The author started using alcohol when she was 13. Then she abused marijuana and injected cocaine until the age 23. She had been kicked out of three schools by this time, and living on the street but managed to turn her life around. She went on to get a degree then Ph.D in behavioral neuroscience and become an expert in the neurobiology, chemistry, and genetics of addictive behavior.
Some interesting points from her book :
1. The brain's response to a drug is always to facilitate the opposite state; therefore, the only way for any regular user to feel normal is to take the drug. Getting high if it occurs at all, is increasingly short-lived, and so the purpose of using is to stave off withdrawal.
2. Solomon and Corbit introduced the terms "State A” and "State B” to refer to opposing affective experiences in the study of addiction. The feelings produced by a stimulus are captured in State A, and the rebound caused by the attempted return to the neutral state is depicted in State B. The a process is the neural response to the stimulus. If we are talking about drug use, we can think of the a process as what the drug does to the brain.
Big doses produce large a processes, and protracted stimuli produce long-lasting a processes. But for each a process, there is b process. The b process is the brain's response to the a process, or the brain's response to what the drug does to the brain, counteracting the changes in neural activity produced by the stimulus in an effort to return brain activity to its neutral, homeostatic state.
3. The hallmarks of addiction-tolerance, withdrawal, and craving-are captured in the consequences of the b process. Tolerance occurs because more drug is needed to produce an a process capable of overcoming a stronger and stronger b process. Withdrawal happens because the b process outlasts the drug's effects. And craving is virtually guaranteed because any environmental signal that has been associated with the drug can itself elicit a b process that can only be assuaged by indulging in the drug.
4. THC (psychoactive constituent of cannabis) interacting with receptors all over the brain - on the cortex, the structure involved in information processing and other kinds of thinking and awareness, but also in many deeper subcortical structures having to do with emotion and motivation.
5. Many opiate addicts attempt to quit, and when they do, they suffer with a constellation of withdrawal symptoms exactly opposite to the acute effects of the drug. For example : analgesia (opiate effect)- pain (withdrawal), tranquilization - hostility, constipation - diarrhea, sleep - insomnia, euphoria - irritability and dysphoria
6. An experiment in rats suggested that if the parent used THC during adolescent years, their children and grandchildren may be at increased risk for developing a mood disorder (depression and anxiety) or an addiction. This studies may be true for human as well. It's increasingly looking as if exposure to drugs of abuse in our parents and grandparents predisposes us to take drugs ourselves- effectively a b process across generations.
7. A predisposition to seek novel experiences, take risks, or escape pain, for example, may influence behavior across a lifetime, but we now also know that starting early, before the brain is mature, causes neural changes that foster problem of drug use in adulthood. We call this the "gateway effect," and a growing body of research documents enhanced drug-taking and drug-seeking behavior in humans and animals following adolescent exposure to substances including cannabis.
8. According to her; federal agents, friends' deaths, expulsions and evictions, physical withdrawal, and myriad other tragedies weren't enough to propel her to change; instead, it was human love and connection. Her father's willingness to treat her with kindness on her 23rd birthday has given her the strength to seek rehabilitation.
Her last words :
In the past hundred years, we've stopped expecting addicts to cure themselves, and that is surely progress. But to wait for a biomedical or any other outside cure is to miss asking questions of ourselves and considering our own role in the epidemic. While we are at it, instead of wringing our hands, we might try reaching for another's.
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