[FRIAM] Addiction and depression

[steve smith]

I'm probably behind the times with pop-lingo but I was caught by a new 
(to me) phrase of "limbic hijack".

I'm left wondering what the adaptive value of this (apparent) exaptation 
is?   My interests have been focused about the competition between 
individual (human) organismal adaptation and societal and even 
biospheric scale collective adaptation...

Mob responses (BLM protests, Capitol Invasion, ...) and collective 
down-regulation of collective "bad behaviour" (e.g. economic 
recessions/depressions as a self-regulating response to unbound 
growth/exploitation?)

My personal experience with addiction/depression is limited but not 
absent.  I have experienced depression almost exclusively as the "rain 
shadow" (nod to Nick and SG) of anxiety... where some threat (real or 
imagined) exhausts me to the point of a depressive response (which 
almost always breaks the anxiety and enforces a rest/recovery phase).   
Addiction is slipperier for me as I don't know that most of us recognize 
our addictions while we are indulging in them, or in their "thrall".   
Most here might not be surprised that one of my more self-recognized 
addictions is "ideaphoresis",  or getting high on my own supply of 
never-ending tangential ideas.  This would fit your (Jochen) idea of 
dysregulated otherwise adaptive phenomena...  wild ideation as a form of 
forced breadth-first exploration of problem space, up to and including 
making up problems that *might* but don't clearly yet exist.   I noticed 
this (making up problems that don't exist) first with my fascination 
with Post-Apocalyptic fiction.

Regarding food addiction, most of my life I had an addictive/compulsive 
response to lowered electrolytes of seeking salty food or more notably 
salting my icewater.   After decades of puzzling over this (often there 
was no obvious reason like exercise/persperation) I had someone suggest 
that my craving wasn't for sodium chloride but rather other 
electrolytes.  I picked up some liquid magnesium and potassium based 
salt-substitute to add to any drink (formerly water, now home-brewed 
kombucha) if I ever feel the slightest salt craving. It clears it 
immediately... and I notice that the mineralized kombucha tastes a great 
deal like coconut water (which is specifically high in potassium) which 
was another craving I knew before I discovered the mineral-electrolyte 
supplements.   I have shifted my diet over the last few years to foods 
which are also potassium/magnesium rich in the process for other reasons 
and my background taste for salt is almost absent.

On 6/15/24 8:22 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> I was reading a book about addictions (Addictions - A Social 
> Psychological Perspective edited by Catalina E. Kopetz and Carl W. 
> Lejuez, Routledge, 2015) and was wondering if addiction and depression 
> are two extremes on the same spectrum. Addiction is in a sense the 
> opposite of depression: we feel either forced to do something or 
> compelled to do nothing. We either can not stop doing something or can 
> not do anything at all.
>
>
> Rock stars and rich people or their kids often suffer from drug 
> addiction to alcohol or cocaine or other drugs, while ordinary people 
> are more affected from junk food and porn. Junk food is to supper time 
> what porn is to pairing time. They hijack the ancient mechanisms which 
> ensure that we maintain our bodies (by ingesting food) and maintain 
> our species (by having sex). The reward system in our brains is 
> triggered without providing the benefits the rewards were meant to 
> guarantee.
>
>
> What do you think, could you say that addiction and depression are two 
> related phenomena where inbuilt reward mechanism go awry?
>
>
> -J.
>
>
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