05 - MARC LEWIS, PHD - ADDICTION AS LEARNING

Marc Lewis is a professor, neuroscientist, author, and psychiatrist whose own personal struggle with opiate addiction continues to inform his groundbreaking work in the field.

In this wide-ranging discussion, Marc explains how addiction isn't actually a disease, but rather a highly motivated form learning--and how this understanding accounts for the ways in which people ultimately overcome addiction: often spontaneously and without external treatment.

To find out more about Marc's work, check out his website or buy one of his books (I highly recommend them!)

Other Topics include:

• Why Marc Lewis believes the “disease model” of addiction should be challenged
• Why the brain changes in addiction resembles the brain changes in other issues, like binge eating, porn, and internet addiction
• How the progress of addiction differs from that of a disease
• Reconsidering if “hijacking the brain” is useful metaphor for the addicted brain
• Depression as a strategy of self-regulation
• The feedback cycle of addiction and the relief of “Now appeal”
• Comparing an addicted brain to a brain in love
• Lisa Diamond: Research on Pair bonding
• How desire, not drugs themselves, “hijack the brain”
• The Biology of Desire
• Why addictions happen “despite the bad news they bring into a person’s life”
• Marc reflects on a recent career change to Clinical Psychology
• How can we meaningfully intervene into a person’s reward system?
• Internal Family Systems approach
• Is the brain like a morality play?
• James talks Morning Pages as a loose therapeutic space
• Freud and the importance of putting things into words
• Marc reflects on his journals of addiction
• James Pennebaker - writing to heal (article)
• why it’s so hard to predict when addicts quit
• Edward Slingerland - Drunk
• Huberman Lab - Alcohol
• weighing the social effects vs the physical effects of alcohol
• Carl Hart - Drug Use for Grown-Ups
• fentanyl and the mixing with stimulants
• Why Marc Lewis think drugs will be integrated into society in future policy
• Huberman on Nicotine
• Research into psychedlics, therapy, microdosing
• Why you have to have done drugs to understand drugs
• Terance McKenna “when you get the message hang up the phone”
• How Marc Lewis’ addiction experience became an asset in his career
• why the “Streets are Talented”
• if we forget the social, we are missing the whole picture

Find out more at GreatLifeWork.com