My love affair with heroin started, I imagine, in utero, since my mother liked heroin, though not nearly with the love I felt! It grew with my formula and baby food having high levels of heroin.
Being the good mother that she was, when I got home from school, there would always be a plate with some heroin for me as a reward for my day’s studies.
As I got older, and spent more time with my friends, we would often stop at the heroin shop after school. Heroin made me tired, too, so I didn’t do much in gym classes.
When I began dating, it seemed my dates often wanted me to not have so much heroin. I tried that for a while, but I didn’t like sneaking it when they weren’t around, so I found other people more like me so we could support each other and have all the heroin we wanted.
I’ve thought about having children one day, but I know heroin affects fertility in women and sperm quality in men, and I just can‘t seem to stop using it. Some of my friends have gotten diabetes, and even needed hip and knee replacements.
I know the heroin has something to do with that.
I’ve thought about changing my relationship with heroin, but I never get beyond the talking stage, and then when I use more heroin, I feel that it really isn’t that important to change who I am. Sometimes, though, like now, I wonder if maybe I can be different and really change my life, so before I change my mind, I thought I would write you and ask for your advice.
No, this is not a real letter about loving heroin, however, a recent study has drawn some very interesting and unfortunate similarities between the effects of eating foods high in salt, sugar and fat and the addictive effects of using heroin!
The Scripps Research Institute in Florida recently studied the effects and response to a diet based on human junk food in rats. Their conclusion was the brain responds to junk food the same way it does to heroin!
Rats given unlimited access to high-calorie unhealthy food became compulsive overeaters as the pleasure pathways in their brains became less and less responsive, forcing them to consume more to get the same amount of pleasure.
“Not only did we find that the animals’ brain reward circuits became less responsive at they continued to overeat and become obese,” says Paul Kenny, an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at Scripps, “but that decrease in responsiveness was similar to what our laboratory has seen previously in rats as they become addicted to cocaine or heroin.”
Tachyphylaxis is a term used in medicine to describe needing a higher and higher dosage of a drug to get the same therapeutic effect. The same happens to you with salt, sugar and fat!
“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neurobiological underpinnings,” says study coauthor Paul Johnson.
To demonstrate how strong the drive to eat junk food was, the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating; the foot shock, however, did not stop the rats who were accustomed to the junk food, they continued to eat even though they knew the shock was coming.
Furthermore, after 40 days of unrestricted access to the junk foods, the rats were then deprived of it and offered a more nutritious food pellet. The animals refused to eat, even though they were starving!
“What we have are the core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,” Kenny says.
Breaking the addiction
Dealing with an addiction is not an easy matter, especially when the addictive substance is necessary for life, but you can modify the addiction and you can manage it.
Many people with addictions waste time, in my opinion, trying to figure out why they are addicted and what caused them to become addicted in the first place. Really, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter what the answers are; besides, you have your whole life to figure it out. Stop the addictive behavior and trust me, it will all become a lot clearer.
It is a well-supported fact that people with addictions cannot see their problem with clarity, let alone process what it’s all about. If you think you can, you are fooling yourself.
The key is to decrease your exposure to the substances that you are addicted to, in this case, salt, sugar and fat, and I would decrease all of them at once, as they seem to have a synergistic effect when consumed together. What will happen, if you do this, is that you will get a normal, satisfying effect from a much lower dose of these substances.
I do not support cheat days, or letting it go for the holiday season, or any other way of eating that does not decrease your addictive exposure all of the time. If you continue to intermittently reinforce the addictive behavior, it will never be controlled!
If a person does not, or is unwilling to make a significant change in their self-destructive behaviors, yet claims to want to be different, it’s like they are living the same movie reel over and over, and expecting the end to be different.
Change the reel, change your life!
Very thought provoking post. I never understand why people routinely keep junk food in their house. Why buy it to begin with. If you know it affects you so strongly, why not keep it out of the house to begin with.
I rarely eat sweets and never keep them in the house unless it is a special occasion. When I do, I have trouble eating just one. It's important to know what sets you off, for me it's sugar. It's just not worth it to me.
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Karen, I agree that we should evaluate what "sets us off" as you wrote. Keep that stuff out of sight & out of reach!
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thanks for the shout-out, jody!
i like how dr. j likened the sugar/sweets to heroin. it really shows the addiction in a different light.
it's funny, OA also says it doesn't matter where the addiction came from, but i can't imagine truly getting over the addiction without dealing with the feelings/events that brought the addiction on.
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You have provided such useful information to all by being so open about your eating disorder. It is interesting that OA said the same thing as Dr. J. I guess it comes down to an individual thing on what needs to be done to get past this.
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Really good write up on addictions. They are difficult to understand when not faced with an addiction or for the more strong willed.
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I agree... reading others' own battles gives us insight into these addictions.
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It really IS a battle against addiction, and takes all the same strengths and tools. Excellent analogy.
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Jack, thru your humor, we all know the battle is there.... we are in this together!
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This one is serious, and so glaringly obvious, yet, I know of VERY few people who take it seriously.
I wonder; will historians 150 years from now throw their arms in the air with disgust that sugar was so central to our very being? Or, will they be writing with envy about how people from this era were in so much better shape than they....?
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Roy, you always come up with more things to think about! Great comment!
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WOW! Powerful post! Yes, I have lived this life. And I do agree with Dr.J
But this is something I am just realizing. Sometimes, just looking at what causes the addiction is an avoidance. It keeps you in the situation. I believe I am finally realizing that I need to stop the addictive behaviors AND work on the reasons AT THE SAME TIME! One cannot succeed without the other. If it is just diet or exercise, I become a "DRY" addict and if I just work on the WHY of how I got there, I am just the enabler in my own addiction.
Powerful, Powerful, POST!
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Jules, another great comment from a person going thru the battle. Thank you!
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Such a great post, especially for mom's like me who do treat their kids with sweets way too often..thank you for telling like it is!
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Sian, check out tomorrow if you really want a dose of reality!
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I believe that you are right and they are horribly addictive. I'm working on banning them but not quite there yet.
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Andrew, we are all a work in progress & as long as you are trying & keep moving forward that is what counts. Consistency!
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LOVE this post Dr. J! (And Jody!!) I always knew sugar (a.k.a. The White Satan) was like crack for me. Of course the main difference between heroin and fat/salt/sugar is that the former is illegal and reasonably difficult to come by and socially unacceptable while the latter is totally legal, everywhere and socially sanctioned. Makes a big difference when talking about breaking an addiction when you can get away from your addictive substance! Not trying to make excuses - just trying to point out the analogy only goes so far. Some day I will have Dr. J strength willpower!
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Charlotte, great comment & that is where we need to start the preventative measures. Thx!
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Greetings to everyone! OK, maybe Jody and I are only supposed to be in the ring one at a time during a tag-team match, but have you SEEN the professional wrestlers follow any rules when the fight is on the line? We really care, as we know all of you do also. We just want to give you some helpful information to help you keep fighting the good fight with your personal health and fitness and to help those that you love with theirs!
Excuse me for not answering each one of you personally, but my tag teamer will do that better than I can. I do want to address one comment, whenever I see or even think about what a women goes through to have a baby, I realize that whatever willpower or strength I may have is NOTHING in comparison!
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Dr. J, thank you so much for this powerful post!
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