It Isn't Rocket Surgery, It's Brain Science.

Addiction is extremely complicated. It's not genetics, it's not choice, it's not neurochemical imbalances. Instead, it's a complex interaction of all of these.

Join Dr. Marc Lewis as he walks us through the neurobiology of addiction in laymen's terms.

Click here to check out more of Dr. Lewis' work.

Super Highways: A Metaphor for the Brain

Habitual behaviors have two main parts. One part biological and one part choice. On occasion, we are more likely to engage in certain behaviors due to a "predisposition" or we may be more "predisposed" to having certain mental illnesses like anxiety or depression. This can be determined from genetics and neural pathways and sometimes choice places a significant role too.

Making new choices that lead to the development of new habits can be hard. Think of the brain like a city. Inside your city, or brain, there are networks of roads (these represent neural pathways). The busier a roadway gets, the larger it needs to be to accommodate the traffic flow. Meaning, the more a neural pathway is fired, the more "space" it takes up in the brain until it because the preferred route for neural synapses to follow.

Think of a country road versus a super highway. That country road is first created when we make a choice. It doesn't matter if that choice is to have a Coca-Cola every day at lunch or to use a substance. That choice creates the road and the more we choose to do that over and over the more traffic is sent down that road. Eventually, the road is built up over time into a super highway and the choice becomes a habit.

Now like in the real world, building a super highway in the brain can be costly and time consuming. This is part of why the brain likes to make things easier on itself and default to those habits or super highways that are already built rather than changing. So, if you tend to make the choice to have a caffeinated beverage everyday then you are more likely to elect to have one out of habit rather than choose another option when given the choice. This can be said for bad habits too. If you choose to do the bad habit, again and again, then it becomes your super highway.

The brain prioritizes the need to conserve energy over almost everything else so even when a decision is painful or not even something we really want to do emotionally, we often find our brains guiding back down that super highway, or neural path.

But, choice is always there. We can choose to do the harder thing and start to create that new highway. This isn't usually simple and requires that the choice be made again, and again, and again.

See It in Action: The Backwards Brain Bicycle

Neurobiology of Addiction