<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Laboratories in the Golden Triangle—Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand—were pumping out low-grade no. 3 heroin for years. Then in 1971 a chemist in Hong Kong went Walter White and started producing 99 percent pure heroin, otherwise known as no. 4. Kilo prices jumped, yet so did soldiers picking up bags from street merchants and highway stalls, even from maids who cleaned their quarters. </span></p> <div class="video-callout-placeholder" data-slug="how-did-the-vietnam-war-shape-you" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="lr3ALxNU" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="5998fb1c3e936cf2651eb30e2f4c7e70">
<div id="botr_lr3ALxNU_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/lr3ALxNU-FvQKszTI.js">
<img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/lr3ALxNU-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview">
</div>
<script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/lr3ALxNU-FvQKszTI.js"></script>
</div>
</div> <p>By the time the war ended 35 percent of American soldiers had tasted heroin while 19 percent returned as addicts. With Nixon waging his crusade on illicit substances to control minority and radical populations, he knew this epidemic was going to be severe. A hundred thousand returning addicts who had just fought for the country could not be handled lightly. </p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">As Adam Alter writes in <em>Irresistible</em>, the marketing professor’s latest book on addictive technology, something incredible occurred. After their initial detox only 5 percent of soldiers relapsed. In the addiction community that number is unbelievable; normally only 5 percent of heroin addicts <em>don’t</em> relapse. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">What changed? The environment they were in. Alter writes: </span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">They arrived home to a completely different life. There was no trace of the jungle; the steamy summers in Saigon; the rattle of gunfire, or the chop of helicopter blades. Instead, they went grocery shopping, they returned to work, they endured the monotony of suburbia, and enjoyed the pleasure of home-cooked meals. </span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Of course, PTSD and other symptoms are another story. What is incredible about this case is that it wasn’t genetics or potency that mattered—it was the shift in environmental conditions. Today, Weill Cornell Medical College clinical psychiatry professor Richard A Friedman believes that changing your environment can also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/sunday/what-cookies-and-meth-have-in-common.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><span class="s2">shift the current opioid and obesity epidemics</span></a>. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Friedman cites a <a href="http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(09)00965-2/pdf" target="_blank"><span class="s2">2010 study</span></a> at Columbia University that found proxies for stress in the form of low social status and social support resulted in fewer D2s, dopamine receptors involved in your brain’s reward network. Turns out the higher your D2 level the less likely you are to seek out pleasure in drugs such as carbs and sugars and pills. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">These receptors don’t only predict drug usage, Friedman writes, their count is also lowered by continued ingestion of substances like heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. He extends the argument for painkillers such as opioids and comfort foods. </span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">These people are far less sensitive to rewards, are less motivated and may find the world dull, once again making them prone to seek a chemical means to enhance their everyday life.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p1"><span class="s1"> </span></p> <div class="video-callout-placeholder" data-slug="carl-hart-describes-drug-addicts-and-addiction" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="m6FflA6K" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="cc6deceb00e5fcd0d8290943526cd014">
<div id="botr_m6FflA6K_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/m6FflA6K-FvQKszTI.js">
<img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/m6FflA6K-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview">
</div>
<script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/m6FflA6K-FvQKszTI.js"></script>
</div>
</div> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">As our understanding of our brains evolves researchers are realizing that while addictive substances are varied, how you become addicted to a substance is similar. This is true with, as Friedman implies, cookies and meth, as well as smartphones and tablets, as Alter discusses. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">It returns to the pleasure derived in our reward network. Each drug has the same insidious effect: what provides immense pleasure at first requires stronger doses as we become accustomed to new levels of stimulation, requiring more of the substance—more food, more pain relief, more time staring at a screen. This is as true of Candy Crush as real candy. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">And so food addicts find “normal food consumption insufficiently rewarding” while olfactory stimuli creates more intense cravings in the obese than in the slim. It is measurable chemistry, but Friedman argues that environment overrules genetics and habits. Since we can’t change our genes, changing our environment appears to be the most beneficial road ahead.</span></p> <div class="video-callout-placeholder" data-slug="rehab-your-taste-buds-getting-hooked-on-wholesome-foods" style="border: 1px solid #ccc;">
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="Z8Yz3Q0X" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="fcca849740f04f65114aaea40ecd2113">
<div id="botr_Z8Yz3Q0X_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/Z8Yz3Q0X-FvQKszTI.js">
<img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/Z8Yz3Q0X-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview">
</div>
<script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/Z8Yz3Q0X-FvQKszTI.js"></script>
</div>
</div> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Our environment has changed. Food deserts aren’t void of product; they are filled with processed sugar- and carb-heavy foodstuffs cheap to produce and cheap in the body. They provide little nutrition but much pleasure. Once you’re hooked on the taste it’s nearly impossible to alter your reward circuits. By remaining in that environment you’re likely to succumb.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Yet this isn’t only happening in poor neighborhoods. As Natalia Petrzela <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/06/28/why-donald-trumps-diet-is-bad-for-americas-health/?utm_term=.bb3006f5cb68" target="_blank"><span class="s2">writes</span></a> in the <em>Washington Post</em>, our president’s poor eating habits and lack of exercise influences the nation. She argues that he’s operating under century-old assumptions: </span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">His love of rich foods and leisure paradoxically trades on century-old tropes that also cast him as a kind of Everyman’s Billionaire. Until about 1920, the wealthy conspicuously consumed caloric foods and avoided exertion because few felt they could afford to do so.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Caloric foods are overwhelmingly available today in every pocket of the nation. And this is an evolutionary first. As Friedman puts it: </span></p> <blockquote>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">There was no flourless chocolate cake on the savanna.</span></p>
</blockquote> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">This “double whammy” of cheap foodstuffs and pervasive pills is a precedent our bodies are not prepared for. </span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">Friedman also notes something important that’s known in the addiction community: everyone has the potential to be an addict. It was long thought that certain genetic traits created the addict, but technology, obesity, and opioids prove there’s an addict lurking inside of us all. It just takes the right mixture of timing and place. Change the setting and you can recover—as Friedman observes, that might be the only factor we truly have control over. </span></p> <p class="p1">--</p> <p>Derek's next book, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Motion-Training-Optimal-Health/dp/1631440721/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476996488&sr=8-1&keywords=whole+motion" target="_blank">Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health</a></em>, will be published on 7/17 by Carrel/Skyhorse Publishing. He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DerekBeresdotcom" target="_blank">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/derekberes" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.</p>
Keep reading
Show less