The Chemistry of Addiction
Hank describes how our brains respond biochemically to various addictive substances and behaviors and where those responses have come from, evolutionarily speaking. Like SciShow: http://www.face...
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Part of what makes our brains so deliciously amazing, is that they've evolved to reward us and encourage us when we do stuff that helps us survive and spread our genes all over the place. I'm talking about eating and sex having and running from danger. Stuff like that. For hundreds of thousands of years, this system served us well. But in a way, our brains have since gotten too smart for their own good. We've figured out how to make ourselves experience this pleasure when we're not even doing any of those things. By inventing drugs. And we've also figured out how we could do those things. Eating, sex having, getting an adrenaline rush. Recreationally. Instead of for our survival. And sometimes the craving for that feeling can take ...
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Part of what makes our brains so deliciously amazing, is that they've evolved to reward us and encourage us when we do stuff that helps us survive and spread our genes all over the place. I'm talking about eating and sex having and running from danger. Stuff like that. For hundreds of thousands of years, this system served us well. But in a way, our brains have since gotten too smart for their own good. We've figured out how to make ourselves experience this pleasure when we're not even doing any of those things. By inventing drugs. And we've also figured out how we could do those things. Eating, sex having, getting an adrenaline rush. Recreationally. Instead of for our survival. And sometimes the craving for that feeling can take ...
