By Vicki Griffin, MS, Human Nutrition, MPA
Habits—we all have them. American author Elbert Hubbard said: “Habit is the great economizer of energy.” He was exactly right. Habits are our friends—when they’re good ones. Habits are routines that help us perform multiple tasks with minimal mental effort. They help us repeat safe and effective behaviors, and build consistency and security into our lives.
The brain is constantly learning new ways to increase the efficiency with which we perceive and respond to our world. Just as commercial airplanes can fly a perfect course on automatic pilot, freeing the captain to watch for danger and monitor the controls, so habits—the brain’s automatic pilot—enable us to perform safe, effective routines that help us cope with daily life. At the same time they free up mental resources for making new decisions in meeting the necessary challenges and changes of an uncertain world.
Habits to Addictions
Bad habits can sometimes become addictions. Addiction is viewed in many and varied ways. In the past, the term addiction was used only to refer to the compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (such as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol). Addictions were characterized by drug tolerance and the withdrawal symptoms a user experienced when not using the drug. The addiction picture is bigger than drugs. Howard Shaffer, who heads the Division of Addictions at Harvard University, asserts that drug use “is not a necessary and sufficient cause of addiction. It is improper to consider drugs as the necessary precondition for addiction.”[1] “A lot of addiction is the result of experience: repetitive, high-emotion, high-frequency experience.”[2] Stanford University psychologist Brian Knutson agrees: “It stands to reason if you can derange these circuits with pharmacology (drugs), you can do it with natural rewards too.”[3] “What is coming up fast as being the central core issue…is continued engagement in self-destructive behavior despite adverse consequences,” says Steven Grant of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.[4] The development of an addiction is a process that involves more than drugs, and can take place even in the absence of drugs. With this expanded definition, addictions can take the form of not only drugs but food, gambling, shopping, overwork, sex, television, or any other activity that becomes excessive, destructive, or compulsive. This does not mean that all addictions have the same results.
Why Addictions are Addicting
Substance addictions involve the introduction of a chemical agent that has varied consequences. Behavioral addictions may involve activities that are in and of themselves normal and even necessary, such as eating or using the Internet. In this case, total abstinence is impossible, but rather remodeling the behavior and thinking concerning the activity, is essential. In fact, all addictive tendencies require vigilance and remodeling of thinking and behavior.
When an addiction develops, what is happening in the brain? For one thing, the pleasure circuits in the brain become “hijacked” by the addictive substance or behavior and stop functioning in harmonious concert with other brain circuits. Judgment and reason take a back seat to habits that have taken over the pleasure and motivational centers of the brain, making them repeatedly produce intense cravings. This is followed by a “reward cascade” of pleasure neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit information from one brain cell to another), including dopamine, serotonin, enkephalin, and GABA[5] when that craving is satisfied. These repeated quick fixes for pleasure paralyze the regulatory mechanisms of the brain that put the brakes on pleasure neurotransmitters with their messages that say, “Stop! I am satisfied!”
Addiction of any kind has many possible roots, including emotional, spiritual, physical, environmental, and genetic. It is important to understand the strength of the enemy in order to develop a strategy for decided victory. Addictions can creep into the lives of the vulnerable or unwary in many forms, crossing all racial, class, social, educational, and economic boundaries with cold impartiality. Emotional, behavioral, spiritual, and lifestyle factors are involved in addictions. Finding lasting freedom requires positive change in every one of these areas.
Overcoming Addictions
Winning any war depends on knowing the strength of the enemy and also having a powerful cache of weapons to win a decided victory. We have seen the strength of the enemy, and that the tangled roots of addiction can have genetic, environmental, and behavioral elements. But the weapons available to win the war against addiction are mighty. They include creating an environment, both internal and external; creating a lifestyle; creating a community; and creating a spiritual Connection. These weapons, used together, play a powerful role in overcoming liabilities, amending weaknesses, building strength, coping with stress, and experiencing permanent recovery from addiction.
Any time a food, drug, or activity (such as using pornography or excessive television viewing) is persistently used to avoid dealing with life’s pain and challenges, or is used as a substitute for unmet needs, addiction may loom dangerously near. However, there is a wide difference between vulnerability and destiny—a significant distinction between risk and predetermined fate. There are many who are at high risk for addiction who overcome the odds and become stellar citizens; we see others who have many of life’s advantages but nonetheless become helpless victims of addictions, not realizing the potency of the addictive substance or activity. Studies may reveal certain links, and understanding those links is important for intervention and therapy, but they do not predict success or failure. It is important to understand where we have come from, but it is equally important to know that we do not have to remain stuck there; we can go on.
Brain Change
Brain structure is not predetermined and fixed—even when early experience has not been good. “Experiences, thoughts, actions, and emotions actually change the structure of our brains. By viewing the brain as a muscle that can be weakened or strengthened, we can exercise our ability to determine who we become. Indeed, once we understand how the brain develops, we can train our brains for health, vibrancy, and longevity.”[6]
While research is ongoing, one thing is certain: The brain is capable of almost innumerable forms of learning and memory, and potentially as many ways for neurons to change their function. Neuroscientist Mary Kennedy describes the brain’s wonderful range of activity and subtlety of function as being based on “highly tunable” properties of each neuron during development and also in adults, which ultimately influence behavior.[7]
Ratey makes the point that the environment and our choices have a profound effect on genetic tendencies for conditions we have long considered “fixed” such as obesity, homosexuality, and even personal traits such as leadership or optimism. He continues: ”We humans are not prisoners of our genes or our environment. We have free will. Genes are overruled every time an angry man restrains his temper, a fat man diets, and an alcoholic refuses to take a drink. It may be harder for people with certain genes or surroundings, but harder is a long way from predetermination.”[8]
People make dramatic mid life career changes, master new skills, adopt healthful lifestyles after years of wrong habits, make positive changes in the way they relate to people after years of dysfunctional relationships, and learn to enjoy new activities, hobbies, foods, and friends. All this human dynamism involves change—genetic, neuronal, and hormonal. These changes are involved in the ongoing formation of new brain circuits—and a new you!
We have all heard the expression “practice makes perfect.” That is, the performance of a given task or behavior improves or strengthens with repetition. This is because the brain is wonderfully plastic, or changeable, throughout life. The processes of thinking, learning, and memory are dynamic and ongoing.
We have to pay attention in order to make a choice, and what we pay attention to changes us! “Attention is a mental state that allows us, moment by moment, to choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, to choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense. These choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.”[9] People with addictions feel they have lost the power to choose what they rationally know is right. There is a loss of a sense of self-control. This is because changes have taken place in the brain that involve multiple brain circuits, especially circuits involving reward, conditioning, and self-control.[10] But once that power is re-harnessed, amazing changes can take place.
Additionally, the brain’s genes, synapses, and structure are influenced when we make positive choices, tackle mental challenges, adopt better attitudes, exercise judiciously, and eat and live more healthfully. Determined effort enhances the brain’s intellectual capacity, reasoning power, emotional strength, and the ability to respond to multiple challenges.
Learning how to cultivate these resources is of great benefit to those who have habits that hurt, and those who are caught in the clutches of guilt, shame, and discouragement. Knowing that the brain can recover from addictions and learn new habits is exciting. As Dr. Schwartz puts it, “With the ability to shape our brains comes the power to shape our destiny.”[11]
If you have a habit that hurts—this book is about how to tap into some wonderful resources—and into the Creator, who can give you power to start Living Free! What’s the piece that’s missing for you? Do you know what you need to do to break free from your bad habit or addiction? Perhaps you know what you need to do but you don’t know how to do it. You try and try but nothing seems to be working. Or perhaps you know what to do and how to do it, but you just don’t have the passion or motivation to stick with it. You may have great intentions—”Monday I’ll quit; I’ll start over.” But the staying power seems to be lacking in your life.
Gaining the Victory with Help
As it has been explained, the brain is very responsive and changeable throughout life. You can change even when habits have been long entrenched in your lifestyle. Repetition is the creator of habits. The more times a thought or action is repeated, the more cemented it is in the brain. One of the hardest struggles of the human heart is to realize the need of a power outside of oneself. It is natural to be independent; to try to solve all of life’s perplexities without help. But God, who created us, knows we need His help, power, and guidance in order to successfully manage ourselves and our life situation. We need to let God have control in our lives. Often the single biggest issue for someone struggling to break free from an addiction is trust. It is hard to relinquish the excessive need to control people or circumstances in an attempt to factor out potential pain. But if the need to control is not replaced with trust, a person will eventually replace one addiction with another.
The Bible teaches us that when we turn our lives over to God’s control, He will equip us to face life’s challenges, give us a new way of looking at life, give us reason to hope and trust, guide us in the right way, and at last grant us eternal life. The counsel is inviting: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”[12]
What you make up your mind to be, you will be. Our attitude is probably the most powerful indicator of success or failure in the pursuit of change. Neuroscientist John Ratey from Harvard University states it this way: “It has become obvious that we can actually change our brains. By altering the external environment or the internal environment of our bodies, we can take better advantage of our strengths and amend our weaknesses. The possibilities for change are bounded only by our imagination, our willingness to assess our brains accurately through self-reflection, and our commitment to do some hard work. One necessary precursor to change, though, is often a change in attitude.”[13]
Adopting healthful lifestyle habits and positive habits of thinking require planning and prioritizing each day. But positive choices have a powerful sculpting effect on the brain and promote long-term recovery from addictions. Getting free and staying free from addictions and bad habits requires applying biblical keys to life that impact the internal environment of how we think, our external environment and lifestyle choices, the community we surround ourselves with, and most importantly, cultivating a strong Connection with our Savior, who is the Author of freedom and liberty. The Living Free book is an exploration of these keys, and how to apply them for lasting victory (lifestylematters.com).
Sources:
[2] Behavioral addictions: do they exist? Holden C. Science for People 2001 Nov:294(5544)981.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[6] Ratey J. User’s Guide to the Brain (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2002) p. 17.
[7] Sticking together. Kennedy MB. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2000:21(97)11135-6.
[8] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., jacket cover
[12] Proverbs 3:5-6.
[13] Ratey J. User’s Guide to the Brain (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2002) p. 356
Copyright LifestyleMatters.com. 866-624-5433. Used by permission.
About the Author
Vicki Griffin
MS Human Nutrition, MPA (Research Director, Author, Member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics)
Listen to Audio Podcast Lectures
Vicki Griffin is the Director Lifestyle Matters and the Director of Health Ministries for the Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. The health outreach programs she has produced include: Fit & free! Building Brain and Body Health seminars; Balanced Living PowerPoint and Video Series; and the Lifestyle Matters Health Intervention Series. She is the Editor of Balance magazine and Balanced Living tracts.
Vicki has authored numerous books and teaching materials for community health education. Her books for the Lifestyle Matters series include Diet and Stress: Is What you’re Eating, Eating you?; Foods for Thought: Nutrition’s Link with Mood, Memory, Learning, and Behavior; and Living Free: Finding Freedom from Habits that Hurt. She has authored 3 cookbooks which feature easy, fast, economical and nutritious plant-based recipes. Balance magazine is widely used in community health outreach programs and features a wide variety of practical lifestyle articles, recipes, and tips.
As a science writer, her special area of interest and research is lifestyle stressors and simple stress solutions; that is, the relationship between diet, lifestyle, stress mechanisms, addictions, and brain health. She has conducted numerous nutritional labs worldwide and specializes in economical, easy, plant-based recipes.
Vicki has a Master’s degree in Human Nutrition; a Master’s degree in Public Administration; and a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work. She is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American College of Nutrition.
