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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