It’s Not the Booze or the Sniff: What Are We Really Addicted To?

It’s Not the Booze or the Sniff: What Are We Really Addicted To?

What Are We Really Addicted To? We tend to talk about addiction in terms of substances. We say someone is a “hopeless alcoholic” or “addicted to cocaine”. We focus on the chemical, the bottle, the powder. We meticulously count units of alcohol, track days of sobriety, and vilify the substance as the sole antagonist in our life’s drama. But what if we’ve been focusing on the wrong villain all along?

What if the booze, the sniff, the pill, or the puff is just a prop? A stand-in for the real object of our devotion?

The truth is, for the vast majority of us who develop a problematic relationship with a substance, we are not truly addicted to the ethanol in the wine or the specific molecules in a drug. These are merely the delivery mechanisms. The key that unlocks a door. What we are truly, desperately, and powerfully addicted to is the state change. We are addicted to the feeling of escape. We are addicted to the temporary silence of our inner critic, the fleeting rush of confidence, the blissful numbness that blankets our anxiety, or the momentary illusion of connection in a lonely world.

This isn’t just a philosophical distinction; it’s a fundamental paradigm shift that holds the key to real, lasting freedom. When you stop fighting the substance and start understanding the state you’re trying to achieve, the entire battlefield changes. You transition from a state of white-knuckled deprivation to one of empowered self-discovery.

In this comprehensive guide, we’re going to pull back the curtain. We will explore the intricate neuroscience that drives our cravings, delve into the emotional voids we’re trying to fill, and unpack the psychological patterns that keep us trapped. By understanding what you are really addicted to, you can finally begin to address the root cause, not just the symptom.

The Neuroscience of “Wanting”: Unravelling the Dopamine Deception

To understand the core of addiction, we must first venture into the complex and fascinating landscape of the human brain. The central character in this neurological drama is a neurotransmitter you’ve almost certainly heard of: dopamine. For decades, dopamine was popularly misunderstood as the “pleasure chemical”. We believed that when we did something enjoyable, our brain released dopamine, and that was the feeling of pleasure itself. This is a crucial, and misleading, oversimplification.

Modern neuroscience has revealed that dopamine’s primary role is not about pleasure or “liking” something at all. Its role is about motivation, anticipation, and wanting. It is the chemical of desire. It’s the neurobiological engine that drives you to seek out rewards, to move towards things the brain predicts will be beneficial for survival—be it food, sex, or, in the modern world, the perceived relief offered by a substance.

This system is centred in an ancient part of our brain known as the mesolimbic pathway, often called the “reward pathway”. It connects the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), where dopamine is produced, to the Nucleus Accumbens (the motivation hub) and the Prefrontal Cortex (our centre for planning and decision-making).

Here’s how it works in a natural context:

1. Cue: You’re hungry and you see an advert for a delicious-looking pizza.
2. Dopamine Spike: Your VTA releases a squirt of dopamine. This isn’t the pleasure of eating the pizza; it’s the motivational urge that says, “Go get that! It will be good for you!”
3. Action: This dopamine spike motivates you to pick up the phone and order the pizza.
4. Reward: You eat the pizza. Your brain releases other chemicals, like opioids and endocannabinoids, which are responsible for the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction (the “liking”).
5. Learning: Your brain learns that the cue (advert) led to a reward (tasty food). The dopamine system has done its job successfully.

Now, let’s see what happens when we introduce a substance like alcohol. Alcohol and other drugs are biochemical sledgehammers. They hijack this delicate, evolutionarily-honed system. They don’t just cause a normal release of dopamine; they flood the brain with it, two to ten times the amount released from natural rewards.

This massive, artificial flood does two catastrophic things:

• It creates a Powerful Memory: The brain’s learning system goes into overdrive. It forges an incredibly strong, almost unbreakable connection between the substance and the feeling of immense reward. The Prefrontal Cortex logs this as a top-priority survival strategy. Feeling stressed? Anxious? Bored? I know what to do! That drink gave us a massive dopamine hit last time. Let’s do that again. The “wanting” becomes pathologically intense.
• It Desensitises the System: The brain is a master of adaptation. If it’s constantly flooded with unnatural levels of dopamine, it tries to protect itself by reducing the number of dopamine receptors. It’s like turning down the volume on a speaker that’s blasting too loudly. This is what leads to tolerance; you need more of the substance to get the same effect.

Worse still, this down-regulation of receptors lowers your “dopamine baseline”. The things that used to bring you joy and motivation—a walk in the park, a good conversation, a satisfying meal—no longer produce enough of a dopamine signal to register. Life in between doses becomes flat, grey, and uninteresting. You’re left in a state of anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure from normal activities. At this point, you’re not even drinking to feel good anymore. You’re drinking just to feel normal, to escape the deep discomfort of a dopamine-deficient state that the substance itself created.

You are now trapped. You are addicted to the anticipation, the motivation, the wanting of the substance, a wanting that is now amplified to an obsessive degree, while the actual “liking” or pleasure you get from it diminishes over time.

Hacking the System: Cold Water and Healthy Dopamine

If we’re addicted to a state driven by a hijacked dopamine system, the logical solution is to find healthy, sustainable ways to modulate that system ourselves. This is where practices like cold water immersion come in.

Pioneering research, such as a study from Prague’s Charles University, has shown that immersing oneself in cold water (around 14°C) can cause a prolonged and significant increase in dopamine levels. The study found that dopamine concentrations increased by a staggering 250% from the baseline.

What’s crucial here is the nature of this increase. Unlike the sharp, artificial spike and subsequent crash from alcohol, the dopamine increase from cold water is gradual and, most importantly, sustained. It elevates your baseline for hours afterwards, promoting alertness, focus, and an improved mood without the damaging consequences of substance use.

By deliberately engaging in an activity like a cold shower or a cold plunge, you are:

• Actively taking control of your neurochemistry.
• Teaching your brain to tolerate discomfort for a future reward.
• Naturally and healthily increasing dopamine levels.
• Building mental resilience and proving to yourself that you can change your state without an external substance.

This isn’t about replacing one addiction with another. It’s about learning the language of your own brain and using natural, powerful tools to give it what it needs to thrive.

The Emotional Escape Hatch: Why We Crave Numbness and Altered States

Neuroscience tells us how the engine of addiction works, but it doesn’t fully explain why we turn the key in the ignition in the first place. For that, we need to look at our emotions. Humans are fundamentally wired to do two things: avoid pain and seek pleasure. When our emotional “pain” becomes chronic or overwhelming, our primal brain will seek the most effective, fastest-acting solution it knows.

For many, alcohol and drugs become the ultimate emotional escape hatch. Think about what that first drink really does.

• For the socially anxious person: It’s not about the taste of the beer; it’s about the blessed, liquid confidence that dissolves their awkwardness and allows them to connect. They are addicted to feeling uninhibited.
• For the overworked professional: It’s not the complex notes of the vintage red; it’s the “off switch” for a brain that won’t stop whirring with deadlines and responsibilities. They are addicted to mental silence.
• For the grieving individual: It’s not the burn of the whiskey; it’s the temporary anaesthetic for a heart that aches with unbearable loss. They are addicted to numbness.
• For the terminally bored or unfulfilled person: It’s not the cocktail; it’s the injection of colour and excitement into a life that feels monochrome and meaningless. They are addicted to stimulation.

In every case, the substance is a tool. It’s a remarkably effective, albeit deeply flawed, strategy for emotional regulation. When we lack the internal skills to sit with, process, and manage difficult emotions like loneliness, shame, fear, or resentment, a chemical solution seems like a miracle. It provides immediate, predictable relief. The problem is that this “solution” is like paying a loan shark. The short-term relief comes at the cost of devastating long-term interest.

The substance doesn’t resolve the underlying emotion; it just postpones it. It shoves the feeling into a closet, but the feeling doesn’t disappear. It festers. It grows stronger in the dark. The next time it emerges, it’s even more formidable, requiring an even larger dose to be suppressed. This creates a vicious cycle:

1. You feel an uncomfortable emotion (e.g., anxiety).
2. You use a substance to numb or escape the emotion.
3. The substance provides temporary relief.
4. The substance wears off, and the original emotion returns, often amplified by feelings of shame, guilt, or the physiological effects of a hangover.
5. The amplified negative emotion creates an even stronger urge to use the substance again for relief.

The addiction, therefore, is not to the substance. It’s an addiction to a dysfunctional coping mechanism. We are addicted to not feeling what we’re feeling. The real work of recovery isn’t just about removing the substance; it’s about developing the emotional literacy and resilience to handle life on life’s terms. It’s about learning to open that closet door, look at what’s inside without flinching, and develop healthy strategies to process and integrate those emotions, rather than running from them.

The Power of the Pattern: How NLP Exposes Our Addictive Loops

If neuroscience explains the “how” and our emotions explain the “why”, then Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) provides a powerful framework for understanding the “what”—the specific, automated patterns of thought and behaviour that constitute the addiction itself.

NLP is, at its core, a study of subjective experience. It explores how we use language (Linguistic), our nervous system (Neuro), and our ingrained strategies (Programming) to create our reality. From an NLP perspective, addiction isn’t a moral failing or a disease in the traditional sense; it’s a highly effective, deeply learned, and automated programme running in our subconscious mind.

Let’s break down this “addiction programme” using a key NLP concept: the strategy, or loop. Every one of our behaviours, from tying our shoelaces to pouring a drink, follows a specific sequence of internal and external steps. A typical drinking strategy might look like this:

• Trigger (The Anchor): This is the cue that kicks off the programme. It can be external or internal.
  • External: The time on the clock (5 PM), walking past a specific pub, the sound of a can opening, seeing friends drink.
  • Internal: A feeling of stress, a thought like “I’ve had a hard day, I deserve this,” a memory of a bad meeting.
    In NLP, these triggers are called “anchors”—a stimulus that becomes neurologically linked to a specific emotional state or response. Over time, the sight of a wine bottle doesn’t just represent wine; it’s a powerful anchor for the entire state of anticipated relief.
• Internal Processing (The “Programme”): Once triggered, the mind runs a rapid, often subconscious sequence of thoughts and visualisations. You might picture the drink, imagine the feeling of the first sip, and recall the sense of relaxation that follows. You run a mental movie of the desired outcome. This fires up the dopamine system we discussed earlier, creating that powerful “wanting”.
• The Behaviour: This internal processing leads directly to the physical action: walking to the fridge, pouring the drink, and taking the first sip. By this point, the programme is running on autopilot. Conscious willpower often stands little chance against such a deeply grooved neural pathway.
• The Outcome (The “Pay-off”): The behaviour achieves its intended short-term goal—the state change. The anxiety lessens, the stress seems to melt away, the inner critic goes quiet. This “reward” reinforces the entire loop, making it even more likely to run the next time the trigger appears.

We run this loop hundreds, even thousands, of times. Each repetition strengthens the neural connections, making the programme more efficient, faster, and more automatic. Eventually, it becomes as unconscious as breathing. You’re not choosing to drink; you’re simply running the most well-rehearsed programme you have for dealing with a specific trigger.

This is where the power of NLP comes into play. If addiction is a programme, then it can be de-bugged and rewritten. NLP provides tools to:

• Interrupt the Pattern: The first step is to become aware of the loop as it’s happening. By consciously identifying the trigger, the internal thoughts, and the feeling that leads to the action, you can insert a “pattern interrupt”. This could be something as simple as snapping an elastic band on your wrist, changing your physical state (e.g., doing ten press-ups), or asking yourself a powerful question like, “What do I really need right now?”
• Collapse Anchors: NLP techniques can be used to “de-link” a trigger from its automatic response. By repeatedly associating a powerful negative feeling with the old trigger (e.g., the smell of stale beer) and linking a powerful positive feeling to a new, healthy behaviour, you can effectively scramble the old programme.
• Reframe the Meaning: The thought “I deserve a drink” can be reframed to “I deserve to feel genuine peace” or “I deserve to wake up tomorrow feeling clear and proud.” By changing the language we use, we change the meaning we assign, which in turn changes our emotional response.

Understanding your addiction through the lens of NLP is incredibly empowering. It moves you out of the role of a powerless victim and into the role of a programmer who can access the source code of their own mind and write a new, more resourceful programme for living.

Reclaiming Your State: Building a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From

Understanding the neuroscience, the emotional drivers, and the psychological patterns is the critical first half of the journey. The second half is about action. It’s about consciously and deliberately building a life that is so engaging, fulfilling, and emotionally robust that the old escape hatch becomes redundant.

The goal isn’t just to stop a destructive behaviour. It’s time to start building a suite of positive, healthy, and effective ways to manage your state. It’s about cultivating a life you don’t feel the need to numb yourself from. This is a creative, proactive process, not a restrictive, defensive one.

Here are the pillars of building that new life:

• Master Your Neurochemistry (The Healthy Way): Instead of outsourcing your dopamine regulation to a bottle, take control of yourself.
  • Cold Water Immersion: As discussed, this is a powerful, free, and immediate way to boost your dopamine baseline. Start with 30 seconds at the end of your shower and build from there.
  • Sunlight Exposure: Getting natural sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning helps to set your circadian rhythm and triggers a healthy release of dopamine and cortisol, promoting wakefulness and focus.
  • Exercise: Physical movement is perhaps the single most effective state-changer available. It releases a cocktail of beneficial neurochemicals, including endorphins (natural painkillers), endocannabinoids (which produce feelings of bliss), and, of course, dopamine.
  • Nutrition: A diet low in processed sugar and high in tyrosine-rich foods (like almonds, bananas, and avocados) provides your brain with the raw materials it needs to produce its own dopamine.
• Develop Emotional Sobriety: This means learning to sit with your feelings without needing to immediately fix or numb them.
  • Mindfulness and Meditation: These practices train your ability to observe your thoughts and emotions without getting swept away by them. You learn that feelings are transient visitors; you don’t have to serve them a drink.
  • Breathwork: Simple box breathing (inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4) can instantly activate your parasympathetic nervous system, calming anxiety and pulling you out of a reactive state.
  • Journaling: Externalising your thoughts and feelings onto a page can rob them of their power. It helps you to identify the patterns and triggers you might otherwise miss.
• Rewrite Your Programmes with New Anchors: Deliberately create new, positive loops to replace the old, destructive ones.
  • If your old trigger was 5 PM on a Friday, make that the anchor for a new ritual: a gym session, a walk in nature, calling a supportive friend, or dedicating an hour to a passion project.
  • Build a “state change toolkit”. When you feel stress (the trigger), instead of running the “drink” programme, run the “10-minute walk” programme, the “listen to my power playlist” programme, or the “cold shower” programme.
• Find Meaning and Connection: Often, the void we fill with substances is one of purpose and connection.
  • Pursue a Challenge: Learn a new skill, take up a difficult hobby, or train for a physical event. Purpose and progress are powerful antidotes to apathy.
  • Cultivate Genuine Connection: Move beyond superficial relationships. Invest time in people who see and support the real you. Human connection releases oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” which directly counteracts feelings of stress and loneliness.

Building this new life is the ultimate act of recovery. It reframes sobriety not as an ending, but as a beginning. It’s the start of a conscious, intentional, and deeply rewarding relationship with yourself and the world around you.

Beyond Sobriety: The Real Liberation

Let’s return to our central premise: you are not addicted to the booze or the sniff. You are addicted to the feeling of relief from a state of discomfort.

The substance was simply the most effective tool you had at the time to change your state from anxious to calm, from insecure to confident, from bored to engaged. True, lasting freedom comes not from simply throwing that tool away and white-knuckling your way through the discomfort. It comes from building a whole new toolbox, filled with sharper, more effective, and more sustainable tools that don’t burn your life down as a side effect.

It’s about understanding that your brain’s dopamine system can be worked with, not just fought against. It’s about accepting that difficult emotions are a part of the human experience and learning to navigate them with skill and compassion. It’s about recognising the automated patterns that have been running your life and consciously writing new ones that serve the person you want to become.

This journey, particularly in midlife, is not just about giving something up. It’s about gaining everything: clarity, energy, self-respect, authentic connection, and a profound sense of purpose. It’s about building a life so vibrant and engaging that the thought of numbing it seems utterly absurd.

If this deep dive into the ‘why’ behind our habits resonates with you, and you’re ready to move beyond simply ‘not drinking’ and start actively designing a life you don’t need to escape from, then this is just the beginning. For a practical, step-by-step guide to navigating this transformation, especially during the unique challenges and opportunities of midlife, I invite you to explore my eBook.

Ready to reclaim your state and build your new life? Your blueprint awaits. Discover the path to true freedom in “Midlife Sobriety: The Ultimate Guide to a Fuller Life Beyond 40“.

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