Understanding How We Get Addicted

Ralph E. Carson, PhD, RD

Knowing the facts – about the consequences of drugs, about the roots of your habit, about the realities for addiction, and about your readiness to quit – makes the decision easier to stand by. The more information you have the better equipped your are to succeed. When you explain the underlying pathology, patient’s have freedom to accept the disease, let go of faulty thinking and learn to problem solve.

Thanks to the innovations in brain imaging, scientist can actually look into the brain and begin to see what is going on in addiction. By employing a model of recovery as the healing brain, the patient can assign purpose; meaning and hope to the recovery process and it may for the first time begin to make sense. The healing brain model helps explains the symptomology, heredity and behaviors of all addictions using a neuroscientific model to point out particular circuits, nuclei, and neurotransmitters involved in the disease process. It is a unique approach to break through denial and contribute to a higher level of adherence to treatment by formulating a viable explaination for a complicated condition. Employing a user-friendly visual brain atlas, the patient is provided a sense of empowerment to achieve a greater measure of control over his or her life. Recently published scientific research on serotonin, brain plasticity, nerve cell regeneration and the neorcortex provides encouragement and connection to the patients and their families who perceive recovery as an extensive, confusing and often helpless ordeal. Understanding enhances long term recovery by incorporating support for why more than abstinence from inappropriate behaviors and head knowledge are necessary to prevent future relapse.

Ralph Carson, R.D. B.S., B.H.S., Ph.D., is a nationally recognized clinical nutritionist and exercise physiologist. Dr. Carson is a frequently requested speaker on a variety of nutritional topics for medical groups, pharmaceutical companies, universities, athletic training camps and corporations. He has a successful clinical practice as well as being a faculty member of the University of Alabama at Huntsville for over 20 years. Dr. Carson is also a nutritional advisor to numerous university athletic departments including the University of Tennessee National Basketball Champion Lady Volunteers. Dr. Carson received his B.S. from Duke University, his B.H.S. in pathology (Cum Laude) from Duke University Medical School, and his Ph.D. in nutrition (Phi Kappa Phi) from Auburn University. Dr. Carson currently manages Oprah Winfrey’s web page on eating disorders and is the consultant for Pine Grove’s eating disorder program, The Women’s Center.

Visit http://www.pinegrovetreatment.com/ or call 1-888-574-HOPE (4673) for more information.