5-03-2008

Brian: Welcome to the Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour, my name is Brian is Fujii and my cohost is Jill Mattingly and we are here by ourselves today, Jill.

Jill: Yes.

Brian: I tell you what. We’ve had several guests and really had been a tremendous time to discuss all the different issues around medications and co-occurring disorders and today we’re going to continue our discussion on the topic on Relapse triggers and Drug or alcohol cravings and I know that many people are probably listening in today and as they listen, they’re trying to say what in the world is a relapse trigger and a drug or alcohol craving? And we do know that this is one of the big issues why people who are trying to recover from either alcohol or other drug addiction continue to either lapse or relapse and get back into using all over again because they haven’t figured out what is it that makes me want to drink or drug.

Jill: Yes, exactly and I was just thinking of listening to that Eagles song as they were bringing us in and the reason I chose to play that is I think that someone out there could be relapse triggered by that song, I mean.

Brian: In what way?

Jill: Well, that either a memory or an emotion or, and even though not everyone out there listening is probably struggling with drug addiction or anything like that, but, still, that song was about drug addiction from what I understand.

So I chose that because it brings up kind of the information we’re going to talk about to day, relapse triggers. Music is a huge relapse trigger and memories, and we know that drug addiction relies heavily on memory.

Brian: Well, I’m so glad that you brought that up because, in a very positive way, thank goodness our brain can have memories that come across because of quote relapse triggers unquote and . . .

Jill: Good memories.

Brian: In fact, that what I was going to say, positive memories. You know I can remember my grandmother cooking up some great batches of cookies and the minute that I think about it, boy, my jaws began to kind of get a little salivating and I’m going, “Yeah! I can remember that.” And those are pleasant thoughts, pleasant memories, and so there’s a positive aspect of having these positive relapse triggers, but then, of course, we know, that there are certain kinds of relapse triggers that produce drug or alcohol cravings that are unhealthy for us.

Jill: Right. Well usually we start the show, I talk a little bit about what’s in the news and I thought it was interesting when we’re talking about drug addiction; there’s many types of drugs out there that can be addicitond and become dependent on. One of them is LSD and as a matter of fact, LSD was developed by a man named Albert Hoffman back in 1938, and most people think about him, Abby Hoffman as an activist back in 60’s, but actually he was a pretty straight-laced scientist and he was studying medicinal effects of different things and he happened to spill this on him in the lab and proceeded to have the first LCD trip back there in 1938. Well, it was discovered over the years by some of the people back in the 60’s and made popular. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the Beatles song, celebrated the use of LCD, but, interestingly enough, coming full circle, Abby might have been on the right track because there seemed that it could help in different types of schizophrenia addiction treatment.

Brian: Yeah, again, this is where the positive purpose for trying to create medication gets turned around and used in a very interesting way.
Jill: Right, and the other thing is I just want to say is shout out to all the Hawks fans, and if you watched that game last night, that was just, I was just on the edge of my seat all night! I so excited!! I think, I don’t know what it’s going to be like up there in Boston, they may take us to task up there, but, Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening is the final game. Yes, okay, sorry! Had to go there! Had to go there, I’m so excited. But, Brian, why don’t you define relapse trigger for us?

Brian: Yeah, let’s look at that again. You know, Jill, when we talk about the relapse triggers, let’s just define what that really means and this might give us more definition. A relapse trigger, as we define, is a stimulus that has been repeatedly associated with the preparation for or anticipation of either alcohol or other drugs and it means that whenever we get exposed, and these things can be like, certain people, certain places, certain things, but also, certain emotions. Emotions can be a significant relapse trigger. Sadness, frustration, depression, boredom, and I’m thinking, many people out there may be saying, ‘you know, when I want to drink, that’s when I want to drink the most, when I’m bored.’

And so if you are interested in maybe with us, maybe your story, what are some of the things that causes you to maybe want to either drink or drug, this might help people out there to realize, hey, this is not that unusual. So, give us a call here at 770-226-0920 or outside the Atlanta area 1-888-920-2665, and we were talking about different things that cause people to want to use and I know that lastly, and let’s kind of do this real quickly as a kind of a review that we know that there are certain types of relapse triggers that get stimulated when people are using different types of drugs, for example like stimulants. One of the biggest and I thought this was a phenomenal, interesting statistic: when people use alcohol, and we talk about this earlier on in our addiction treatment about the idea of cross-addiction, but they’re saying that people who use stimulants, like cocaine or amphetamines or methamphetamines, all those stimulants, that if they use alcohol, even in a casual way, that they will have an 800% chance of relapsing back to cocaine, that’s exactly right.

Jill: So alcohol kind of greases the wheel and then they go down. And also, I have come to understand that when you mix alcohol and cocaine, you come up with a whole different metabolite that actually can be as addictive as those things by themselves.

Brian: Almost a synergistic effect.

Jill: Absolutely. So, alcohol use is a huge relapse trigger for a person that may be trying to stay away from a stimulant like cocaine, methamphetamine or something like that. Also, I’m sure it’s being around friends that do it. I mean, if your friend is pulling that out, you’re in the bar and they say, ‘hey, let’s go to bathroom’, obviously it’s going to be very difficult not to participate.

Brian: That’s right, and I’m glad you brought up about friends. It’s really interesting too, that some of the most seemingly innocent or innocuous events can actually be a stimuli. We’ve seen where just certain freeway exits or maybe even ATM machines, you say, “what in the world are you talking about?” Well, when people begin to realize that that’s the exit they took to go and get their drug dealer so that they can get their drugs of choice, it becomes a major issue and then this sort of occurred earlier when intranasal use of cocaine was snorting cocaine, and when the weekend came and they used all their money up, that was the end of the weekend. But when ATM machines came into play, now, if they ran out of money on Friday night, guess what they could do? They could run to the ATM machine and pull out some money and now they could really have an extended weekend. And so ATM machines, believe it or not, became a very significant relapse trigger for many people who were using cocaine at that time.

Jill: And also money. I’ve had friends in the past that have gone through addiction treatment or are trying to stay away from stimulant addiciton like crack cocaine which is very, very addictive. They were helping a painting project and they were paid like $50, but it was given to them in cash and I remember when they were being handed the cash, they had a look that I hadn’t seen yet, and the job wasn’t finished yet, yet they were almost giddy and it was interesting and I think the money, having the cash in the hand was part of . . . .

Brian: Oh, money is a big relapse trigger, it really is, and that then literally, the idea about money burning a hole in one’s pocket is really true. But, listen, give us a call here at 770-226-0920 and participate in this conversation because I know we’d be surely interested in trying to hear what have been some of your experiences about maybe a loved one is moving toward using toward using again and you’re wondering, “why, what’s going on?” What are the relapse triggers?

Jill: Alcohol, I bet, everyone is wondering, well, what are the main things in alcohol relapse triggers?

Brian: I’m so glad you asked that.

Jill: And usually anger and depression, it says.

Brian: That’s right.

Jill: That’s one of the main things that can cause a relapse with alcohol or relapse triggered alcohol use.

Brian: Yep, and then that’s because it’s dealing with the emotions. We talked about the people, the places, the things; but, it’s really interesting that it is that internal emotional, what we call an internal relapse trigger, that is probably the most powerful, in fact, many times people say, “Well, I gotta have alcohol just so that I can get to sleep. If I can’t get to sleep, I have to have my alcohol, or I’ll have a miserable night.” And so, here we are, individuals are having problems with depression, and they’re saying, “I’ve got to get over this depression, I gotta have me a drink.”

Jill: Especially during a break up or a loss of job or something like that, or unemployment.

Brian: And we’ve seen this a lot, haven’t we?

Jill: Yes, we’re seeing a lot of people coming through now because of that.

Brian: And I’m seeing, obviously the way our economy is running, I’m sure we’re going to be seeing an increase of that particular area.

Jill: Well, it looks like we’re coming down to our first break, and so let’s just put out that number: 770-226-0920. Call us, get in on this conversation, ask a question, and hopefully you’ll get an answer. We’re going to be right back.  Stay with us.

Jill: Hey, welcome back to the Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour. My name is Jill Mattingly.

Brian: And I’m Brian Fujii.

Jill: Yes, and we’re back and we’re talking about issues and addiction, and today, we’re talking about relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings and I just chose some music today that relapse triggers memories with me and a little two-step in there, but, anyways, I just want to bring us back in on that one issue that we were talking about relapse triggers for alcohol, and there’s a lot of people out there that may not even know that alcohol is an issue and as we bring up these relapse triggers that creates that drug or alcohol craving to drink, that may be something that turns the light on for them.

Brian: Absolutely, and then we got this area on relationships. Oh, we got a call from Courtney in Atlanta. Welcome, Courtney, to the Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour!

Courtney: Hi.

Brian: Hey, welcome.

Courtney: Oh, thank you. I have a question, actually. My uncle lives in Orlando, Florida, and he has all the same problems that you’ve mentioned, especially with alcohol and what relapse triggers him, and right now he’s battling addiction with alcohol and he’s going through a divorce. He can’t see his children. He doesn’t have a job, and I just wanted to know, like, what to tell him in terms of, like, I don’t know, like, how to encourage him to stop drinking without, like, driving to it I don’t want to, like, make him feel guilty. And also, like, are there any places in Orlando that I can refer him to so that he can have help right now? He’s all alone, he doesn’t have anyone to support him.

Brian: Well, I tell you, one of the best things to do if he’s in the Orlando area, probably, to go ahead and go online and just maybe do a Google search for programs there in that Orlando area. However, I want to let you know, Courtney, that many, many people come from all across the United States to Breakthrough Addiction Recovery here in Norcross, and we provide a very good, we can do a program where they can come in, stay in one of private suites and then continue to do the addiction treatment on our out-patient basis, but one of the key things that I’d recommend is that you try to talk with him and help him to understand that the drinking is probably a symptom of him not being able to deal with some of the sadness and the grief that he’s going through right now and that is relationship issues and job issues, it’s very tremendous and we do know that a big relapse trigger. {Dial tone}

Well, we just lost Courtney. Well, Courtney, if you’re still listening out there, we hope that you will give your uncle a call.

Jill: Yeah, but, Brian, if she is not there physically and she’s worrying about her uncle, I’m trying to think, that’s got to be a real helpless feeling because first of all, Courtney, is, of course, if you’re still listening, we’re going to keep talking to you for a few minutes, that if he is still drinking and he’s drinking heavily, you don’t want him to stop cold turkey because of the risk of withdrawal and that can be deadly, but, you can also start to elicit help from your family members that are concerned, also.

Brian: That may be in that area, too.

Jill: Right, and maybe even plan to, all of you go down there and spend some time. Not in a confrontational way, but in a way that just says we all care about you and we want to see things change for you. We don’t want this alcohol to be your demise and that sometimes is called an intervention and sometimes it’s just common sense. The family getting together and wanting to talk and bring it out in the forefront and sometimes that can trip the wire that makes him say, “Okay, what is there for to do?” And you having done research about where he could go or who he could talk to would come in very handy at that time, too.

Brian: That’s right, and then as you talk with him, again, it’s really trying to be encouraging. Try to get him motivated to want to take a look at this issue rather than coming across more vindictive or maybe condemning. I think many times we think that’s the best way to be confrontational, but it seems to be the way the research goes and just the responses, the more compassionate, the more understanding and the more supportive we can be, usually they’re more responsive to seek out addiction treatment. Listen, we really appreciate your call, sorry we lost you, but we hope that this has been helpful.

Jill: And, Courtney, if you’re listening, we also have an office number that you could call and talk to one of our licensed therapists about this problem and get some ideas and that number is 770-734-8091. You can go to our website, BreakthroughAddictionRecovery.com and get the same information, also, or even refer your uncle to our website, which actually has a lot of teaching material and educational material for him that might also spark an interest in maybe ‘I can do something different.’

But, thank you so much for your call. I’m sorry we lost you, but, we were just talking a little bit about alcohol relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings and talking a little bit about depression and anger. Depression over things like what her uncle is going through, about loss of relationships, loss of jobs, you know it seems there’s a spiral going on, so, drinking becomes more and more of a viable way to get through it.
Brian: It’s a coping mechanism. Trying to find a way to be able to numb those feelings and they feel really overwhelmed and that is another big reason why so many people do get relapse triggered into using because they feel they can’t manage the emotions and the pain. Let’s take a look at something about opiates and heroin users. Opiates are the painkillers, right, kind of like those things like heroin, and we do know . . . .

Jill: And this would be the stimulation, or not stimulation, I’m sorry, the relapse triggers for someone that is maybe using the harder opiates, the heroin snorting or smoking or injecting heroin, and unfortunately, most people that start off with the prescription drugs can get to place where they are actually doing heroin in some way, shape or form. And many people don’t think they could ever get there, but then that’s when they come to us and say, I never thought I would inject and when I did, I knew I needed help. But stress, it looks like stress is a major relapse trigger.

Brian: Stress is a major relapse trigger, and just think about this, when they’re using it and they’re going through withdrawals, what are they experiencing? Stress. And so many, many people feel that they have to use in order to avoid those significant withdrawals and also, too, when you look at prescription drugs like your Oxycontin, some Percocets; those things can really cause a lot of uncomfortable ness. And one of the biggest relapse triggers, I’ve noticed here, is insomnia, and even anxiety, and so those are the things, as you begin using the medication and you begin withdrawing from it, it’s those highly uncomfortable withdrawal feelings that they cannot tolerate and as a result, they have to use in order to maintain their stability.

Jill: I hear this story quite a few times for the people that are coming in and want help for prescription drug addiciton. They come in and state that, ‘I had the root canal and I was using the medication as directed, but I noticed instead of drinking my glass of wine at night, when I took the Vicodin, I felt just as comfortable and even and calm as if I had the glass of wine, so it seemed a little easier. The wife didn’t know I was taking the Vicodin, so it wasn’t on my breath and it became a snowball effect after that, more and more was needed.’

We actually have a story on our website called Paul’s Story or the story through the journey of going through opiate dependency. Incredible story that talks about a man that just started taking Vicodin because of a root canal, just like I said, but that ended up being a desperate situation for him and losing family, losing job, everything else. But, if you want to look at the relapse triggers that he had in his story, it’s pretty amazing.

Brian: It is, and even to the point that gets us thinking is how they go about going into, actually peoples’ homes and up to that medicine cabinet.

Jill: Right! Just, a friend’s home and going into the bathroom, the medicine cabinet was a relapse trigger and also going into places where they knew a friend just had surgery, that was a relapse trigger. So, anyways, it looks like we’re coming down to the end of this segment and we’re moving right along. It’s 770-226-0920. We would love to hear from you. Go ahead and call us, get in on the conversation. Tell us your story. Ask a question. We will be right back.

Jill: 770-226-0920. That’s the number to call if you want to get in on the conversation or ask some questions of us. Brian Fujii and Jill Mattingly. We’re here manning the mikes. Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour and we are talking about relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings for drug and alcohol use. Relapse triggers being something that stimulates that need to use or need to do something about something you’re feeling.
Brian: Some kind of a drug or alcohol to make yourself feel better. That’s why we call that mood-altering substance.

Jill: Yes, we do, and you were going to have an important point about pain.

Brian: Thank you, and we’re talking about prescription drug use, especially as we’re talking about Oxycontin, Percocet; some of these painkillers. Interesting thing, Jill, is that the research shows, which is kind of mind boggling, is that the more people use pain medication, it kind of has an inverse relationship. The more medication they take, the less pain they can stand. And that’s a really phenomenal thought. You would think that it would be in the same direction, the more pain medication, the more tolerant. But, what the research has shown is that physically, they have less tolerance to pain, but also, emotionally. So, that’s where many, many people really get relapse triggered, it’s because they’re having emotional pain and as they’re taking their pain medication, they have less tolerance, so guess what? They want to keep on using it. And that’s what I’m saying, is this is why we’re beginning to see more and more through neuroscience why addiction truly is a brain disease and that’s one of the key factors that we like to emphasize at Breakthrough Addiction Recovery and that’s in many ways why we’re different. That we try to emphasize and really teach our clients how their addiction truly is a disease and it’s a manageable disease but it is a chronic disease, it’s long-term, and that’s the reason why to understand one’s relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings becomes critical if they’re going to maintain sobriety.

Jill: Absolutely. And that’s why we’re doing this. We’re trying to get people to understand that the myth that they believe or the stereotypic behaviors that they think happen during drug and alcohol dependency, we’re just trying to educate in helping you think of it in a different way and it could help you, it could help a loved one, but it definitely brings more people into a addiction treatment facility when they understand, now I feel like I can get help for this.

Brian: And the guilt and the shame, we have to get past that. It’s not because you’re a bad person. They actually have a disease that needs to be addressed both medically as well as psychotherapeutically. And if they’ll do that and that combination, we have found through studies that that combination works best in trying to help people recover from addiction.

Jill: Well the next subject that we were going to go look at were the relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings for marijuana use and one thing I heard about was the Bon Jovi concert last week. I’m sure there were people that were around my age that went to the Bon Jovi concert and may have been relapse triggered because of what happens at concerts, and still not just in the 70’s but it’s happening . . . same kind of stuff is happening now.

Brian: Well, it’s interesting you’re saying about concerts, but we had a client that said they got relapse triggered at the NASCAR races because as they were walking by the fragrance of the marijuana was just almost overwhelming. At NASCAR! That’s right, and so not just Bon Jovi, but even something more current.

Jill: Well, with marijuana, it’s a lot of friends, social situations.

Brian: But anxiety, and then we know many that they can’t even get out of bed without having at least a joint or a bowl where they can actually smoke and then feel a sense of well-being to get out of bed, so anxiety and irritability, but also, it’s such a type of drug that really is, what we call the Dream Killer. Procrastination becomes almost the key characteristic of individuals who are using marijuana, and loss of drive, loss of motivation and so therefore as a result, lot of things don’t move forward for them.

Jill: But, you’re not anxious.

Brian: No, you’re not anxious, that’s right. Everything is just cool.

Jill: Well, that brings us to just looking at this. We’ve been talking about relapse triggers for all of the different substances or general substances and alcohol, but there’s a lot of brain science and brain research that goes into looking at these drug or alcohol cravings and relapse triggers and things like that and you were going to talk a little bit about one, everyone learned this in high school . . . .

Brian: I am. Oh yeah. I’m sure in High School, definitely in Psychology 101, but you’re talking about brain science, but this really was done many years ago with a Dr. Ivan Pavlov. There I go, I mention that word, Pavlov. Everyone is probably saying, Pavlov’s Dog,

Jill: That’s right. It’s a relapse trigger!

Brian: It’s a relapse trigger! But, let’s take a look at this, and this is why we believe how the brain can really change. This is where Dr. Pavlov, he tried to see if he could a conditioned response where he would ring the bell and he would present food and the dogs would begin eating the food. So, they would ring the bell and the dogs would see the food, they’d eat the food and they’d associate the ringing of the bell with the food and then, of course, what would happen is that their normal response when they saw the food was to salivate, gastric juices would flow, and they’d begin to desire the food. Now, after a period of time, they rang the bell and they began feeding the food and of course, part of the feeding of the food, they begin having these salivation and gastric juices but after a period of time, they became so conditioned that all Dr. Pavlov did was ring the bell but did not present the food. But because of anticipation of the food, these dogs had this same response. They had the same gastric flows of their gastric fluids, the salivation and you’d say, ‘So, what does this have to do with us?.’ It tells us that how our brain changes too, whenever we use alcohol in such a manner because it’s traveling through a certain part of that brain called that pleasure pathway.

Jill: It’s a conditioning situation. Where he did it over and over again, they did associate with that and there’s a lot of research out there, especially with the highly addictive drugs like cocaine, crack, methamphetamine and we’re going to get to those studies in just a moment. But there was another research or study that was done that I thought was even more interesting, especially in how it deals with risk behavior. We’re hotwired to survive, so this study shows that you can actually override that, but it looks like we’re coming to a break again. Let’s get to this study when we come back. This is very interesting and I want you to stay with us. 770-226-0920 and we will be right back.

Jill: Welcome back to Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour. My name is Jill Mattingly.

Brian: And I’m Brian Fujii.

Jill: And it is 770-226-0920 and the question is, what is the phone number that I can call to get in on the conversation or ask a question. Well, please call us if you’d like and we have a few more segments to go. We were talking a little bit about anticipation, just like Pavlov’s Dog and happened to bring in Carly Simon’s CD today, how great is that?

Well, anyways, we were talking about relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings and talking about Pavlov’s Dog as a classic experience of classical conditioning and how the dogs would salivate even at the sound of a bell because he had conditioned them to associate the bell with the food that he was giving them.

Brian: And how does that apply for drinking and drugging? It’s the same thing, so if being around certain people, being around certain things, being around a certain environment; those become our bells. That’s what rings and causes us to want to look at drinking or drugging.

Jill: Well, let me put a teaser out, too. We’re not going to talk about this yet, but when we get further along in this study of relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings, we are going to talk about that our unconscious brain can pick up relapse triggers without us even knowing it and the studies that have come out are shocking that, when people say, ‘I don’t know why, but I just turned into the bar and I needed to get a drink’ or ‘I don’t know why, but I just had to go ahead and smoke the crack’.

A lot of that is coming from unconscious relapse triggers that haven’t even made it into the frontal cortex yet. But we’ll talk a little bit . . .

Brian: Subliminal stimulation.

Jill: Yeah, and what we were talking about right before the break was high-risk behavior. There’s so many parents out there and family members that cannot believe that their loved one is taking the risks that they are taking with getting their drug or drinking the amount they’re drinking or getting into a car while they’re drinking or after they’ve been drinking, there’s so many high-risk behaviors associated with drug and alcohol addiciton and dependency.

Brian: Yes, and there’s a study that has been done many years ago, but it certainly has currency and relevancy for today, Jill. Dr. Sidney Cohen did what they call a demonstration experiment and he did this with a mouse, a rodent and typically, let me ask you the question: if you had a rodent, a mouse and you had it in a box and it had a choice when you opened the box to go into the dark or go into the light.

Jill: Like, under a piece of a piece of furniture, or sit out right in the middle of the floor.

Brian: Yeah, where would he go?

Jill: Well, of course, it’s an animal that’s going to try to run away from you and get out of sight.
Brian: Absolutely, because of survival, right? They’re going to run into that dark. They’re going to try to get into that area where they can be self-protected.

Jill: It’s an ingrained survival mechanism.

Brian: It is ingrained survival. And yet, it’s really interesting over millions of years of this process of learning how to survive, they were in this experiment. They actually fed the mouse cocaine, where they forced it into the light to get the cocaine. It only took a few times that after a period of time, that brief period, when the allowed the mouse to make a choice between going into the dark for preservation or going into the light to put his life at risk to get the cocaine, guess where it went? In the light, in the light. Again, now when you begin realizing what this experiment is saying, is that’s the reason why individuals are willing to risk marriages, risk businesses, risk their jobs, risk their families, lose their teeth, go to jail.

You know, all these things, we see this where peoples’ lives have been truly changed in such a way that they’re making these very inappropriate and negative choices that destroy their lives. And it looks like it distorts what the normal brain chemistry will do and that’s why I’ve always said that these drugs that are addictive, hijack that area. That area that is responsible for their survival.

Brian: That logical thinking.

Jill: Yeah, and survival pathway which is ingrained or hardwired, if you will, into our brains.

Brian: And that’s the reason why, again, we see it as a brain disease, because the brain has really changed and in that change, that’s where we take a look at what part of the brain is that person operating out of while it no longer certainly out of that upper brain, that cerebral cortex piece, or that prefrontal cortex, but now they’re operating out of that more primitive brain, that lower brain. We call it the Limbic System, right? That mesolimbic system, and there’s that pleasure pathway that the drugs or the alcohol takes to help a person feel better and when it happens that way and we give more and more and more alcohol or more and more drugs, the brain begins to change in such a way that it’s not producing that particular chemical called dopamine to make us feel better. But dopamine is a “survival neurotransmitter” because it helps us to stay alive, like when you have sex or when you eat a good meal or when you do something well, that part of the brain gets stimulus that says ‘Do it again, do it again.’ Why? Because . . .

Jill: So, the species reproduces, the species eats and stays nutritionally fed and sleep is also associated with dopamine, so many things that are very important to keep the person or human alive is rooted in this neurotransmitter release of dopamine.

Brian: It is, and the more we use alcohol and drugs, the brain begins producing less and less of that dopamine and as a result, we’re supplementing it with their drink or drug of choice, so, that’s where the drug or alcohol craving comes in if the body does not have enough of that in it, then as a result, we got to feed it supplementally and that usually comes in from the drugs and the alcohol.

Jill: And some of these drugs are much more efficient on causing extreme dopamine release than others, like cocaine, crack, methamphetamine. Those are so highly addictive because of their action on the dopamine synapses, the neurotransmitters being released into the synapse and the dopamine receptors, so those actually classify as much more addictive type drugs because of how they react on our dopamines.

Brian: Yeah, they just make us feel so much better. If this is a subject that is really gnawing at you and you’d like to get some more information, give us a call here at 770-226-0920. We would love to have you participate in our discussion today. But as we talk about how this dopamine release goes, we begin realizing how the brain is really changing. Well, looks like we’re coming to another break here, Jill, and we’d like for you to give us a call here. 770-226-0920 and join us in our conversation. We’ll be right back.

Jill: Welcome back to the Breakthrough Addiction Recovery Hour and we are going into our last segment, a little Chuck Mangione, I’ve been playing all the music that has fun memories and relapse triggers for me. And then, probably a lot of you out there are saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I haven’t heard that in 30 years!’ Well, you’re about right.

Anyways, we’re talking about relapse triggers and drug or alcohol cravings and how it pertains to drug and alcohol addiciton and we came back into this section, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit about the subconscious relapse triggers, okay? Now, the conscious relapse triggers, you’re watching a commercial. They’re talking about how great beer is, and you can play football and associate that with beer drinking and isn’t that great? All the boys will love you and all that. But there’s so much study now being done on the subconscious relapse triggering of brain reward pathways and it’s a little bit of a scary subject, and as I was researching this today, I saw that they’ve learned how to use this in marketing, so to get us to buy the car they want us to buy or the food or move to the place they want us to move to if we take this science into a place where they can start to put things flashing them on the screen now, I’m pretty sure subliminal advertising has been outlawed.

Brian: It has, especially, like in movie theaters.

Jill: Exactly, so you won’t go out and get the popcorn all at the same time. But, actually, there’s a scientist has been doing a little bit of study on this and the study basically goes like this: They were taking images of cocaine and drug paraphernalia that relapse triggered drug or alcohol cravings in brains of addicts and when they weren’t aware of having seen anything, they were measuring with an MRI what was going on in their brains, and so they had cocaine-related images flashed in front of them for 33 milliseconds and 33 milliseconds, that’s really fast and that’s not enough time for our conscious brain to get that. But it would relapse trigger activity in the brain’s emotional centers and the reward system, which is what we were just talking about, the limbic system. And Dr. Nora Volkow, who is very well known in addiction research right now, she says patients can’t pinpoint when or why they start drug or alcohol craving the drug. Understanding how the brain initiates that overwhelming desire for drugs is essential to treating addiction, so now that we’ve got a little bit of an insight into just a 33 millisecond subconscious flash could cause a person to turn down the road that they know the dealer lives on, or could make them grab their keys and get in the car and go to the liquor store. That’s pretty powerful.

Brian: Well, that talks about how much the brain has memory, emotional memory, of our drinks and drugs of choice and we’re talking about this and that’s that pleasure pathway. Again, we want our listening audience to really understand that this is a brain disease. It has very clear symptoms, we know if it is left untreated, it only gets worse and it can lead to further illness or death, but at the same time, it is chronic and it is something that is manageable. That’s what I want the listening audience to know, that this is a treatable and it is a manageable disease that can make a difference in helping up the quality of life but going back to this piece here you’re talking about, Jill, was, as they did this study, it found out that there was a special part of that brain that kind of lit up, that amygdala, that little part of that emotional memory that when the persons were using, it would go through that pleasure pathway and also right back into an emotional memory bank and it stays there a long time. But, how many times we hear and I say this in my family education, ‘Family members, I know that you love your loved ones and I know sometimes you think well, you have been six months clean without a drink and after all, it is our anniversary, surely you can have just one glass of wine.’ No they can’t, because that brain remembers and remembers well and it will stimulate that thought process and take them right back where they were before.

Jill: And the advances in brain science and neurobiology has really changed the face of addiction addiction treatment and should be changing it even more in our lifetime. But I don’t think an addiction pill is on the horizon, but I do know that knowing what’s going on in the brain pleasure pathways is going to be crucial for people understanding what this disease is all about.

Brian: And I’m glad you talked about that disease, and here we go . . . it looks like we’ve come to the close of another . . . .

Jill: So fast.

Brian: Yeah, it’s been a great time, and again, we hope that you will take a look at our website, BreakthroughAddictionRecovery.com, and give us a call at our office at 770-734-8091. Thanks for joining us.