Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg1/6 Joe had managed to stay sober for a month when he notices that he has

a package in the mail. He immediately knows what is inside the package. Oh no, I didn't even remember I had ordered this, thinks Joe, as he goes back to his room with it. He knows that he should throw it away, but he rationalizes I should at least see it's actually the drug I ordered before I toss it, it could be something else. When he arrives to his room, he opens the package which contains his drug. For the past month, Joe has been dreaming about this drug. He had just recently recovered from the damage it caused him, but now it was just sitting on his desk, taunting him. Joe isn't stupid he has a lot of work to do, and he knows that if he took it, he would stay up for the next two weeks instead of working. He thinks about throwing it away, but he doesn't. He reasons that he'll have a prize in case he finished his work early, or a consolation otherwise. As the night goes on, Joe's gaze is torn away from his laptop and toward the bag. He decides to just look at it. Without realizing, he opens the bag. Joe then grabs the razor blade he hasn't used in a month, and forms a thin white line on his desk. He was almost able to forget the negative that that line could cause in his life, but he remembers just in time. He quickly tosses it back into the bag, saying No, I can't do this. Joe is clearly conflicted due to his addiction. He wants to take the drug, but he knows that he shouldn't. On the other hand, he can't bring himself to toss them. Does Joe still have the ability to choose here? He seems to be trying to resist the temptation of the drug, but can he fight it? Is Joe even capable of fighting his addiction? Gary Watson would think that Joe is not. He says that an addict is more like a collaborationist than an unsuccessful freedom fighter, and that they are not so much overpowered by brute force as seduced. This is quite a strong position, because it dramatically changes the way addiction is perceived.

Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg2/6 Being called a collaborationist implies that the addict is collaborating with the addiction, compromising to take the drug. It places more blame on the addict, saying that he could stop collaborating if he really wanted to. The addict must just not want to quit enough. In comparison, calling addicts unsuccessful freedom fighters evokes a more heroic image, of facing a giant oppressive enemy and being defeated after struggling and fighting. A freedom fighter retains his dignity and his honor even as he fails, unlike a collaborationist traitor. If the addict is a collaborationist, then it's no use to try to help him, because he will end up on the drug's side, fighting against you. There's another similar shift in perception when Watson says that addicts are not so much overpowered by brute force, but seduced. It puts more blame on the addict, as seduction implies that he was tricked into doing something, it's his fault for allowing himself to be tricked. He was, after all, willing to take the drug, even though it was very persuasive. Being overpowered by brute force is complete and brutal its imagery is of the addict hanging off the end of a cliff until the weight tears his grip away and he falls. For example, the drug acts as someone attacking the addict, hitting him and taking his wallet completely out of his control. Being seduced, on the other hand, is subtle: the addict is tricked into choosing the incorrect decision. In some way, the addict must have been stupid or weak minded every time he was seduced. We feel more pity for someone who is mugged and loses his wallet than we do for the man who is seduced into a one-night stand who robs him, even though in both cases they have the same outcome. It's like someone is climbing a cliff and gets tired before reaching the top. He rationalizes falsely that letting go will help him feel better before he decides to let go. He was tricked by his tiredness into letting go of the cliff before he tried his hardest. In a sense, it seems like this climber didn't want to live as much as the one who falls after clinging on. From Watson's view, all actions are chosen, from the weakest addiction to the absolute

Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg3/6 strongest one. The addict betrays his own values and consciousness in the chase for the next high. If he wants to stop doing any drugs, all he has to do is choose to not take any. Likewise, if he relapses, then he chose to do so, becoming a traitor to his own body and interests. Seduction must always be resistible. If it weren't possible to resist, then the addict would effectively be forced to take the drug, in such a way that he would be unable to stop, which would be the same scenario as an overwhelming force . No, seduction is like a slow and subtle changing of your mind into choosing to have that one night stand, whispering in your ear that you'll be fine, that nothing bad could happen. Seduction is something that happens to people who are weak-willed or weak-minded, and it convinces them to choose to fall prey to the addiction. Some people might resist, but the addicts are the ones who don't resist and end up being completely seduced. Watson's ideas about addiction are fundamentally flawed, however, since his model fails to account for several phenomena in the real world. It turns out that addicts are neither seduced nor met with unstoppable forces, but instead, that their brains are chemically rewired by their drug abuse such that their ability to weigh choices and choose is altered. While the addicts can still choose, the criteria they use and the logic they follow are different from what a normal person would understand and reason with. Not every person who tries heroin ends up addicted to it. However, most do, unlike some other drugs. This implies that there are different levels of addictiveness. Similarly, some people can get addicted to anything, from marijuana to heroin, and have addictive personalities. This means that there are different willpowers against addiction that people can have. So for some people, an addiction will be irresistable, and it will therefore not be a seduction. If addiction were an appetite, then the amount of craving you have would be proportional to its addictiveness minus your willpower. However, most addicts tend to have triggers, or situations that cause them to feel stronger cravings. An addict might be tempted to smoke just after coffee, or to

Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg4/6 snort a line of cocaine just before leaving the house, or to take benzodiazepines before talking with his parents. These triggers don't need to be perfectly logical either, as in the case of Joe above, who would use the drug to celebrate or to mourn over failure. There is no appetite that has its cravings affected in such drastic ways by triggers. Appetites are only triggered by the amount of time spent without the substance. I can walk by Chipotles a dozen times a day, and only eat there during dinner. An alcoholic can walk by a bar a dozen times and go in every single time. Likewise, if addiction were an appetite, how could anyone manage to quit? After all, can you quit your appetite for water? Even if you managed to survive without drinking, you would still have cravings and they would grow as time passed. Surely it would be as hard to stop an appetite as it is to stop drinking possible, in the short term, but nearly impossible in the long term. People lost at sea can end up drinking salt water, knowing it dehydrates you, because they can't stand the idea of not drinking it. And yet, no opiate addict would abuse Naloxone, which blocks opiate receptorsand makes you need more opiates to get the same effect.There are people who would trade being able to ever eat food for the ability to not have to eat food. If addiction is not an appetite, however, then what is it? The brain uses two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, to control how it learns about what actions it should take. The more successful an action is, the more dopamine and serotonin are released, which makes you feel good. The triumph you feel after graduating, the elation you feel from getting the job you set out for, and the joy you feel from watching your children's births are all correlated with very high levels of dopamine and serotonin. These neurotransmitters make it easy for the brain to decide how to prioritize its behavior due to classical conditioning whenever utility goes up significantly, so do levels of dopamine and serotonin. Therefore our brains think it's only logical to maximize your dopamine and serotonin in order to succeed. The problem, however, with representing all of your goals and motivation to the levels of two

Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg5/6 chemicals is that if something manages to change those levels without affecting your goals and motivations, then you will make the incorrect decisions. You will choose to take the easy route, the shortcut to raise your levels of dopamine and serotonin, instead of the slow route. Drugs are, unfortunately, this shortcut. By modifying your neurochemistry, they become the cheat code to life, providing success without the effort it takes to feel success. This fundamentally alters your thinking so that it becomes logcal to maximize your consumption of drugs. These drastic modifications to your brain chemistry can cause you to act in completely irrational ways. For example, rats in a study chose cocaine over food repeatedly, until they starved to death. Wouldn't it have made more sense to pick food occasionally and have the cocaine high last longer? If they had just picked food once or twice a day, they could have lived and felt much better for much longer. As they were starving, food would normally have been the choice that released the most dopamine, but it just couldn't compete against the absurd amounts released by cocaine, so the rats rationally chose to maximize their dopamine and die. This classical conditioning model fits very well with the behavior of addicts and with the neuroscience. A craving that is triggered by something is just a beginning of a classical conditioning chain: hearing the bell makes you think of being hungry and getting food, just like a certain song can make an addict remember a high, and have a craving. You can quit a drug and stop feeling cravings for it just like you can have a conditioned response go extinct. How addicted you are is just a function of how much you associate the drug with the feeling from the dopamine and serotonin. Tolerance is your brain learning that dopamine does not signify success. Dependance is your brain learning that the lack of the drug signifies not feeling successful. With these two combined you start to need drugs and success for the feeling that just success used to produce, which quickly becomes the point where your life is unmanageable. How unpleasant everything feels as you are recovering from an addiction is simply your brain

Kevin Mustelier - Essay #2 - pg6/6 relearning to associate its happiness with its dopamine you were used to sharp spikes of dopamine from drugs, so it numbed how much the dopamine affected happiness making you need more dopamine for each amount of happiness. Your brain now has to relearn what your normal levels of dopamine are. So, does Joe have any choice as to whether or not he uses that drug? Yes, he does! Should he be blamed if he chooses to use? He's not using the same set of logic that we are, so we can't completely blame him; however, he does have a choice, so he is not completely innocent of guilt. Joe is unlike rats in that he is capable of higher order conscious thinking. He knows that taking the drug would be extremely negative for his life, and he knows that he will talk himself into taking it. He also knows that he can't just let himself choose to throw it out, so he calls his friend Bob who takes the decision out of his hands and throws it away. He can now manage to do his work. Sources: Disordered Appetites (Watson) A Visceral Account of Addiction (Lowestein) Pleasure Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_center)