Your Brain and the Addictive Pathways

Cravings all start in your brain—in your brain’s chemistry, and also in your emotions..

Your body is designed to work perfectly. This perfect natural design includes brain cells called neurons that keep you alive, efficient, and balanced. This balance is called equilibrium, and that equilibrium comes from a special area of the brain,the hypothalamus.

Your hypothalamus makes sure your blood, digestion, hormones, and other endocrine functions are always perfectly balanced.

Also, your hypothalamus and its companion nuclei {do we mean neurons?] are affected by your emotions, including fear, sadness, anger, frustration, and stress.

It’s a delicate balance between emotions and chemicals in your hypothalamus, this area of the brain that keeps your daily life working perfectly anytime you experience a significant emotion, your brain will include the hypothalamus in its pathway of checking the past to compare that emotion to events stored in your memory.

Anytime you have a surge of chemicals foreign or in excess, the hypothalamus has to adjust and at the same moment, compare what happened in the past with what is going on the present in order to find the easiest path to restore your body’s balance.

Now, any time you take an addictive substance, the brain will store the memory of the effects of the substance along with emotions that went along with the experience. Over time, your emotions become so woven into the experience of the addictive substance that they become just as important as the substance—and maybe even more when it comes to how the brain stores your history of habits, and how the brain can learn to release bad habits. Because deep emotions are embedded in the experience of addiction, your body has a difficult time letting go of its dependence. Emotion plays a major role in the brain and its maintaining your equilibrium.

Let’s put this all together.

When you take a substance such as sugar, junk food, or a harmful drug, the hypothalamus has to deal with the chemical change in the brain and body. Your body experiences the chemical as an assault—and it resists! But if taking the substances gives you pleasure, your body ignores the pain in favor of that pleasure.

Unfortunately, most of us aren’t in the habit of listening to our bodies, so we often miss the initial stress of taking the chemical substance, and the mixed body sensations of pleasure and pain start to confuse us. It becomes more and more difficult to decide what’s good for us, and what’s hurting us.