Nobody craves their drug of choice.

Back when I was stuck in the loop of addiction treatments (7 rounds), there was all this talk about Cravings. Cravings this, cravings that: track them, what are your triggers, ways to manage them, let’s try CBT, DBT … All can probably agree, Cravings are a big deal.

 I got so sick of Cravings, and this idea of “pushing-through and manage them for the rest of my life” approach was insane to me. I couldn’t deal with it, drove me nuts; like, to the point where I wanted to off myself if this were truly my destiny, and I even tried a couple times.

Finally, I went up to a counselor and asked, “What, exactly, are cravings? Like, what are the mechanisms behind them, how do they work, where do they come from, how do I get rid of them without using another drug (prescriptions)?” I asked quite a few health professionals these same questions, but nobody had any practical answer, something I could apply.

And the narrative that cravings were born from the absence of a drug didn’t sit right with me either, or that sometimes they were just dormant, waiting to pop up randomly with no rhyme or reason.

The mysterious part for me was that there was a time during one of my early recovery attempts when I had zero cravings. During this entry level phase of my recovery, I was doing the 12-steps entirely wrong (on my own, no sponsor, no meetings); meanwhile, I was really focusing on nutrition, exercise, meditation, reading instead of tv, all that health guru stuff. And there were entire months when I had zero cravings.

There was a contradiction. I experienced entire seasons with no cravings, but I’m being taught that I will need to deal with them forever and that they must be continually monitored and regulated.

What I found was that I never craved my drug of choice. I never craved Alcohol or the opiate I metabolized it into (the allergy), nor any other drug I took. That’s not how cravings really work, that’s not actually what’s going on—at least for me.

As we all know, using drugs, and certain behaviors, give a big reward. Simple. And our brain has a reward center. Not reward pathway, but the reward center. And this reward center is all nestled-up nice and cozy, housed in a set of brain structures often called the primitive brain, reptilian brain, caveman brain, “Ooga, booga,” survival brain. I like to call it Scaredy Cat.

Scaredy Cat has a job, and its job is to monitor and regulate the survival essentials: air, water, food, sleep, excretion, homeostasis. Or: oxygenation of the tissues, hydration, nutrients, relaxed and restorative states, getting rid of poisons, and balanced body chemistry (blood sugar, pH balance, salt levels, and so on.)

Imagine how it would feel to have all these survival essentials locked in place, fully satisfied: fully oxygenated from deep breathing practices, aerobic exercise on a regular basis, all body tissues receiving this Chi; fully hydrated with uncontaminated water and fresh fruit plasma; clean food, real food, not messed with; 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, hitting all 4 sleep stages; minimal toxins for your body to battle and remove; and fully balanced body chemistry, starting with pH balance (which is a measurement for how well your tissues conduct electricity, think nervous system), Blood sugar levels, salt levels, cortisol levels from being in fight-or-flight too long, and so on.

An extreme case: Have you ever met and talked to one of those Gym Bros, or Yoga Babes, and they are just super stoked, high vibe, positive, ambitious, ready to take shit on, and just seem a little too happy? Yeah, there’s a reason. It’s not just the pre-workout shake. That’s how we are supposed to feel when our engines are tuned correctly and running on all cylinders.

When all my survival essentials are properly satisfied, I feel fantastic. I get a big, and consistent, reward. Scaredy Cat reads all the meters and gauges, and they all read great, totally full. But there’s an easy button. The drug gives me the same reward.

When the drug is in my body, unnaturally induce a big reward, Scaredy Cat reads all the meters and gauges, and they all read great, totally full—the reward is already there. Scaredy Cat gets the signal from my nervous system that all the survival essentials are fully satisfied. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Health is declining but the signal that “all-is-well” is still there—until it’s not. When you cease drug-use, that fake reward, that imposter signal, goes away too?  

Scaredy Cat’s readings on his meters and gauges are now reading danger zone. If you are nerdy like me and you want to know which structure is Scaredy Cat’s control panel, it’s the hypothalamus.

Now, with the absence of the fake-reward (and most likely some true survival essentials neglect) you feel like you are suffocating, dehydrated, haven’t slept, full of toxins, and are all out of balance. It feels like you are dying in the more extreme cases, but this can be subtle too, like when you all-of-sudden want some Taco Bell, “it’s what you crave”.

Many define addiction as characterized by continued use despite negative consequences. This definition refers to external life consequences like jail, divorce, job loss, health, and so on. All these consequences fail in comparison to the ongoing feeling that you are dying. So, we can flip that definition around and say that addiction can be characterized by continued use because of the negative consequences experienced internally when they stop.

But here’s the twist. What does Scaredy Cat really want? What is it ringing the death alarms about: is it the drug, or the survival essentials?

Do you think your body wants more poison, or the real thing?

All I needed to do to get rid of Cravings for my drug was to realize that the drug only shut off the fire alarm but didn’t put out the fires.

This explains why puddle-bum drunks are fine with their conditions of squalor: they can induce the reward without all the work. It explains why the successful addicts will risk it all for another hit: because an ongoing nervous response to the signal of eminent death trumps everything—even the mansion.

Understanding this also helped me greatly with relapse prevention. No matter how much sober time I have, if I start getting those intrusive thoughts, that “stinking thinking”, I know it’s only a check-engine light. An indicator to check the quality of all my survival essentials and make sure they are satisfied in the most genuine, and NATURAL ways possible. “Has my sleep been off lately, how much junk-food have I been consuming, am I in consistent fight-or-flight, how much coffee, how’s my breathing…?”

The bonus is, I found that this level of health also increases resiliency to the bulk of life stressors. Because when I was walking around teetering on the edge of a consistent nervous system signal of fear, because of Scaredy Cat’s alarms, any little trigger was a good excuse to use again.

That’s the compulsion, and how to get rid of it. However, without the application of this strategy, drugs (prescribed, or not) are the only other option.

For me, this understanding also helped explain my insanity (click the link). Because there’s another part of my brain that knew better. It knew the bad outcome of using but would choose to use anyways. I explain why in the Insanity article.