Never Enough: the neuroscience and experience of addiction
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About this ebook
From a renowned behavioural neuroscientist and recovering addict, a rare, page-turning work of science that draws on personal insights to reveal how drugs work, the dangerous hold they can take on the brain, and the surprising way to combat today's epidemic of addiction.
Judith Grisel was a daily drug user and college dropout when she began to consider that her addiction might have a cure, one that she herself could perhaps discover by studying the brain. Now, after twenty-five years as a neuroscientist, she shares what she and other scientists have learned about addiction, enriched by captivating glimpses of her personal journey.
In Never Enough, Grisel reveals the unfortunate bottom line of all regular drug use: there is no such thing as a free lunch. All drugs act on the brain in a way that diminishes their enjoyable effects and creates unpleasant ones with repeated use. Yet they have their appeal, and Grisel draws on anecdotes both comic and tragic from her own days of using as she learns the science behind the love of various drugs, from marijuana to alcohol, opiates to psychedelics, speed to spice.
Drug abuse has been called the most formidable health problem worldwide, and Grisel delves with compassion into the science of this scourge. She points to what is different about the brains of addicts even before they first pick up a drink or drug, highlights the changes that take place in the brain and behaviour as a result of chronic using, and shares the surprising hidden gifts of personality that addiction can expose. She describes what drove her to addiction, what helped her recover, and her belief that a ‘cure' for addiction will not be found in our individual brains but in the way we interact with our communities.
Set apart by its colour, candour, and bell-clear writing, Never Enough is a revelatory look at the roles drugs play in all of our lives. It offers crucial new insights into how we can solve the epidemic of abuse.
Judith Grisel
Judith Grisel, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Bucknell University, and an internationally recognised behavioural neuroscientist with expertise in pharmacology and genetics whose research focuses on determining the root causes of drug addiction. Her recent research helps explain the different trajectories of alcohol abuse in men and women.
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Reviews for Never Enough
30 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a very powerful book which has clarified for me exactly what is happening in the brain during addiction. It is incredibly helpful to understand the physiological and neurological effects of drugs and why drugs are a futile endeavour because of the brain's maintenance of homeostasis. I am so grateful that I read this book as it has convinced me that drugs are not the answer and that you have to face your reality.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After years of experience as drugs addict, Judith Grisel got sober and embraced the chance to scientifically study the mechanisms underneath addictive substances, and their consequences on behavior. Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction is her accessible and authoritative guide through a taxonomy of stimulants, depressants, uppers and downers, alcoholics, plants, liquids, pills, and needles.Addiction today is epidemic and catastrophic. The personal and social consequences of this widespread and relentless urge are almost too large to grasp. In the United States alone some 16 percent of the population aged twelve and above meet criteria for a substance use disorder. In purely financial terms, it costs more than five times as much as AIDS and twice as much as cancer. The book highlights the current knowledge neuroscience has brought on this topic. How are substances transmitted into cells, synapses and influence behavior, central nerve system, and impact movements, speech, memory, fetus' health, etcetera? When any drug has an effect, it's due to the drug's chemical actions on brain structures. For most drugs of abuse, we know precisely which structures are modified, and this gives us a really good start to understand how they make us feel the way they do. Yet, there's still much we don't know yet.The bottom line in is this book is that there can never be enough drug. Because of the brain's tremendous capacity to adapt, it's impossible for a regular user to get high, and the best a voracious appetite for more drug can hope to accomplish is to stave off withdrawal. This situation is best recognized as a dead end, in the most literal sense. But to wait for a biomedical or any outside cure is to miss asking questions of ourselves and considering our own role in the epidemic. While we are at it, instead of wringing our hands, we might try holding one another's.