Day 2

Friday, March 18, 2011

I set up a meeting with Neal in order to talk about the components of my question. I was not sure about the actual fields of study that I should aim to explore throughout my concentration years. I want to focus in neuroscience, neurobiology and all the subjects that relate directly to the brain, but I know that I need the social/ethical/psychological aspects of addictions in order to answer my question thoroughly. I worked on an outline (on paper) for about 2 hours to take to my meeting with Neal so he could see my interests and hopefully suggest some good areas of study that I could focus on apart from the biological perspective. We met for a 45 minute lunch in which we talked about the different areas of study that I should include in my question. First of all, I realized that there is so much more to addictions than just neural networks firing up. The concept of “addictive personalities” came up in the discussion, and I am interested in exploring what makes a personality addictive. I feel like right now I'm too biased towards the deterministic aspect of things, I'd like to think that our personalities are a direct result of stuff happening in our brains and that brain = mind, mind controls personality, personality makes us, us. 

But I know that's not how it works. Cultural norms, social constructs, *decision-making*. What drives our decision making though? Where do we find the balance between our environments and our intrinsic motivations and our brains firing up stuff in order to make a decision?

Talking to Neal was really helpful because we had a good talk on the social aspects of addictions. In psychiatry, an addiction is defined as a habit that is taken to the point that it interferes with our everyday lives. However, there are successful people that have families, jobs, hobbies, and still could be categorized as having a drinking problem in relationship to what an average person drinks. "A person that drinks in a night what I drink in one year can still go to work and have a family". Does this mean that this person is not addicted to alcohol? Have their brains been modified in a way that they NEED alcohol to function right? What does this all mean?!!?

I've decided I need to take into account the concepts of motivation, somehow find a way to integrate the concept of "coping mechanisms" in my question.

I read two chapters of The neurobiology of addiction, by Robbins, Everitt & Nutt (2010), and I spent a total of 3 hours going over this book. I read about a series of theories that integrate motivation and drug use/abuse and I am not sure how much I want to talk about motivations, as it abstract and hard to quantify or describe in scientific terms.