Dr. Keith Humphreys

It doesn't necessarily mean the one who relapsed lied.

It may just be, I didn't realize how deeply my brain has been changed.

and it's pretty hard for me given the neighborhood I live in to walk around and see no one using drugs ever, to see no allusions to drugs in TVs or movies, to see no pipes, to see no powders and I'm going to relapse because I have rewired my reward system.

Yeah, that's right.

And you think particularly when you get into legal products, that is a hugely important thing.

I mean, it's very hard to watch TV,

And not see an ad for beer, for example.

Or pharmaceuticals.

Or pharmaceuticals, yes, right.

And it's depending where you are around cigarettes, you know, this is a very driven by class, but there's still a lot of neighborhoods where quite a few people smoke and it's pretty hard to get through the day without being exposed to the cue of the smell of tobacco smoke or the smell of cannabis smoke for that matter.

And so Q-elicited craving is going to be a driver of relapse and that is clearly something that you were not born with, that is something that you learn through repeated exposure of your brain to a pretty powerful drug.

It is extremely common experience just in life, right?

You know, I know I shouldn't eat that ho-ho, I've been trying to lose weight, but I'm tired today and I'm going to have it.

Like just the fact that we have a contradiction between our idealized self and our own head and our behavior, that's probably just being a person.

But when it gets to the point that I'm actually, I'm going to flunk this exam, which is important to me not to flunk, if I don't start studying and I'm on my third hour of scrolling through TikTok and I know, and I'm,

then you start to worry, right?

Because now you're going to do damage to yourself for the purpose of consuming this brain candy, you know, which has no nutritive value at all, but is clearly seductive.

I've met people like that too.

Yeah, I mean, you're right.

One of the challenges is, you know, addiction is... It's not like it's introduced something new into the body.