toodamtall
Active member
Its interesting some of the different factors that play into assorted, somewhat unhealthy behaviors. Rob, you and LaMa have hit different aspects of it. I've done a little exploring too on some of the science to it because of my own issues, and a lot of it still comes down to the "reptile brain". Anything that feels good tends to release chemicals like dopamine in your brain, so we build these neural pathways from our behaviors. A certain food tastes good, gives us pleasure, releases dopamine, makes us feel good i.e. "comforted". Where a lot of us go astray is that once we've built these pathways, if we have a genetic, epigenetic or learned behavioral trend toward excessive use, we begin to go astray and start using it as a coping mechanism.
This pretty much works for all of it. Eating, drugs, alcohol, sex gambling... Something hits that sweet spot in our brain that starts releasing those chemicals and we begin to rely on it to cope until the behavior becomes unhealthy. Now our normal levels of dopamine aren't as high UNTIL we use that coping mechanism. Since we're now naturally low, all of the rest of the stuff that stresses us out (fear, anger, loneliness, etc) seems that much worse, so we binge more on (insert coping mechanism of choice here) and the cycle repeats itself, potentially getting progressively worse.
It's kind of a scary merry go round.
This pretty much works for all of it. Eating, drugs, alcohol, sex gambling... Something hits that sweet spot in our brain that starts releasing those chemicals and we begin to rely on it to cope until the behavior becomes unhealthy. Now our normal levels of dopamine aren't as high UNTIL we use that coping mechanism. Since we're now naturally low, all of the rest of the stuff that stresses us out (fear, anger, loneliness, etc) seems that much worse, so we binge more on (insert coping mechanism of choice here) and the cycle repeats itself, potentially getting progressively worse.
It's kind of a scary merry go round.
