope that the two personalities would be merged back into one individual. This (spoiler alert) strategy turns out to be successful, and an integrated version of the Captain walks off the transporter platform, with confidence and grace, to resume his directorial duties. 

On the surface the moral of the story is that the more bestial aspects of our nature are as necessary to our functioning as are the more human ones, and that the only way a person can function is by integrating both aspects into their being. Jung adds to this the following maxim – we habitually deny the influence, possibly even the existence of this shadow in ourselves. Having been raised by parents who played the role of our PFC until ours was fully formed and integrated into our being (a process of emotional maturation) we learned to have a very poor view of those behaviours, beliefs and attitudes that were so frequently censured in our youth. One focus of this parental nurturing process is the frequent admonition to care for the feelings of others. This exhortation towards empathy lays the foundation for many of the skills necessary to function as members of a social group, be it a family, collegial troop, religious community, gardening club or society as a whole, and yet we all fail repeatedly. We cheat, violate social mores, lie, let our loved ones down and hate ourselves for it. 

This sense of self-loathing causes us to resist the more beggarly qualities we see in ourselves, but rather than addressing their manifest reality we resist their expression in others.  This external-focused aversion creates a destructive cycle of tension that both exacerbates our personal situation and reduces our ability to redress it. Jung encapsulates this truth in the statement: 

 “what you resist not only persists, but grows in size.” 

Herein lies a key point – the use of the word “resist” differs from its use in James 4:7 where James states: 

“Resist the devil and he will flee from you” 

Jung is not saying that the only way to keep our Chimp in check is to stop resisting it. The resistance to which he refers could better be described as denial. Rather than accepting the truth that we share the propensities and capabilities of the rapist, murderer and thief, we deny (resist) this reality. Because we hide these tendencies behind a mask which turns both inward and outward, in an attempt to disguise our true nature from ourselves and others, we become blind to it. But this does not prevent us from seeing our shortcomings in others. We become judgmental and condemn the people in our lives while being blind to those same principles at work in us. As Jung put it: 

…it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil. 

This quality of self-observation (shadow perception) rarely observed in human kind, is a pre-requisite to the acceptance of reality. Rather than familiarizing ourselves with the contours and features of the face described by Jung (our true moral appearance) our tendency is to put it out of our minds, and do as described in James 1: 

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 

As bizarre as it sounds, this level of self-deception is pretty much the default mode of human operation. We all tend to see ourselves as decent up-standing citizens and that it is those around us that need rehabilitation. Jesus was well aware of this axiom and described it in Matthew 7: 

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. 

We can’t see the plank in our own eye because we deny (resist) its existence. Perhaps this is the quintessential application of the word hypocrite (play actor). We are playing out the role of the righteous one in our own minds when in reality our flaws are at least equal to those of the people we disdain. That plank in our eye used to be a speck, but our denial of its existence allows it to grow without restraint. Ironically, we can’t resist what we resist to acknowledge. 

A major component of Christ’s ministry was the delivery of this message to the people, and he used the Jewish leaders of the time as his prime antitypes. Their challenge in recognizing their own plank was twofold, firstly they were entrusted with interpreting a law which defined the parameters of righteous living. This enabled them to mold each precept to their own advantage and insure that their Chimp remained satisfied while at the same time, in their own minds, they were abiding by the rules. Secondly, they believed it was possible to perfectly observe their interpretation of this law and that their job was to be seen by their followers as doing just that. It’s hardly surprising Christ describes them as hypocrites and blind leaders of the blind. The ability to deny their own shadow was practically part of their job description. Nowhere is this presented more clearly than in Christ’s parable recounted in Luke 18: 

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 

Denial is the wool the Chimp pulls over the eyes of the human. It allows the Chimp to operate in stealth mode. But where in the Bible do we find a description of this Limbic/PFC dichotomy. In his letter to the Romans, chapter 7, the Apostle Paul describes the two warring minds as the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit: 

5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.   

This passage provides some context for this book’s title – The Spirituality of Addiction. It frames the struggle between the human and chimp, as a spiritual conflict. All of our addictive behaviours are rooted in the mind of the flesh, a mind that operates independently of the desire for self-improvement and self-preservation. The mind of the flesh is death in both the temporal and the eternal sense. Even in an illegal drug market, such as that in Western North America – which has been contaminated with lethal levels of Fentanyl – addicts continue to use, knowing that their next fix could be fatal. Feeding the appetites of the limbic loop has become, for them, more important than life itself. The strength of a Christ-centered approach to recovery, as promoted by in the 12 Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that it brings the spiritual nature of the conflict into full view, thus promoting life and peace. 

Another hugely influential effect of dopamine addiction can be found in America’s obsession with guns. When I was a teenager I discovered that I was a pretty good shot with an air rifle and a shot gun so I decided to invest in the only firearm I was able to acquire, a .22 caliber air rifle. It might not have had the same kick as a .22 rifle, but it was just as engaging. I purchased it while working in the Forestry industry in Scotland –  the same day as I began a week of leave at home back in London. At the railway station in Dumfries I was overcome by the craving to hold it. I removed it from its case and admired the perfect sheen of its curvaceous exterior. It was, I thought, beautiful. I couldn’t wait to test my skills shooting tiny plastic soldiers in the back yard. I soon found out it’s not acceptable in the UK to have an open carry firearm in public (I was just a kid!) better put that away.  

In an article coauthored by Dr. James Olds, Director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, entitled “Addicted To Bang: The Neuroscience of the Gun” he, and co-author Steven Kotler, explore the allure of the gun in dopaminergic terms. Guns affect dopamine signaling in many ways. They are status symbols, they denote a sense of personal power and they contribute to an (often false) feeling of safety and security. The urge for safety, and conversely the fear of external threats, is largely governed by the operation of the Amygdala (a major component of the limbic system). It’s known colloquially, in some circles, as the Guard Dog, and governs our tendencies towards fear, tribalism, aggression and territorialism. The suitability of this epithet can be seen in the dog who “doggedly” protects their home and maintains allegiance to the pack. When the dog sees an intruder, it can’t wait to get its teeth into the maleficent. The problem is, there is a need for the teeth to be in physical proximity to the intruder for the bite to occur, and there are many obstacles to achieving this. From the guard dog’s perspective, it would be great to have a tooth that could be thrown at the infiltrator at high speed, thus circumventing the need for a chase and overcoming any other intervening geographic obstacles. This is a basic function that the gun affords. 

Olds and Kotler outline how these attributes contribute to America’s gun problem and focus on the current fealty shown towards semi-automatic weapons. Their assertion is that it is the frequency with which these guns can be discharged that makes them especially alluring. This bolsters our previous discussion on the effects of rapid and repeated dopamine release on the establishment of dependence. It also explains the attachment shown, by many, towards bump-stocks (devices that use the recoil from firing the gun to cause the operator’s finger to pull the trigger multiple times in succession). There is no practical application for these devices outside their involvement in mass shootings, and their ability to stimulate the dopaminergic thrill of the bang. The military have much better solutions to the need for rapid fire technologies. 

For those for whom these opportunities are out of reach there is always the thrill of the first-person-shooter computer game. While the addictive quality of games extends well beyond the bounds of this genre, it does provide the perfect example of limbic activation by performing a territory expanding activity. Another article in Psychology today describes an experiment performed by Allan Reiss and his coworkers at Stanford University. The article details the results of brain scans performed on subjects engaged in a simple video game. As described in the article, the game operated as follows: 

“The video game involved a screen with a vertical dividing line and leftward-moving balls on the right-hand side, which the player could click to remove. When a ball hit the divider, it caused the divider to move slightly leftward, reducing the player’s “territory” on the left-hand side of the screen. Conversely, for each second that the area near the divider was kept clear of balls, it would move rightward, gaining territory for the player. The only instruction given was, “Click on as many balls as possible.” All players soon deduced the point of the game and adopted a click strategy that increased territory.” 

The results showed the activation of key components of the forebrain’s pleasure circuit, primarily the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. While both male and female subjects exhibited these effects, they were significantly stronger in men. There are indications that the pleasure responses in men illustrate their predilection towards the establishment and maintenance of territory. Additional PET studies on game playing illustrate the specific involvement of dopamine signaling in the nucleus accumbens under similar circumstances.  

Another study entitled “The Neural Basis of Video Gaming” identifies a paradoxical effect in the brains of pathological gambling addicts. Their pleasure centres were activated when they lost money. Other studies show this to be a consistent feature in the experience of compulsive computer game players of all stripes. If losing is pleasurable it follows that a subject will chase both the winning and the losing scenarios resulting in extended game playing sessions. The principle is often used in advertising materials for computer games that draw the potential buyer in using terms like “this game will keep you up all night”. While compulsive game playing is good for the game manufacturer, it is also at the root of a disturbing trend towards men playing video games instead of getting jobs. While the American Psychiatric Association were unwilling to include game play as a recognized addiction in 2013’s DSM V, it can only be a matter of time before such a classification is established.

When I was in high school I never liked team sports, but the magical word “technology” would fill me with glee. Everything from the cast-off mini-computer at school that read programs from punched tape to the space shuttle provided me with a constant source of excitement. In 1973 my parents spoiled me rotten with one of the first electronic calculators on the market. I was enraptured by those green LED numbers, and would repeatedly perform calculations, merely for the thrill of knowing I had a thinking machine in my hands. Even the smell of it was hypnotic. I purchased my first liquid-crystal digital watch in 1975 with proceeds from my paper route. It was amazing! An electrical device that kept quartz-crystal time and communicated with me using seven cell LCD numbers. I even discovered I could find lost objects at night in the park using the back light! My number one thrill though was derived from the twice-yearly airshows at Biggin Hill Battle of Britain airfield. The bigger, faster and louder the plane the better, unless it was a hovering jump-jet, in which case the fact it wasn’t moving was mindboggling. 

It sounds trivial, but one of the worst days of my life was when the Sunday School Prize giving fell on the same day as the Biggin Hill Airshow. I was 11 years old and was carted off to church where I could still hear the planes but couldn’t see them. There was definitely some serious dopamine withdrawal involved in that experience. In today’s technology environment, however, kids are vulnerable to that kind of misery on a daily basis. At 14 years old my daughter went through a difficult time with stress and depression at school. We took her to see a psychiatric nurse who informed us that most of the teenagers he sees are brought to him because their parents take away their smart phones and they threaten to kill themselves as a result! This is an order of magnitude worse than my airshow experience because their social identity is bound up so tightly with the device and the applications it provides. A smart phone is not just and pretty and powerful status symbol, but also allows them to meet their esteem and social connection needs in so many ways.  

While kids in my day might be content with collecting stamps they now collect Snapchat Streaks (sequences of daily communications with their friends). While we might have hung out with our friends at the park this can now done remotely using Instagram Hangouts. While these activities might be dopamine inducing, the opportunities for dopamine withdrawal are also manifold. Kids experience the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) because they can see posts and pictures from their friends at events that they are unable to attend, or worse are not invited to. They can be bullied 24 hours a day. They may be getting ready for bed when an entire online friend-drama unfolds after 11pm causing them to lose hours of sleep. If the parents take away their phone they will take some other device (an old phone belonging to a parent, a tablet or a laptop computer). If all the devices are locked up overnight in a safe they will secretly borrow a phone from a friend. They might even commandeer a device left at their house without telling the owner. These are the behaviours of an addict. 

Data plans can be turned off. Wifi network access can be put on a schedule. Apps like Netsanity can be installed on their phone so that their parents can see and control what the child is doing online, but kids are sneaky. They learn how to turn off the management software, or find locations nearby with free wifi, or steal passwords for private devices. None of this makes the job of parenting particularly easy. It does, however, show how important relationships and connection are to the limbic system. 

It’s not like the problem is limited to kids either. Some parents also spend hours a day on their devices, playing games, reading and browsing social media. This in turn presents a poor example to the children and disrupts communication and connection within the family. Even before the smart phone came into vogue the Blackberry Curve had earned the nickname “Crackberry” because its use was so addictive. I won’t delve too deeply into why this might be the case other than by making the dopamine connection. I do want to note, however, the amount of time these things take away from the meaningful/valuable aspects of life.  

While the principle of technology-based reward might be viewed by the public as incidental to the design of mobile applications, that’s only because the industry has been cagey about its strategies and goals. Make no mistake, the software industry is well aware of the link between dopamine-mediated reward and application design, and, predictably, the motivation behind this strategy is money. This approach has given rise to a new job designation – the neuro-economist – and has spawned a number of companies and departmental specialties that seek to maximize the addictive nature of products.  

A key example of this is the Silicon Valley startup Dopamine Labs, the brainchild of neuro-economist Dalton Combs and neuro-scientist Ramsay Brown. A major feature of their approach to software design is maintaining the fast-pace of rewarding actions. This utilizes a feature of the addiction process that has been observed consistently in the abuse of chemical agents, namely, the faster the delivery mechanism, and the more frequent the administration is, the more potent the dependency becomes. This has been shown repeatedly in comparisons of the relative effects of smoking, injecting, insufflating (snorting) and ingesting drugs. Over the past few years it has become obvious that technology addiction is a problem. Nowhere is this stated more clearly than in an interview with former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya where he stated: 

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.” 

To give them credit, Combs and Brown took this to heart when designing the Mindfulness app “Space”. Space introduces delays in the app browsing experience aimed at breaking the dependency on the fast-paced dopamine feedback process. When initially released, Apple saw the effect this app would have on their bottom line and refused to make it available on their app store. This decision has since been reversed, presumably because while Apple’s number one goal is maximizing profits for their shareholders, they do have a conscience. 

How does space work. As reported in Psychology Today, mindfulness (the practice of conscious awareness of an individual’s own inner thoughts and sensory states) activates the medial pre-frontal cortex. Through the process of neuro-plasticity, mindfulness practice results in the growth of brain areas associated with self-awareness, empathy, compassion and reason. However, as with growing plants this growth takes place very slowly. While a few seconds of delay might help to loosen the grip a rewarding experience has on the psyche, making long-lasting changes to the balance of power between the limbic and pre-frontal brains takes dedication, effort and commitment. These are not something that we, as humans, have in large supply. 

While using smart phone applications might be addictive, creating them is no less so. I’m currently writing an app that uses the Global Positioning System to track the performance of students during driving examinations. The dopaminergic effects of this task are palpable. I’ve taken to getting up an hour early just so that I can go to work and get the dopamine hit provided by the process. I haven’t had to set a wake-up alarm in weeks because the dopamine stimulation wakes me up hours before I would normally get up. It’s like being on a stimulant drug.  

One area that is ripe for further research is the effect this principle has on the economy. Companies used to pay thousands of dollars to purchase a single enterprise application license. Now a large part of our economy runs on open-source operating systems, databases, geospatial and cloud systems that are available free of charge. Where does the money go that used to be spent on software infrastructure? These savings can’t but effect the economy as a whole. But wait, you may ask, how can these products be free of charge when huge teams of people have spent thousands of hours developing them? The answer is that programmers are willing to donate their time and energy towards the production of these applications because they enjoy it. Their payment is no longer measured in financial terms but rather in the strength of the dopamine response experienced during the team engagement and coding process. This field of study is now known as Open Source Economics. (These points are consistent with my thoughts expressed in chapter ? “Dopamine and Money”.) 

It’s been a confusing week in which we’ve (predictably) seen the President of the United States take an aggressive and confrontational stance towards America’s traditional allies, and treat a Russian Dictator as a trusted friend. What, you may ask, is going on?

Exploring this principle has been the life-long work of Linguist and Cognitive Scientist George Lakoff (Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkely). He developed “The Strict Father Model” as a unifying view of the many seemingly contradictory values exhibited by factions within American politics. According to Lakoff, as we are first governed in our families we grow up understanding the governing systems of society in terms of the family dynamic. There are two poles to this – the strict father and the nurturing parent. The strict father is seen as the ultimate source of moral authority in the family and their governing influence is asserted under the threat of painful punishment. The threat of pain is used to force the child to obey – or do what is right – rather than what feels good. The logical outcome of this line of reasoning is expressed by Lakoff as follows:

Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.

The most blatant expression I’ve seen of this mindset was in an opinion given during a 2016 presidential campaign interview. The interviewee asked the question “why should my taxes be used to fund the 911 (emergency response line) service? People need to learn to deal with their own problems”! Seemingly, to that individual, the action required immediately after a heart attack, car accident or shooting would require calling a cab for a ride to the hospital’s emergency department. That approach has DOA (dead on arrival) written all over it. The alternative to this – the Nurturant Parent Model – is described in Wikipedia as follows:

The nurturant parent model is a parenting style which envisions a family…where children are expected to explore their surroundings, while being protected by their parents. This model believes that children inherently know what they need and should be allowed to explore their environment. The parents are responsible for protecting their child during this exploration, including protecting their child from serious mistakes, by offering guidance. A child will be picked up if the child cries because the parent wants the child to feel safe and nurtured. If a child grows up believing that its needs will be met, it will be more confident when facing challenges.

An article published in the journal PLOS Genetics entitled “Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans” sought to determine the neurophysiological activities/structures underpinning political orientation during risk taking activity. What they found was that the brains of liberals and conservatives were structurally different, with liberals having increased grey matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex (a brain region associated with impulse control), and conservatives having increased grey matter volume in the amygdala (known colloquially as – the guard dog). When brain activity was measured using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (as part of the study), liberals showed significantly greater activity in the left insula (part of the pre-frontal cortex associate with internal bodily cues crucial for subjective feeling states) and conservatives showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala.

The nature-versus-nurture argument has a strong application to this study, as well as other studies on political affiliation. Earlier studies identified parental political leaning as a major determinant in a child’s own political inclination. This was believed to indicate that political affiliation was genetic in nature, as parental leaning could be used to determine the views of their children with an accuracy of 69.5%. This, however, ignores the principle of neuro-plasticity where the structure of the brain adapts based on experience and learning, something that may happen to anyone as their life unfolds. An example cited in the PLOS paper is the study performed on London cab driver applicants who had learned the map of London in preparation for their new job role. These drivers demonstrated significant growth in their hippocampus, a brain region related to memory formation. The main takeaway for me is illustrated in this quote from the paper:

A classifier model based upon differences in brain structure distinguishes liberals from conservatives with 71.6% accuracy. Yet, a simple two-parameter model of partisanship using activations in the amygdala and the insular cortex during the risk task significantly out-performs the longstanding parental [genetic parent rather than the strict parent] model, correctly predicting 82.9% of the observed choices of party.

Lakoff acknowledges that the breakdown between strict and nurturing behaviour is by no means black and white as people tend to exhibit both tendencies depending on the context. There is, however, always one approach that is dominant. It would be naïve to assume that politics and the family are the only arenas in which this distinction manifests itself. We can probably identify people at work and in our religious communities, any community really, who exhibit a strong tendency in one direction or another. In an email exchange I had with a director at Oracle corporation, who is also involved in the Non-Violent Communication community, he described his work environment as follows:

For the last few years, I have not attended [NVC] training sessions, workshops, or empathy groups. I do however, use vernacular NVC many times a day in my job as a manager and with my family. At Oracle, specifically, I am alone. In Lakoff’s terms (see Moral Politics), Oracle works through a strict father model and [Larry] Ellison is the supreme strict father. I’m not about to attempt to change it. So, I respond upward in ways that work in the strict father model and downward with an NVC approach.

What he identifies here is the wisdom of accommodation. Although we may have a preferred (even imperative) perspective on life, there is little point communicating with someone’s right amygdala using our left insula, or vice-versa. The language and logic of both diverge so radically as to render such communication fruitless.

This need to speak the same language was brought into stark relief by the recent conflict between David Hogg (a survivor of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida) and Laura Ingraham (Fox News host). When she bullied him by diminishing the relevance of his anti-gun-violence fight by calling him a whiner he organized a protest against her show that resulted in the withdrawal of several high-profile advertisers (including AT&T, Bayer and Nestle) and netted her a week-long break from hosting the show. In an opinion piece on this story entitled “The anti-Trump resistance should stop bringing knives to a gunfight” CBC Journalist Neil McDonald makes the point:

America needs a real resistance, not slacktivists who talk about it. The left (and moderate right) needs to ape the Tea Partiers, who understood how to take over and use power.

What he describes here is the importance, when communicating with conservatives, of using language and strategies that the amygdala understands. During the 1930’s Albert Einstein was also forced by necessity to change his pacifist agenda to accommodate the realities of the third Reich. In his biography “Albert Einstein – Life of a Genius” Walter Isaacson describes Einstein’s eventual assent to the need for armed resistance against Germany. This realization followed his eviction from his home and the confiscation of all his property by the German Government due to his Jewish ancestry. This didn’t mean that Einstein had changed his point of view on pacifism, but rather that he had embraced the necessity for the protective use of force (an integral principle of Non-Violent Communication).

I raise these issues, not to promote a particular socio-political perspective, but to illustrate that in any communication one has to use language that the other party can relate to. As we will see, in chapter ?’s consideration of spiral dynamic theory, the contrast between pre-frontal and limbic function explains the primary distinction between Old Testament and New testament theology. In the Old Testament God played the strict father role, because that was the only power relationship that was understood on a societal level four thousand years ago.

Donald Trump is not the first US president to experience this kind of connection with Vladimir Putin. Another conservative President, George H. Bush, had this to say following their 2001 meeting:

I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.

Bush’s assessment is consistent with a connection between two similar brains. We will trust someone who has the same view of the world we do. We will see “eye to eye”. Our world view is determined by those neural circuits that, through genetics, upbringing and life experience, prove dominant. Bearing in mind that the European mindset is built on the activity of the pre-frontal cortex (logic, reason, compassion), it’s hardly surprising Trump sees Europe as a Foe. He can’t see eye to eye because what European leaders think and do makes no sense to him. It’s based on a different definition of “smart”. At the same time, Trumps actions have baffled, even horrified, European leaders for the same reason.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners, like CT and MRI scanners, produce cross-section images of the human body. PET scanners are the stuff of science fiction in that they employ the same process that powers the warp-drive of the Star Ship Enterprise (matter/anti-matter anihilation). They are commonly used in the study of dopamine mediated function, and can produce images in concert with a radioactive dopamine Antagonist such as Carbon-11 Raclopride. Raclopride is commonly used in medical practice as an antipsychotic. It can, however, be adapted for the PET scanning process by replacing the naturally occurring carbon atoms within the Raclopride molecule with those created in a cyclotron. These atoms have a mass number of 11 and are mildly radioactive. Carbon-11 has a half-life of 20 minutes, and when each atom decays to boron-11 it releases a positron (the anti-matter equivalent of an electron). After release (usually within five millimetres of the source) the positron will interact with an electron. At this point matter/anti-matter annihilation takes place releasing two gamma rays that travel in opposite directions.

The detector of the PET scanner forms a ring around the patient’s body. If a gamma ray passes through the detector it creates a flash of light. The detector senses this flash and takes note of the time it occurred. If two flashes happen at approximately the same time, and on opposite sides of the detector, the software assumes that these are the result of a single Carbon-11 decay. From the precise locations of the two flashes it can deduce where in the body this decay occurred, and from that it can infer that a molecule of Raclopride was at that location. The amount of radiation measured at a particular locale indicates how many Raclopride molecules have bound with dopamine receptors at that point in space. These receptors were unoccupied prior to the arrival of the Raclopride molecule. Raclopride is not able to bind with a receptor that already has a dopamine molecule attached, so if a lower number of Raclopride molecules are detected this indicates that a higher number of dopamine receptors are currently bound with dopamine, or one of its agonists.

Let’s use an analogy here. Imagine you have a black piece of construction paper with ten spots of glue on it. The glue spots represent the dopamine receptors. The glue is clear so the black colour from the paper shows through. This is what the limbic system looks like to the PET scanner prior to introducing the Raclopride into the blood stream; it’s all dark. Now use a fan to blow hundreds of white feathers over the surface of the construction paper. This represents the arrival of the Raclopride molecules as they are carried past in the blood stream. If a feather meets a glue spot it will stick. After that no other feathers can stick to that location because that glue spot is occupied. We could now determine how many glue spots there were by counting the number of white feathers on the card. This is the equivalent of the dopamine receptor density.

A more realistic example would take into account that some of the dopamine receptors are already bound to dopamine molecules, or a dopamine agonist drug, prior to our experiment. To reflect this, we’ll make a new card with another ten glue spots and stick black feathers to half of the glue spots on the card. The next time we blow the white feathers over the card they will only stick to at most five spots. Knowing that each card contained ten glue spots and by comparing the first card with the second card we can calculate how many dopamine receptors were already bound at the start of the experiment.

The PET image below illustrates how cocaine addiction and obesity are related in terms of dopamine receptor occupancy. The normal image exhibits high density Raclopride occupancy, signified here by the reds and yellows, showing that a large number of dopamine receptors were available for binding at the time of the test. In both other cases dopamine receptor availability is greatly reduced. This situation calls for a much larger stimulus to produce a normal response (or signal gain) and will affect the subject’s ability to experience satiation. This naturally drives sensation seeking behaviour and over-consumption. In light of the Rolling Stones’ drug-fuelled lifestyle in the 1960’s this may well be the state of mind described in the song “I can’t get no satisfaction”.

Other drugs have the opposite effect in that they produce an over-satiated state. This factor is desirable when employing stimulant drugs as appetite suppressors, but is a serious impediment to the long-term use of Serotonin based antidepressants which tend to extinguish an active libedo.

We can also use Alcohol and other drugs to illustrate the compounding effect of mixing external and internal dopamine stimuli. One of the most powerfully rewarding dopamine responses is that of aesthetic appreciation. Colour, form, art, music and the wonders of nature all stimulate a pleasure response. When I was first prescribed Ritalin for ADD I visited a friend’s house where a song was playing on the radio. Half way through listening to the song, and enjoying it immensely, I had a realization – “I hate this song, so why am I enjoying it now?” The Ritalin up-regulated dopamine function causing the small amount of dopamine released into the synapses by the song to create a pleasing buzz.

Alcohol can enhance our perception of beauty in the same way. While the following graphic is a joke, and some might consider it to be in poor taste, it does illustrate the principle rather well.

Turning back to the subjective experience of limbic stimulation we find that dopamine does not work alone. Other signalling chemicals also bind with receptors in the nucleus accumbens and affect its firing patterns. Two drugs that follow this course of action (both of which are created naturally within the body) are Oxytocin and beta-endorphin (an analogue of Morphine). Oxytocin modulates dopamine function directly, and Morphine influences dopamine signalling through its action on interneurons. On the subjective level the Oxytocin experience is very similar to that of a dopamine inducer, a response that is exhibited in both sexes. It’s responsible (in conjunction with the Opioids) for the bliss of a warm hug and the coziness of a cuddle with the one you love. Oxytocin also engenders feelings of trust (as revealed by research conducted on Poker playing) and pair bonding (as studied in the lives of monogamous Prairie Voles).

What research reveals is that Oxytocin, Morphine and by extension dopamine, express most aspects of relationship. We are hard-wired for relationship with others. Whether we find someone physically attractive or love them as a friend or family member, dopamine is at the root of each. While the sense of smell is a vitally important component of attraction in animals, human allure relies primarily on vision. The sight of a beautiful face or figure is guaranteed to bring with it a dopamine (attraction) response. It’s also often accompanied by verbal superlatives with religious connotations such as “she was a vision in that dress”, “what an angel” or “she looked simply divine”. Here we begin to see the intersection of dopamine response with spiritual experience.

From the moment we’re born until the day we die we find that our behaviour affects those around us, but what drives our behaviour? Are we totally in control or are there influences at work which transcend our conscious involvement? You’ve likely heard that humans generally seek pleasure and avoid pain. There’s a very good neuro-physiological reason for this. The brain contains a circuit known as the incentive and reward pathway which is located deep beneath the cerebrum. This is where we process many felt-sense experiences such as the enjoyment of a tasty meal, a good glass of wine, the thrill of a loving touch and the beauty of a sunset. Because these things are enjoyable we seek them out either consciously or unconsciously. They drive our everyday behaviours on a very deep level. These motivations could be described as selfish, but we also enjoy being unselfish – as the adage goes, “it is better to give than to receive”. The limbic system is very sly and full of guile. Its primary goals are the survival of the individual and to reward key behaviours. It also contains the seeds of its own demise.

In the 1950’s, Abraham Maslow identified a set of primary motivations that are shared by all humans which he referred to as needs. Many researches have explored this space and some have used the word “wants” instead of needs. I overheard a conversation on the beach that helps illustrate the distinction. A child wanted a shovel his sister was using to build a sand castle. There was only one, and this scarcity introduced some tension into the situation. The little boy repeatedly stated, “I want it”, then when it seemed there would be no response from his mother he said with an indignant tone “I need it”. Did he need the shovel or want it?

Our culture associates wanting something with a selfish desire for an object that is not necessary, whereas to need something is more of an imperative, but this is not necessarily the case if needs are viewed through Maslow’s lens. His hierarchy of needs begins at the lowest level with a set of physical inputs that the human body requires in order to survive. These include food, water and air. A human can exist without air for a few minutes, without water for a few days and without food for a few weeks but after those respective periods of time the result is always the same – death. These inputs can surely be called needs as we need them to survive. The next level of the hierarchy includes safety and security. Here things are a little less clear. We can survive without safety for a long time, but the chances of survival are lower. If we live in an environment full of predatory animals there is a higher probability that our life will be taken early, but many people in such an environment live to a good age. My grandfather fought in the Battle of the Somme in World War I, but lived until he was 80 years old. Survival at this level is no longer contingent on absolutes but rather probabilities.

Do we want security or need it? The child on the beach could have built a sand castle with his bare hands, but this would have taken longer than by using the spade. He needed the spade to complete his task with a measure of ease. In the same way security provides a level of ease that forms the foundation for contentment. Without the risk of attack by wild animals there is no need to set a watch or build secure accommodations. The next level of the hierarchy involves belongingness and love needs. It’s clear that the child on the beach would see the gifting of the spade as a sign that his mother loved him and that withholding it would introduce doubts about that. There is also the issue of sibling rivalry and how important the boy felt in the family context. This state of affairs is at Maslow’s level of esteem needs. All of these non-essential factors could be described as wants, but if viewed as pre-requisites for a particular goal they become needs. If the ceilings in our house are 12 feet high we would need a ladder to change the light bulb. It’s not that we need a ladder for survival, the human race survived for millennia before the ladder was invented, but a ladder is required to reach the goal of a newly installed light bulb. In the same way, if the goal is to feel loved there are certain prerequisites that are needed to reach that goal.

I want to emphasise the word “feel” in the previous sentence. This word places the experience firmly in the incentive/reward pathway. How important are feelings? This is a judgment that depends largely on how empathic your culture is, and this in turn depends on the social conditioning of its citizens. During World War II my father was a teenager and times were hard in the UK. People were subjected to rationing, air raids and a continual state of fear. Families were being destroyed and children orphaned. It was popular at the time to follow a process of “hardening off” with your children. Parents were expected to toughening them up by withdrawing emotional connection, softness and kindness. It was thought that this would give them the tools to cope if their parents were taken from them in one way or another. Feelings were not regarded as very important at that time and the overall principles were “Keep calm and carry on” and “big boys don’t cry”. Feelings were not very important in most cultures until the late 20th century, especially in the nations of the Soviet Union. Things have changed a lot over the past few decades and now being able to appreciate not only your own feelings but also the feelings of others is seen as a necessary pre-requisite to avoiding conflicts of all kinds.

So what is the role of dopamine in all of this. Let me illustrate using an analogy. I was speaking recently with a financial advisor concerning my mutual fund portfolio and happened to ask him “how does the performance of my investments relate to the Dow Jones Index?” He responded “Ah well, everything usually comes down to that in one way or other”. Dopamine plays a similar role in regulating behaviour to that played by the Dow Jones Index in the field of stock performance. There is only one incentive/reward pathway and a central component of this is the nucleus accumbens. This is where we experience the incentive to take action, and the incentive is created by the expectation of reward. The reward is experienced as a good feeling be it a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, flavour, freedom or pleasure. When we anticipate a reward the dopamine levels in our limbic system spike. We take an action and the dopamine levels rise again to provide the rewarding sensation. The sensation of reward is multi-faceted. It involves dopamine for its expression, but the subjective experience of the reward can take many forms.

Think of the nucleus accumbens as a light bulb that can display any colour imaginable. We might experience one rewarding sensation from smelling Chanel Number 5, another when watching a Lamborghini drive by, a third while listening to our favourite song and a fourth from taking a bite of our favourite cheese. These sensations all take place in the limbic system, as electrical signals are propagated in myriad ways depending on the stimulus and our memory associations with that stimulus. The term often used to describe this is a “lighting up” of that part of the brain on a brain scan, most commonly a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) scan.

PET scans show the distribution of a particular radioactive marker drug as it binds with a target receptor. FMRI scans show which parts of the brain are active based on blood flow. In both these cases the view of the brain is essentially monochrome. The level of activity can be colour coded, but this is a false colour view that has little relation to the subjective experience of the activity. I’m using colour as a metaphor for what the subject is feeling. We walk out of our house on an early spring day and smell the freshly cut grass. This might light our limbic system up one colour as we feel a sense of possibility, of hope for the arrival of warm weather. If we’re allergic to freshly cut grass the chances are it won’t light up at all…or light up in a way that indicates aversion. We walk past the window of a department store and see a gorgeous dress in the display, our limbic system lights up another colour. It’s a rewarding feeling that is totally different from the previous one but it’s still a result of the flash of electrical activity. Someone else might walk past the same display and find the dress unappealing.

“I wrote the words about a friend of mine; his name was Gareth Spaulding, and on his 21st birthday he and his friends decided to give themselves a present of enough heroin into his veins to kill him. This song is called ‘Bad.'” – Bono, Gothenburg Sweden, 1987

This song became U2’s statement on the societal trend which has since turned into an epidemic of drug and alcohol overdose and death. I recorded this tribute in part because of my love of the Live Aid performance, but also because it fits perfectly with the theme of the book. While you watch, please say a prayer for all those unknown soldiers who, today, fight to keep standing on the battlefield of addiction.

Bad Lyrics

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. So spoke Christ in Revelation 21:6. Although the verse is framed in temporal terms, the suggestion is that of eternity. But what of us? Are we eternal? Were we recruited from a swirling pool of souls, without beginning and without end, and installed into a material body some time before birth? Does our consciousness arise progressively as we are woven together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13)? Although many faiths and traditions profess views on such things, the Bible remains largely silent on the matter. What we do know is that once we were small and now we are grown, and that growth consists in more than just physical dimensions. Each of us develop along similar lines, being to one extent or another “normal”. The fact that some diverge from the normal developmental path shows that we are not all the same, and that our experience of reality may differ greatly from that of another. We are, however, all human and subject to the same basic gene stock, and from that template our bones, muscles, sinews, nerves and organs take shape. 

Coincident with this we grow into people. We accumulate likes and dislikes, experience laughter and tears, learn words and movements. That this would be time consuming is reasonable as we are getting used to being alive, learning what it’s like to have senses and a body, discovering what control we have over our limbs and the external world. We could liken this process of development to a coming into focus, a gradual revealing or a dawning from darkness into light. This is the origin of the term Enlightenment which has been defined as “insight or awakening to the true nature of reality”. As the years go by we pass through many stages of development on this journey of enlightenment, each of which corresponds with a perspective on reality or a level of conscious awareness. 

It might be suggested that prior to birth our state is identical to that at death, and that research into near death experiences might shine a light on this nascent phase of existence. Near death experiences are often accompanied by out of body experiences, during which the subject is able to view themselves from an external perspective. This was the outcome for Tony Cicoria, an Orthopaedic Surgeon from Upstate New York, who described how his perception of consciousness during this episode was perfectly normal, and yet he was able to watch people trying to resuscitate his unconscious body. His consciousness was situated in a location in space past which people were walking, and he could direct his vision towards them and follow them with his eyes as they moved past. Experiences such as this have caused people to muse about the true location of consciousness. Is it really situated in the brain? What is the nature of the link between the brain and consciousness and is it possible that our bodies are operated from a remote location? 

On further reflection we might notice that this distinction between the body and consciousness is an anomaly. Our consciousness is affected by what happens to our body. We drink too much coffee and are unable to fall asleep. We are scheduled for an operation and are rendered unconscious by the general anaesthetic. We ingest a substance and enter an altered state of consciousness. So, whether out of body experiences provide evidence for the existence of a separate “me” or not, we must admit that our general participation in the here and now is neuro-chemical in nature.  

The infant at birth is a sensorimotor organism which possesses neither linguistic ability or an appreciation of time. They have no sense of the subjective dimension but exists in a sensoriphysical space. As Piaget put it, “The self is here material”. As time progresses they learn that they are separate from the physical world, still later that they are emotionally differentiated from those around them, including their mother. These mark the first three stages of personal development as defined by Margaret Mahler, Melanie Klein and others. Stage three is the first which allows for introspection, the ability to sense and identify internal physical and emotional states.  

I have vivid memories of two such discoveries, at this stage of development, memories that were given weight by the novelty of the experience. Being carried by my mother at around eight years old I noticed a strange pleasing inner glow as I laid my head on her shoulder. I was familiar with many emotional states common to a child, all of which seemed unremarkable, but this caught my attention. I had become accustomed to musing about the strangeness of existence, about life, consciousness and the material world. Where did they come from and what was their true nature? Societies throughout time who shared this childlike world view also created cultural narratives to explain these things. The First Nations of Haida Gwaii possess a rich mythology with fantastic accounts of the origin of all things. The Mesopotamians of the Euphrates and Tigris basin had their own. The Egyptians another. But going back to that pleasing sensation, how could that be explained? There seemed to be nothing I could draw on from my experience that could begin to account for such a perception. What was the objective difference between that glow and pain, or sadness? I was grasping at air, trying to hold the unsubstantial, attempting to nail spirit to the wall.  

It was a losing proposition. Little did I know that philosophers and scientists, from the time of the Greeks, had been grappling with the same problem. But like this eight year old child they had been unable to construct a satisfactory explanation. The nature of consciousness is still a mystery, unexplained even by the most advanced research techniques and models of neural function. To a child, however, beliefs concerning conscious awareness have yet to solidify. Being raised in an agricultural environment I was accustomed to talking to beings that lacked the ability to understand English. Horses, cows and chickens were my companions, as were the ever present gaggle of family pets. I even remember having a deep discussion with a petit palomino pony about the possibility of life on Mars. 

Add to that the presence in the news of stories describing the benefits of talking to your plants and my imagination really took flight. I talked to African Violets, Dahlias and Horse Chestnut trees. If they were big enough to hug I’d hug them! What I was reconstructing were beliefs held by ancient cultures. Belief in the spirits that inhabited plants, the earth and water. I even had a few pet rocks! Aspects of this thinking were persistent. Even at eighteen years old I believed that my Austin Mini possessed conscious awareness. It did, after all, have electrons flowing through it’s frame. It came alive at the turn of a key and performed tasks as directed, why wouldn’t it be conscious? It all seems so illogical now, but such is the thinking of the agrarian world view. (While those with the rational world view of twenty first century Western culture may scoff at these ideas, there is a growing body of scientific evidence that plants have a form of awareness with at least some of the features possessed by mammals.) 

On another occasion, about a year later, I was playing on the floor of my bedroom when my attention fell on a corner of my bedspread which flowed from the bed and lay diagonally across the carpet. The sun was beaming through the window warming the environment and bringing out the rich greens, blues and highlights of the wool fabric. I was transfixed by the sensation of warmth and coziness instilled by the sight. The sensation was similar to the glow brought on by my mother’s touch, but it was even more intense. My reaction was of confusion and fear. Now that I had two instances of a subjective experience with similar qualities, however, I was convinced that the first was not an anomaly, but an aspect of conscious awareness that might be reproducible. It was certainly desirable to be in that state, but I had no idea how one might create the conditions for its genesis. 

While the collective musings of humanity may have come up with no explanation for why, objectively speaking, something might feel good or bad, we do understand the neuro-chemical prerequisites to such an experience, and it all has to do with a signalling molecule called Dopamine. It’s not that Dopamine itself creates the conditions for such transcendent experiences, but it does cause electrical signals to propagate through the incentive and reward system, a part of the brain that governs much of human behaviour. It is this electrical activity that constitutes the physical manifestation of the transcendent state.  

My quest to understand what makes us tick inevitably led me to a consideration of neuro-chemistry. Our bodies use chemicals to transmit the electrical signals that create both the objective and subjective state of affairs we call life. Reading up on this stuff is quite the eye opening experience. I remember my incredulity as a teenage boy on learning that there are receptors in the human brain that bind with compounds found in the Opium Poppy (Papaver Somniferum). Was this just a bizarre coincidence, or was there some ancient link (either evolutionary or designed) between plants and animals? It soon became clear that the Opium Poppy was just the tip of the ice berg. Many plants contain substances that perfectly compliment the complex structures embedded in cell membranes throughout our bodies. It is these synergistic relationships that enable the treatment of disease using herbal therapies.

Electrical signal transduction across the synapse

One goal of this book is to openly discuss situations where these plant-based therapeutics have hijacked their hosts and set them on a self-destructive journey that so often ends in death. The aim of this discussion is to get a better handle on why these things cause people so much trouble, and to explore why existing non-drug solutions are effective in addiction recovery. Why is it that belief in a higher power allows an individual to move away from their chemical dependency?

It’s true that many of the compounds abused by humans are made in the lab, but it would be rash of us to underestimate the creativity of nature in this sphere. While the stimulant drug Meth-Amphetamine was first synthesized by the Japanese in the 1930s, it has since been discovered occurring naturally in acacia trees native to Texas, along with its cousin Methyl-EneDioxy-Meth-Amphetamine (Ecstasy or MDMA). Most plant-based compounds which are psychoactive in humans are used by plants as a defense against herbivores, most notably insects. The best known member of this family is Nicotine, which has been used by gardeners as an insecticide for generations. High profile examples of the nicotine family include the Neo-Nicatinoid insecticides, which were recently banned by the European Union due to their devastating effects on bee colonies. How ironic that a compound (nicotine) used by the Nicotiana family as a defense against herbivores has become the most addictive drug known to man.

All psychoactive chemicals interact, in some way, with neural membranes to modulate the frequency of electrical signalling either up or down. Sometimes this is done by binding with receptors that allow charged ions to move into or out of the neuron. At other times they might block or open ion channels (receptor-like structures) with the same effect, or cause a neuron to disgorge itself of a neurotransmitter that then binds with its receptors in the receiving neuron, stimulating an action potential. Because these processes control everything in our bodies from the beating of our hearts to breathing, digestion, reproduction and mood, it’s hard to separate the reality of what we might describe as a subjective (spiritual) state from its neuro-chemical underpinnings.

The cough-suppressant medication Dextromethorphan (DXM) illustrates this quite well. Commonly found in non-prescription treatments for dry cough, DXM is actually a dissociative general anaesthetic. The dose indicated for treating coughs is low enough that most people are free of negative side effects, but higher doses may result in unwanted psychedelic experiences. The related anaesthetic Ketamine was withdrawn from use in adults for this very reason, and is now used only in children and animals. Both of these therapeutics act by blocking one of the Glutamate receptors – the N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptor.

Glutamate is the most commonly occurring neuro-transmitter in the human brain and one of the NMDA receptor’s primary functions is to maintain the connection between our conscious minds and the realities of our bodies and their surrounding environments. Progressively blocking these receptors with DXM or Ketamine leads to increasing levels of dissociated feeling. Complete blockade of the NMDA channel is not fatal, but does allow consciousness to persist while transporting the mind to surreal realms where the perception of space and time is completely transformed. While in this state one subject described living an entire lifetime as paint on a wall! A little reading about DXM reveals its plant-based provenance in that it is the Dextro stereoisomer of the synthetic opioid Levomethorphan. It has the same chemical formula as Levomethorphan but is its mirror image. This structural difference vastly changes the way it interacts with neurons – although technically an opioid it doesn’t bind with opioid receptors at all.

The scale and complexity of receptors is mind-boggling. Take for example this crystallographic model of the NMDA receptor:

N-Methyl-D-Aspartate (Ionotropic Glutamate) Receptor

This receptor is a protein that is synthesized from a single member in the human genome. It’s a pretty smart little machine. It contains a central Calcium ion channel that is opened or closed depending on how the filaments of the protein are stretched out or compressed. The stretching or compression of the filaments, known as a conformational change, depend on how the atoms in other molecules line up, and how their electrical charges attract or repel the corresponding atoms in the receptor. The NMDA receptor is agonized (activated or opened) by Glutamate and held shut by DXM and Ketamine (as well as laughing gas, PCP and other compounds). Unlike most receptors the NMDA receptor will not open when bound by Glutamate alone – it also requires the presence of the amino acid Glycine. Despite its undeniable complexity it is so tiny that you’d have to line up 10,000 of them in a row to equal the thickness of a human hair.

In order to get some inexpensive practical experience working with the processes and mechanisms underlying addiction I decided to write a simulator called Neuralsim. I just released an updated version today which you’re welcome to play with. It runs in a web browser on pretty much any platform, although it’s optimized for smart phones and tablets. The concepts underlying this simulator are as follows:

• A single generic neuron type is presented into which you can insert plug-and-play components.
• The neuron is preceded by a synapse on the other side of which is the axon terminal of the preceding neuron.
• You are responsible for adding synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitters to the upstream neuron. You must also add receptors to the downstream neuron. You can do this via the Receptors page.
• The neuron won’t fire if it doesn’t have a good supply of ions to work with. You can set ion levels using the Electrolytes page.
• Ion channels are always required, in addition to receptors, to ensure the signal is propagated properly. VGCA Ion Channels must be added to the upstream neuron in order for the synaptic vesicles to release their neurotransmitters. CNG Ion Channels must be added to the downstream neuron if you want your metabotropic receptors to work. You can add both of these using the Channels page.
• You can also add various therapeutic agents to the fluids surrounding the neuron. These include stimulants, pain killers, anti-psychotics and sedatives. These can be added using the Therapeutics page.
• You likely won’t want to do any of these things, so I’ve created a list of presets from which you can import your neuron parameters. Select the “Click here for help” link at the top of the main page to find out how.

While this simulator emulates the low-level functioning of a single neuron, it can’t explain concepts such as mood, emotion, motivation and desire. To explore these ideas we’ll have to look at how millions of neurons are combined to form the many different organelles making up the human brain (something tackled in the book). It does, however, illustrate how combining various therapeutics can have negative effects. Bad outcomes from drug combinations usually stem from under-stimulation or over-stimulation, so if your neuron won’t fire you may have discovered a lethal drug combination.

Disclaimer: As this app is in the early stages of development I can’t guarantee that all combinations of components will work together, however, the presets are working (mostly).

Technologies Used (for geeks only)

I created the following components to support some pretty heavy resource requirements. (I might use these neurons for some artificial intelligence applications later on.) For that reason the neuron activity is performed on a remote server.

Server Side:

• Neural Activity Library: A Java/Maven project that’s imported into the neural simulator.
• Neuralsim: A Spring MVC based API that uses Jackson for JSON marshalling/unmarshalling.
• Google Cloud Services: Neuralsim is hosted on Google’s App Engine. This provides dynamic provisioning should the processing or storage requirements get out of hand. The Neural presets are stored in Google’s Firebase real-time JSON datastore.
• Eclipse IDE

Client Side:

• Ionic 2 iOS/Android hybrid development environment for progressive web apps.
• Angular 2 JavaScript/TypeScript framework
• Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud
• Microsoft Visual Studio Code