How Addiction Affects Your Brain

Addiction affects your brain. But have you ever wondered how?

Photo courtesy of Jesse Orrico via Unsplash

I find brain science fascinating and I’ll admit I’m a chemistry geek. Even if you’re not, you may be interested in what drugs, alcohol, and even behavioral addictions can do to you and how addiction can affect your brain.
 
I run an outpatient addiction clinic based in Portland called Fair Start. At Fair Start we help addicts—mostly young adults—recover from drug addiction.
 
The majority of our patients are addicted heroin and other opioids. Often they are using several drugs at once, including meth.

Most people know me as a medical doctor. Most people don’t know that I’m also a recovering alcoholic.
 
Or that my wife, Maiya, is a recovering opioid addict.
 
While I’ve been in active recovery for 15 years now and I’m not shy about sharing my story, I’m about to go public with all of this in a big way.
 
I have a new book coming out called The Addiction Spectrum: A Compassionate, Holistic Approach to Recovery.  www.Addictionspectrum.com

The book will be published by HarperOne on September 4. 

If you have a young family and you read my last book, co-written with Jennifer Margulis, The Vaccine-Friendly Plan, I think you will want to read this one too. Any parent who is afraid their child might someday get addicted needs the information we present in this book.

​If you’ve ever wondered about addiction, loved an addict, or suffered from addiction yourself, this book is also for you.

If you’re a public health official, policy maker, doctor, or educator, you also need the knowledge in this book.

So how does addiction affect the brain?

No child is born thinking, “I want to grow up to be an addict or alcoholic.” 

​Even when our using or drinking starts having a significant negative impact on our lives, most of us will deny that a problem even exists.

That is one baffling aspects of addiction.
 
Addiction hijacks a person’s normal common sense. 

To the outsider, it seems we have no willpower.
 
But that’s not what’s actually going on.
 
We now know where most of the substances we misuse act in the brain.

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