The Role of Craving in the Cycle of Addictive Behavior - Mind & Life Institute

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Dialogue 27|Session 4

Overview

I begin by describing a typical episode of pursuing and taking drugs based on my own experience of addiction during my 20s. This vignette demonstrates how thoughts about drugs and feelings of craving grow together in a person’s mind, until they finally give in. Then comes the loss and despair, and the cycle repeats itself. According to psychological theory, the attraction to the cycle of craving and the use of drugs increases over months and years. According to neuroscience, brain events follow a similar cycle, from perceptual triggers to the activation of motivational, cognitive, and behavioral systems, though structural changes in the brain emerge over longer periods. The universality and momentum of the addiction cycle stem largely from the action of dopamine, a neurochemical that narrows attention to immediate rewards and intensifies the desire to attain them. Focused desire–or craving–is also a key element in Buddhist models of suffering. Buddhist views map onto the neuropsychology of addiction surprisingly well: Craving and grasping lead to action, loss, and despair in a cycle that recurs time and time again. As drug use increasingly affects the brain, it becomes very difficult for addicts to look beyond the immediate goal and see the larger picture of their lives. To get out of this trap, addicts have to learn to trust in themselves rather than in drugs or alcohol. My presentation ends by considering the usefulness of making contact with a “higher self” that enables self-forgiveness and compassion, and weakens the intense attraction of immediate goals.

Dialogue 27
11 sessions
October 28, 2013
Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India
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Speakers

Tenzin Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama, is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a spiritual leader revered worldwide. He was born on July 6, 1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, he was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion, who choose to reincarnate for the purpose of serving human beings. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989, he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peaceful resolution of human conflict. He has traveled extensively, speaking on subjects including universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. Less well known is his intense personal interest in the sciences; he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked to be an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa it was he who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be it a clock or a car. He has a vigorous interest in learning the newest developments in science, and brings to bear both a voice for the humanistic implications of the findings, and a high degree of intuitive methodological sophistication.

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Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. Founder, abbot, and head teacher of Upaya Institute and Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she received her PhD in medical anthropology in1973 while teaching at the University of Miami Medical School. She has been awarded a National Science Foundation fellowship in visual anthropology and an honorary research fellowship in medical ethnobotany at Harvard University, and was named a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library of Congress. From 1972–1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center with dying cancer patients. She has continued to work with dying people and their families, and she teaches healthcare professionals and family caregivers about the psychosocial, ethical, and spiritual aspects of caring for the dying. She is director of the Project on Being with Dying, and founder and director of the Upaya Prison Project, which has developed programs on meditation for prisoners. She studied with Zen teacher Seung Sahn, received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than four decades has focused on applied Buddhism.

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Marc Lewis is a developmental neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology, recently at the University of Toronto (where he taught and conducted research from 1989-2010), and presently at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He is the author or co-author of more than 50 journal publications in psychology and neuroscience. He experimented with a large variety of drugs in his youth, and eventually became addicted to opiates. His addiction cost him several close relationships and led him into a life of crime. He got arrested and convicted for theft, and was kicked out of graduate school as a result. At the age of 30, he quit drugs for good, then re-entered grad school and received his PhD five years later. In 2006, his research led him back to addiction--this time as a neuroscientist studying the brain changes that amplify craving and weaken self-control. His recent book, Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, blends his life story with a user-friendly account of how drugs affect the brain and how addiction seriously alters neural chemistry and structure.

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