Judith Grisel

Informative book about addiction by a neuroscientist - and former addict.

Grisel wrote her thesis on the mechanism by which morphine is more addictive in familiar contexts than in novel contexts; a kind of Pavlovian effect triggers an anticipatory process in the brain. This process, dubbed "the b process", is the brain's effort to maintain stasis in response to "the a process", the effects of the drug itself. This is the key to Grisel's model of addiction, the graph of which she would get tattooed on her body if she ever wanted to get a tattoo. A drug floods the brain with a certain effect, and the brain in response tries to fight back, to counterbalance it. After more and more instances of taking the drug, the "b process" becomes stronger, lasting longer and kicking in sooner. So think of the drug's effect as "the good feeling"; this means you're going to get more and more "bad feeling", sooner, heavier, and lasting longer, until you've got a case of classic addiction: you're no longer taking the drug to feel good. You're taking it not to feel bad.

The chapters each deal with a different category of drug, based on how it achieves its effects. I read the chapter on alcohol with interest, as I dabble sometimes with the idea of stopping drinking altogether. The more I think about it, the more I feel that regular imbibing is really not such a good idea. Counting alcoholism as one of her past addictions, Grisel is strong in her condemnation of it, and heavy are her lamentations of its ubiquity and heavy advertisement. But I feel she's remiss in not discussing its central place in so many cultures for so many centuries - people have practically bathed in the stuff, and continue to do so, all over Europe and beyond. Wine accompanies every meal as a matter of course. Is this stuff really so bad for you? Why has it persisted? And she doesn't discuss its value as a social lubricant. She deals with it merely as a depressive, a downer, and wonders why people want to get depressed and "dimmed" whenever it's time to celebrate something. But booze is only technically a downer. For me its value is in the way it greases the wheels of interaction with other people. She never mentions this.

Poor Grisel. You really do feel for her... her addiction is still a real living thing. She misses pot so much, and she is so jealous of people who can drink one or two drinks and stop. They absolutely confound her. She sees her husband peruse a menu of microbrews, which lists the alcohol content of each, and can't understand why it isn't an easy choice of picking the most alcoholic one. A coworker mentions leaving an event after only two drinks because she has to work in the morning, and Grisel can't fathom what one thing has to do with the other. I mean, of course she understands these things on an intellectual level, but she can't make them jibe with her own experience. When she was a drinker, she DRANK.

Meanwhile, I wonder how Dr. Carl L. Hart of DRUG USE FOR GROWNUPS is doing these days...… (más)

I thought this book had potential but didn't really live up to my expectations. The first few chapters were interesting in bringing up the neuroscientific theories underlying addiction. But the next several chapters, all about different types of drugs, basically just rehashed the same exact thing (what goes up must come down) over and over again, while also reciting Wikipedia-like lists of effects and side effects of each class of drug.

I guess a book about here's what we know: very little, and here's what causes addiction: who knows?, and how to prevent it: 🤷🏻‍♀️ would probably not sell very well.… (más)

Never Enough is a solid read, one that you shouldn’t race through but take the time to savour because it’s a unique book. Never have I read a book that combines the theory with the practical, real-life experience when it comes to addiction. Judith Grisel has done just that – taken her own experiences as an addict and added her knowledge as a neuroscientist to produce a truly fascinating read.

Generally if you want to read about illicit drugs and their effects, you can do it in two ways – read the textbook and learn the mechanisms of action, adverse effects and the names that scientists call the drug by. Or you can read the user experiences through a memoir or other means. The two sides of the story of addiction are generally not seen together. It’s really helpful and useful to understand why addicts use and keep on using and how their brain is affected by continued use. The A and B processes Grisel uses to explain how the brain counteracts the effects of drugs is simple to understand and makes a lot of sense. In altering the brain’s baseline with drugs, it affects what the body and brain see as normal and why users keep using – to feel normal rather than seeking a high that is more and more elusive.

After explaining the way the brain is altered through addiction, Grisel then devotes the majority of the book to individual drugs. There are the licit (alcohol, nicotine and caffeine) and illicit, ranging from cannabis to psychedelics and solvents. These chapters are very detailed, explaining how and where these drugs act (interesting to me but possibly not everyone). Grisel also describes her personal experiences with using these drugs (she tried a lot of them, but less of the ‘newer’ agents) which was fascinating to read. She discusses the experiences in lay man’s terms of what the attractive points were to her at the time and how they made her feel (good and bad). It’s not really something you can just ask somebody, so I thought this was really interesting.

The book also discusses the genetics of addiction (scary stuff) as well as the environmental factors. It’s an area that we still don’t really understand and Grisel puts forward some interesting theories as to how the two interact. The final chapter looks at how addiction can be treated and solved, which looks at different options and future choices. With America’s opioid addiction opening the eyes of the rest of the world to their own problems, this book is a timely read that informs the reader from multiple perspectives.

Thank you to Scribe for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

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