New year addiction

The new year is a time of beginnings, a time for change, a time to resolve to become a better you. Snuffing out the Marlboro habit, eating only when hungry and getting off the couch and earning a degree become important as we look to improve our lives. Excitement envelopes our body as we envision the new us we hope to become in 2015.

Three weeks into the new year our resolutions begin to wane as we open a quart of Moose Tracks ice cream, light another cigarette, turn on reruns of "Dallas" while snuggling into our cozy couch and decide to look into school next semester because this semester, we are just too busy to take on another task. We decide a new me can wait until 2016.

Approximately 40 percent of Americans make New Year resolutions while, according to the University of Scranton, only 8 percent of people obtain their goal. Why take time to make a resolution when inevitably, we will fail to reach our goal?

Are goals important? Is deciding to quit smoking as simple as creating a goal to quit? Is the goal of ending an addiction the same as the goal of starting a new task, like going to college? The answer brings us to a study on heroin use among Vietnam War veterans.

Congressmen Robert Steele and Morgan Murphy discover during a visit to Vietnam in 1971, that 15 percent of the servicemen are actively addicted to heroin. As President Nixon reads the congressmen's report he creates, The Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention - dedicated to fighting the evil of drugs. This newly created office holds all servicemen in Vietnam to detoxify and withdrawal from their heroin addiction before returning to the United States.

With this edict in place, all service members are tested for heroin prior to leaving Vietnam and those found to be addicted, approximately 20 percent, are held in-country until they dry out. This mandate offers a unique opportunity to assess the recidivism rate of one addicted to heroin when that person is detoxed and clean from the drug.

The recidivism rate for heroin addicts treated in the United States is approximately 90 percent - a very low success rate. The investigators expect the same results from veterans returning home from Vietnam but to their surprise, after following the veterans for a year, the recidivism rate is about 5 percent. So, 95 percent of those addicted in Vietnam to heroin do not become readdicted once they return to the United States.

Now the researcher's task is to find out why? During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, researchers believed to change one's behavior, the person needed to set goals and stick to the goals - their behavior would create a permanent change in actions and the goal would be achieved. The hope was to change a person's attitude, then the behavioral change would follow.

To quit smoking, one would set a goal, stick to the goal and eventually achieve the goal. To quit overeating one would create a menu, buy only healthy food, stick to the menu and one would lose the desired weight. To quit heroin, one would be taught the negative aspects of the drug, talk to a therapist and in group therapy about negative experiences when taking the drug, set a goal to commit to quit and eventually the patient would be drug-free.

As noted above, this process works for about 10 percent of heroin users and 8 percent of Americans who stick to their goal or resolution - not a great success rate. What did work for 95 percent of the servicemen returning from Vietnam?

Every day we do innumerable detailed tasks without thinking. Driving a car, typing on a keyboard and cooking dinner are all multi-step, difficult tasks that most do flawlessly because we've learned through repetition to do the task without thinking. Throughout the process, one does not think for a second about what one is doing, one is just responding to the different parts of the sequence learned. About 45 percent of what people do every day is in the same environment and is repeated.

Our brains would figuratively explode if we had to think about every action and task we attempt so, our brains are wired to learn a task and once learned, repeat that task with little brain-work. We do this by taking subconscious cues from our environment and using these environmental cues to perform each task. Conversely, our brains also find it hard to unlearn the task once it is learned.

Back to the Vietnam veterans. What makes the Vietnam veteran different from the stateside addict is the environment. All environmental cues used by the veteran when getting high were left in Southeast Asia. The environmental cues used by the stateside addict are still present when the addict returns home from the detox center.

Why does a cigarette smoker get nicotine pangs when the newspaper hits the front door or he smells brewed coffee coming from the kitchen? Once one has continually repeated a sequential task, that task requires little brain-work and the environmental cues - the paper hitting the door or the smell of coffee - remind the brain of the expected outcome from that task - to light a cigarette.

Once one breaks the chemical addiction to cigarettes, drugs or alcohol, one can also break the cycle of recidivism by changing the environment in some way, interrupting the ritualistic behavior. Holding a cigarette in the opposite hand, driving to work by a different route or rearranging the furniture in your house can create enough of an environment break to force your conscious mind to wake up and pay attention to the task at hand.

When one grabs a tub of ice-cream and returns to the cozy couch moved to the opposite side of the room, one breaks the subconscious environmental habit of sitting and eating the whole carton of Moose Tracks. Instead, one's brain wakes up noticing that something is different giving the ice-cream eater a chance to make a choice instead of following the ritualistic behavior of eating the whole carton.

Often, one or two seconds to think before performing a negative action will offer the mind enough time to remember the goal set and decline the negative action. When the behavior is destructive to the point permanent mental, physical or emotional damage, seek out a therapist to help rearrange your entire environment. This is often needed when a person is in crisis.

Send comments or other suggestions to William Rutherford at [email protected] or visit pensiveparenting.com.