Understanding addiction: Why your brain gets hooked on gambling
The brain of a gambling addict mimics that of a drug addict. But no outside chemicals are involved. How does that happen?
Maia Szalavitz is widely viewed as one of the premier American journalists covering addiction and drugs. A neuroscience writer for TIME.com and a former cocaine and heroin addict, she understands the science and its personal dimensions in a way that few others can. is the first book-length exposé of the "tough love" business that dominates addiction treatment. Her newest book is Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction.
Maia Szalavitz: Addiction is: compulsive behavior despite negative consequences.
And it's really important to start by defining addiction because for a long time we really defined it very poorly.
We used to think that addiction was “needing a substance to function”.
And what that resulted in was that cocaine was “not addictive” because cocaine does not produce physical withdrawal that is noticeable. You may be cranky and irritable and crave cocaine, but you won't be puking and shaking and have the classic symptoms that you would see with alcohol or heroin withdrawal. So cocaine wasn't addictive.
Then crack came, and we realized that defining addiction in that way not only harms people by telling them that cocaine is not addictive, it also harmed pain patients because people who take opioids daily for pain will develop physical dependence, but they are not addicted unless they have compulsive behavior despite negative consequences.
To me, non-drug addictions are really, really interesting because some people have argued that drugs are addictive because they change the brain and that addiction results from unique pathology related to the particular chemicals of the drugs.
It is certainly the case that the chemistry matters, but addiction can occur completely without any external chemicals.
And the reason that that happens is that addiction is not simply exposure to a substance, addiction is a pattern of behavior, and certain patterns of experience are inherently addictive.
And gambling is a good example of this because what gambling does is it gives you intermittent reinforcement. And so every unpredictable amount of times, you win.
And this is a puzzle to our pattern-seeking brains, and we keep thinking we're going to find a pattern and it's going to sort out and we're going to understand it, and we're going to get rich. Or we find that sort of the constant immersion in these ideas that allow you to escape: “Well I've got to do—this is going to soothe you and allow you to escape from your life,” and stuff like this.
I think gambling is also really interesting because we've had an enormous explosion in the availability of gambling, but we have not had an enormous explosion of gambling addictions. ‘
And again, this is because the population rate— there's only a certain percent of people who will be vulnerable.
Now, you can make more of those people by traumatizing them and taking away their economic ways of living, but you can't create them by providing more substances or more addictive opportunities.
Author and neuroscience journalist Maia Szalavitz says that your brain doesn't necessarily choose to become addicted to gambling. Rather, it just really wants to figure out a pattern. This 'want' doesn't need any foreign chemicals in order to make it work. In the mind of a serious gambler, their brain wants to find order in the game's structure so bad that it will keep the person playing, telling itself that it will figure it out and that it's just one step away from becoming rich. This doesn't happen to everyone — on the contrary, addictive gamblers are a small yet potent percentage of all gamblers — but their brains mimic that of a severe drug addict trying to get their next fix. Maia's latest book is Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction.
To boost your self-esteem, write about chapters of your life
If you're lacking confidence and feel like you could benefit from an ego boost, try writing your life story.
In truth, so much of what happens to us in life is random – we are pawns at the mercy of Lady Luck. To take ownership of our experiences and exert a feeling of control over our future, we tell stories about ourselves that weave meaning and continuity into our personal identity.
MIT study: 24-hour fasting regenerates stem cells, doubles metabolism
This gives credence to the 5–2 diet, which has recently gained in popularity thanks to a large celebrity following.
Chances are you're probably thinking about food right now in some capacity. Maybe it's close to dinner and you're wondering what you are going to eat. Maybe you had a really good lunch and are fondly reminiscing about your BLT, or whatnot. Or maybe, just maybe, you're thinking about not eating food for a while.
Ashes of cat named Pikachu to be launched into space
A space memorial company plans to launch the ashes of "Pikachu," a well-loved Tabby, into space.
- Steve Munt, Pikachu's owner, created a GoFundMe page to raise money for the mission.
- If all goes according to plan, Pikachu will be the second cat to enter space, the first being a French feline named Felicette.
- It might seem frivolous, but the cat-lovers commenting on Munt's GoFundMe page would likely disagree.
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