ONE NATION UNDER Addiction

Drug addiction research holds that in the center of the human brain is a Natural Reward Pathway which drives our feelings of motivation, reward and behavior. Drugs apparently alter the pathway and the way I understand it, the drug cheats the system [You] by doing for you what your five senses should. In other words the drugs overload the circuitry of the brain causing you to feel “high” from an immediate release of a chemical called Dopamine. Apparently, Dopamine is the chemical behind why you feel like getting up in the morning or even living at all. Without it, scientists say you’d commit suicide.**

So if that’s true about Dopamine, the Natural Reward Pathway and synapses then guys like former NBA superstar Antoine Walker may very well tell much about the susceptibility of humans to addiction whether drug or other. Walker blew upwards of $110 million and is now reeling from incurred debts. By the same measure, a lesser known former NBA player named Winston Bennett was so addicted to sex that he slept with an estimated 90 women per month during much of his basketball career.Bennett, by his own admission, cheated on his wife the day after getting married.

I’m not a science guy by any means but I think I get the idea that addiction is not limited to elites, junkies or Tiger Woods. The brain is a unique construction and can be programmed. And it would seem that addictions aren’t created in a vacuum. Perhaps they’re rooted in childhood when you craved significance on the playground or in the deficit for affection many young girls feel. The point is that we likely all have addictions and the most destructive of them are the ones we refuse to identify. Antoine Walker waited until debt flanked him on every side before he realized the exorbitant lifestyle was over. Winston Bennett returned to his faith in Jesus Christ amidst the almost limitless graciousness of his wife who took him back every time. Tiger is entering a rebuilding stage because of a form of addiction whether it was women, power or golf.

The Gospel group The Winans sang it best when they sang, “It’s good to know He’ll be there if ever I fall. But it’s better to know that I don’t have to fall at all.” All this talk leaves me wondering if there’s a way to avert the addictions that derail us. From arrogant church leaders to promiscuous athletes, maybe addiction begins with the deception that it only happens to THOSE people.

** Genetic Science Learning Center (2010, March 23) Natural Reward Pathways Exist in the Brain. Learn.Genetics. Retrieved March 23, 2010, from.