One big fish story…

One big fish story… or The path of least resistance

When talking about addiction and how it affects the brain have you ever heard the term “what fires together wires together”?  What does this mean.  The phrase, “neurons that fire together wire together” can be attributed to Donald Hebb, a neuropsychologist, who said this in 1949. 

Each time you have a thought or encounter, different areas of your brain records this information all at the same time. (they fired together and are now wired together) i.e. You will never forget the first time you touched a hot stove; what it felt like, looked like and even smelled like, because your brain remembered every detail.  Next time you see a hot stove all of those areas in your brain remember it in details.  This happens with the good things in life too. When you hear a song it can take you right back to that moment in time, the feeling and what you were doing, who you were with.  Advertisers have known this for a long time and they hit you in as many regions as the brain as they can, sight, sound, scent etc.  This way your brain associates that product in many different ways.  The more times the same thing happens the stronger these connections get. 

I like to think of brain wiring like that path down to the creek when you were kids.  When you first started to go down to the creek you had to push through waste high grass with your fishing pole slung over your shoulder.  Remember the first time you fished there and all the big fish you caught?  That memory kept you coming back time after time, using the same path.  By the end of the summer you could clearly see the path you had been taking and within a couple of years it was a well-worn path.  Every time you start down that path you remember the first big fish you caught and you say to yourself, today I’m going to catch another really big one today, but you never do.  All you have left is the memory and a well-worn path.

This is what happens to our brain when we repeat anything over and over.  We create well-worn paths and these paths are what we follow without much conscious thought, hoping for one more big fish. 

In the case of addictive behavior, it may start out as a something to distract and entertain us or ease our pain.  Then here comes that well-worn path of a habit, followed by the anticipation of what is going to happen.   That first rush is now long gone and replaced with the brains need to keep that feeling coming.  They brain starts to tell the rest of the body it needs that old feeling back…  right now and it does it rather loudly.  Then when the body grabs that fishing pole the brain begins to anticipate what is about to happen its starts the fireworks show and those neurons begin to fire much like it does when we actually engage in the addictive behavior.  People talk about the rush they get from hearing the casino noise or seeing drug paraphernalia and its almost as powerful as the addiction itself.  We now see that with the internet and smart phones; every notification on your phone brings a rush of excitement of what the message might be.

What addicts really need is help building new paths, healthy paths that lead in all new directions,

away from old thinking and friends.  If they don’t get rid of the old paths they start to think they can go fishing with their old friends just one more time.     

Our brain keeps telling us, there might be one really big fish left, I bet we will catch it this time.  Let the fish go, that one last time may kill them…