Comments on: Impulsive minds are primed for drug addiction

By: Michael K Moriarty

Michael K Moriarty — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:31:18 +0000

This question of Self regulation is essential to all of our lives and yet presents such complexity. What is impulsivity? Why do we all act impulsively at times. Since the capacity to make sudden, ill thought out actions, is present in all, then we must assume that this capacity has been selected by natural selection and confers advantage. It would seem so. While the addage”look before you leap” is sound generally, there are circumstances such as danger
where leaping first is life saving. Leaping first when we are angered seems more prone to negative consequences.
but even with anger surely there are moments when delaying action to weigh my options could be risky.
Then too, impulsivity may be advantageous when we need to try new actions, or respond with novelty in situations where habitual actions brook nothing new or have lost their effectiveness. Men believe that women are attracted to guys who are edgy and take risks. Young men will behave impulsively in front of women to gain their admiration and attention.
Use of drugs or alcohol to reduce pain and to promote pleasure seem to involve us in risky behavior DDrugs/alc may beused impulsively, or when overused to the point of
habituation or dependence, taken compulsively to stave off the physical discomforts of withdrawl., or as a self comforting or self rewarding behavior.
Their is more to the notion of impulsivity
than just insufficiently delayed action, unregulated by higher brain functions as appraisal and better judgement.
we are designed with this capacity/ Like so many of our capacities they serve us well in many instances and bring harm in others. MIke

By: Kapitano

Kapitano — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:09:39 +0000

Innate differences in personality traits can predispose individuals to addictive drugs
Innate? As in “determined solely by genetics, inborn and forever unchangeable”…or as in “pre-existing for unspecified reasons, cultural or natural, beyond the scope of this paper”?
I ask as one who was raised to be quiet and accepting, and learned that impulsive and skeptical is more interesting.

By: speedwell

speedwell — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:16:05 +0000

Indeed. I learned when I was in middle school that my grandfather was an alcoholic (something carefully kept from his grandchildren for many years). Since he was a beer drinker, something in my mind associated beer with alcoholism, and I never cultivated a taste for beer… something that made me really stand out in my recent business trip to Germany, I can assure you.

By: outofocus

outofocus — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:11:14 +0000

speedwell – You might as well have been describing me.
I severely broke my leg when I was 12. They gave me codeine to take home. I have in my stack of journals, several pages where I documented when I took the codeine and how much. I tapered myself off and switched to tylenol within a few days of getting out of the hospital.
I’ve collected a nice stack of pain killers over the years for a variety of things (falling out of a tree, crashing while skateboarding, childbirth, motorcycle accidents, surgery) and most of them remain unopened. Unlike you, I do have a high pain tolerance but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it.
I grew up around drug users, alcoholics, etc and was lucky to have parents who were honest with me about their experiences. The idea of being addicted terrified me and since that is the only consistent and obvious genetic weakness in my family, I’ve rearranged that part of me so that I’m basically addicted to controlling myself so that it’s never an issue. I make fun of myself but I have spreadsheets keeping tabs on my calorie intake, my exercise regime, etc etc.
I know that the reason that I declined drugs when I was a teenager was because I was educated about drugs and really understood the long term risks. I opted for other sorts of sensation seeking behavior that had more short term risks. I know some people believe they are impervious to the risks and I think that’s a secondary issue, a disconnect with reality.
I am a huge supporter of educating children as they come into appropriate ages for it. My siblings grew up with my dad and his wife. They were secretive about their behavior when asked by their children (I’m 10 yrs older than my sister, I can remember my dad doing coke) so my siblings were not given the opportunity to learn. My sister spent pretty much all of her teenage years under the influence of drugs, moving from THC to speed to heroine. She kicked the heroine but hasn’t learned to kick the people from the lifestyle and so she is always in danger of backsliding (which is another major issue for addicts).

By: speedwell

speedwell — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:22:32 +0000

That’s interesting. I’m sitting here with two recent root canals, for which the dentist gave me a prescription for Vicodin. Four pills into a 20-pill scrip, I switched over to regular Tylenol, as I have a horror of becoming dependent on a drug. This has happened multiple times; after having a kidney removed two years ago, I still have half the Vicodin given to me for post-op pain. I’m particularly pain sensitive, so it is not that I simply didn’t feel the pain. Vicodin works great on me (in fact, I can’t seem to properly tolerate Percocet), so I didn’t have a problem with it.
I’m pretty impulsive, all in all. I can be objective enough to give in to mostly GOOD impulses, but there have been times… you know. I have also been clinically depressed most of my life. These two things, I understand, predispose me to being an addict of SOME sort, but I don’t drink, or smoke, or anything… the best I can do in that respect is that I eat too much, like the majority (I was about to say the bulk) of the population.
My own case, where I actually take fewer doses of the addictive medication than other people despite being, arguably, an “addict” personality, leads me to reflect that the main difference between me and the rats is that I’m a human being with the power of choosing my behavior based on the knowledge of what I’m taking into my body. Addicts, once addicted, lose some of that power of choice, and I’m not blaming them for that. After somebody is addicted, there is only so much you can do. But before they’re addicted… that’s where we can really work on what is unique about us as human beings.
It’s common to harp on “prevention” as if admonishing people that “drugs are bad” is anything but crude and condescending. If we are to agree that addictions are horrible and we should take steps to prevent them, we need to approach things respectfully and in a more nuanced way. I’m not entirely sure how your rat experiments will help us do this, but I’m hoping that you will come up with something unusual and good. Thanks for posting.