Why some of us are addicts | Robert Lefever | TEDxWarwickSalon

thank you for inviting me it's my privilege to be here to share my ideas with yours I know I may not look like an addict but I am fully paid-up probably since birth I have an addictive nature I don't use addictive substances or processes nowadays not for the last 31 years but I'm still an addict I know that in any day in which I start to use any mood altering substance or process I don't know how to stop I crave for more whoa whoa whoa whoa more my family don't do heart disease or cancer or diabetes primarily we do addiction we're very good at it my mother's mother died of alcoholism my father's father died of alcoholism my mother had a little disorder my wife's father committed suicide from his addiction and his father died of his my wife and I by marrying each other and breeding with each other did our bit to keep this genetic pool ticking over our eldest son has addiction problems now he runs rehab he's very well trained for that one is six people have an addictive nature the rest of the population do not non addicts can be stupid and can do damaging things but those of us were addicts by nature rather than by transient youths are born not made behind cancer diabetes heart disease those of us who edits and using nicotine alcohol drugs sugar are the major troublemakers we bring down the health care and welfare systems our families our society at large it's reckoned that each addict of any kind significantly affects the lives of five other people and no amount of determination and willfulness from ourselves or other people or from the government can change our nature therefore most of us addicts and on addicts need a profoundly different perception on the nature of addiction and its treatment for the non-addictive part of the population in your behavior good luck to have fun but be careful I myself have a whole bunch of addictive tendencies my weight your so varied by 50 pounds up and down up and down year after year I had three different sizes of colors because I never knew from one month of the next what my shape and size would be I used to smoke 30 cigarettes a day when I was the junior doctor on the Hart ward with people all around me dying of cigarette smoking related illnesses I used to take on work that I didn't even want to do I rarely saw my children through my compulsive helping obsessively doing too much for other people patronizing them and belittling them in the process and not doing enough to protect myself I caused a lot of pain self-righteous pain I lost three months income on the turn of one card in a poker game wives don't like that when my wife finished up in front of a divorce lawyer I went straight round to our family doctor and I said what's the matter with Meg and he said the problem was me and I said it can't be I haven't had an affair I pay the mortgage i educate the children I simply did not see my addictive nature minor Oh transmission disease how do want us I go to do about that try to help her illness that I can't even see they don't even acknowledge I needed to take responsibility for myself I didn't learn about neurotransmission disease from University or a medical school eventually I recognized it in other addicts and they recognized it in me we're responsible for our behavior if not for our genes and we learn how to be the people we want to be rather than destructive idiots we were born to be so on a daily basis I do some simple things that enable me to put my neurotransmission disease into remission it caused more than enough trouble in the first 47 years of my life I don't want it to cause any more as a family doctor for 45 years I was familiar with the workings of the normal brain and some extraordinary ones at the same time over 23 years running my own rehab I looked after a total of over 5,000 inpatients addicts of one kind or another like me I still do that work today on an outpatient basis I've been ideally trained for the work that I do like Harry Potter speaking Parseltongue I speak addict my idea or neurotransmission disease is it in some of us the mood centers in our brains don't work very well there's a defect in the way that one brain cell talks to another if we put six units of mood into this side of a pair of neurons only five arrive on the other side maybe one wasn't released properly or wasn't picked up properly or maybe it looked out of the side whichever way the end result is that we're left in a - one situation mood wise so we're gonna look in four plus ones anything to lift the innate sense of inner emptiness and we discover that alcohol works cocaine works cannabis works sugar works nicotine works rhubarb doesn't it has other effects so we don't bother with it nor with bananas they don't hit the spot but my idea is that we have to find a way of researching this because you know without the research we're not going to get anywhere traditionally research involves hypothesis data collection painstakingly longer crunching observation and conclusion usually that more research is necessary so I find that what's the most important thing is intuition and ideas in my rehab we looked at this and I had a whole stack of questionnaires that look specifically for 12 addictive characteristics in any behavior and we found that addictive outlets commonly go in clusters as a hedonistic cluster alcohol recreational drugs mood altering prescription drugs nicotine caffeine gambling and risk-taking sex and love addiction and there's a nursin nurturance of self cluster food using sugar and refined flour with binging vomiting starving purging they're all the same thing using food to change the mood and in this cluster the shopping spending work and exercise and then there's the relationship cluster composite helping using ourselves as drugs for other people and relationship addiction using other people as if they were drugs at Johnson sex no thanks do you mind lying down well I have some that's the extreme but there are may relationship addicts in a business world using their staff or clients as drugs for themselves I believe that each of these clusters is mediated by one gene because we found that some people had just one cluster some people had - some people had all three I myself have all three as I say I think ideally trained for the work that I do in helping other people to put their neurotransmission disease to rest I understand these people instinctively I see neurotransmission disease as having three causes first the antecedent cause genetic second the contributory cause trauma and third the precipitant cause exposure to something that works in changing the mood treatment therefore has to be in three phases in reverse order first abstinence there's no point in us trying sensible use we don't have the gift for it second emotional therapy anything that works specifically on feelings rather than primarily on thoughts and third to control genetic inheritance a daily commitment to the 12-step program first formulated by Alcoholics Anonymous the most effective therapy for addicts is group therapy helping addicts to help each other what happens as a complete disaster is when an addict of any kind is treated by someone who's not an addict it doesn't work annex need to have people who understand them specifically because any idea - totally outwit any individual counselor or doctor or psychiatrist but will not be able to outwit a whole group of addicts they've made the same excuses and tell the same lies there for one-to-one therapy is completely ineffective unless the counselor is also an addict and unless that counselor has had a range of experience of other therapies and knows all the games that addicts play the most effective group therapy I know is psychodrama working on thoughts feelings and behavior all at the same time and looking at the past the present of the future so that they can rely on rather than stay stuck the one form of individual therapy that I value is EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing this form of bilateral stimulation of mirrors helps the thinking brain to talk to the feeling brain I use sound touch and muscular movement in addition to ila but I find that's far more effective in helping people to heal rather than come to terms with something it's like treating appendicitis rather than diabetes I'm often asked to talk about really rich people or really poor people I don't do that neurotransmission disease is an equal-opportunity illness what I want at the end of all this for myself and for my patients is far more than mere abstinence and keeping out of trouble I want three things I want peace of mind in spite of ants or problems happy and neutral feeling relationships and I want spontaneity creativity and enthusiasm when my wife meg died after we've been together for 51 years and three weeks after I came out of bankruptcy as a result of a fraud I did not go back to my former addictive behavior and I did not use wood or drink pharmaceutical drugs so that the lights are on but nobody was at home I wanted far more than anything like tabs I wanted to keep my neurotransmission disease in remission where it belonged I have better things to do I have a life to live

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 184,732

Rating: 4.8095236 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United Kingdom, Health, Disease, Neurology, Neuroscience

Id: BHbuaq5h2A4

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2016