Emotion and Addiction

1. Week 6 - Emotion & Addiction Why do we have to talk about FEELINGS?!

2. Quiet Time • Sit quietly for a minute or two, and focus on where we are now.

3. Today’s Agenda • Quiet Time • Check-in Review AOD Relationships • Review • Four Characteristics • Continuum • Emotions & Addiction Presentation

4. Check-in • Name • Feeling • Last use • 12 step meetings? What happened? • Who attended a meeting? • If you did not attend both meetings • Did you think about it? • What prevented your attendance? • What can you do differently this week? • Success with last week’s recovery tool

5. Think about it… • If you don’t manage your emotions, they will manage you!

6. Sometimes it’s hard to sort them out… they’re like a tangled knot Feelings…………….

7. Sorting it out -EmotionalCategories • Understanding different types of emotion is a tool for recovery

8. Plutchik (1994) suggests there are eight basic emotions, grouped in pairs of opposites… Categories ofEmotions

9. These seven basic feelings were first introduced to the author by staff at • the Meadows treatment center in Wickenberg, Arizona.

10. Addiction < > Emotion • The powerful connection with emotion

11. Break time!

12. Understanding emotions • Is the key to understanding • addiction…

13. Redefining Addiction • A preventable and treatable brain disease influenced by a complex set of behaviors that may be the result of genetic, biological, psychosocial, and environmental interactions

14. The Hijacked Brain • Our emotions play a (big!) part in why addictions are so powerful • Our body is wired with a reward and punishment system to guide our behavior • Drugs of abuse “hijack” this system, confusing the drug’s reward & punishment with our bodies own chemicals

15. The Power of Addiction • Our most basic drives • Hunger and food seeking • Pleasure and reproduction • Fight/Flight survival • Cravings • Based in the same part of the brain affected by ALL drugs of abuse • Addiction imitates our basic drives

16. Discussion • Which of the seven basic emotions trigger cravings for you most often? • Does one emotion show up more in your life than any other feeling? • Which emotion is your primary feeling?

17. The Brain, Emotions& Drugs • There is an “emotional neural network” implicated in human drug abuse.

18. The Limbic system • First thought to be a neural circuit known as the Papez circuit • The modern notion of emotional circuitry has been expanded to include the amygdala and other regions

19. What the Limbic System does… • This system is concerned with visceral and emotional behavior, with primal urges and primal moods. • It causes the organism to recognize a reward, and work for it; to recognize punishment, and try to avoid it.

20. Ways Drugs Can FundamentallyAlter Neural Or Brain Function • Drugs can interact with systems regulating these basic drive states through effects on receptors in the brain and neural circuitry • Drugs can capture control of brain mechanisms that control motivations and emotions (i.e., Basic drives, such as anger, fear, anxiety, pain, and depression).

21. Neurotransmitters & Addiction • Dopamine, one example of a neurotransmitter, is correlated with: “highs” elicited by addictive drugs (i.e. cocaine) • cravings in withdrawal • Dopamine is activated in a “reward system” • Drugs of abuse activate the same reward system, - increasing or decreasing dopamine • Learned emotional reactions are created contributing to drug addiction…

22. Nucleus accumbens –one site for dopamine release • The main target of the reinforcing effects of stimulants is the nucleus accumbens • Alcohol, morphine, and nicotine also exert some of their reinforcing effects via the nucleus accumbens The "reward pathway" in the brain that is activated by natural rewards and by artificial rewards such as addictive drugs. – Janet Firshein

23. The Emotional NeuralNetwork • Regulation of Emotion may be implemented by certain brain regions • The pre-frontal cortex (PFC) • • Orbitofrontal PFC • • Dorsolateral PFC • • Anterior cingulate cortex • The limbic/para-limbic structures • • Amygdala • • Hypothalamus

24. Drugs & their Effectson Emotions • Alcohol & Other Drugs

25. Alcohol & Emotion • Alcohol dampens fear and inhibits response By impairing cognitive processing capacity

26. Drinking Alcohol Can inhibit adaptive behavior Can lead to changes in behavior and emotional reactions

27. Nicotine • The nicotine molecule is shaped like a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. • Acetylcholine and its receptors are involved in many functions, including mood, appetite, memory, and more. • Nicotine also activates areas of the brain that are involved in producing feelings of pleasure and reward. • Recently, scientists discovered that nicotine raises the levels of dopamine.

28. Methamphetamine • The shape, size, and chemical structure of methamphetamine and dopamine are similar. • Dopamine is sometimes called the pleasure neurotransmitter. • Methamphetamine is able to fool neurons into taking it up just like they would dopamine. • Methamphetamine causes that neuron to release lots of dopamine, creating an extra sense of pleasure. • Eventually these pleasurable effects stop. They are followed by unpleasant feelings called a "crash“ that often leads a person to use more of the drug. • If a person continues to use methamphetamine, he will have a difficult time feeling pleasure from anything, and this effect can last a long time

29. Drugs like cocaine “light up” thereward pathways of the brain

30. Marijuana • One region of the brain that contains A lot of THC receptors is The hippocampus, which processes memory. • When THC attaches to receptors In the hippocampus, it weakens Short-term memory. • The hippocampus also Communicates with other brain Regions that process new Information into long-term Memory. • In the brain, under the influence of Marijuana, new information may Never register - and may be lost From memory. • THC also influences emotions, Probably by acting on A region of The brain called the limbic system.