Points covered:
Addiction isn’t about character but environment
Addiction is a maladaptive trigger-reaction-reward cycle
In most cases, it's better to retrain not abstain
Remove triggers
Create friction to slow engagement and reduce friction to replace the behavior with an alternative
Order– document the time of the cycle’s sequence
Limit– measure and document the exact amount of the reaction (dose)
Proportion– dilute the dose’s proportion over time
Addiction arises when the reward cycle (trigger, reaction, reward) breaks. Normally, the reward cycle moves us to fulfill bodily needs. As the Higher-Order Conductor of our body (including the brain), we work with our Lower-Order Bodies towards a healthy lifestyle by creating effective, embodied AST models, or what NUM labels SFS body models– scripts of behavior based on framework, priorities, goals, and preference. When we suffer (lack preference), the SFS body models must change, altering any combination of the four hierarchical levels of the priority algorithm– through a chosen framework (Love or Power), we increase awareness and execution of preference through the exercise of goal setting.
Priority’s algorithm is fashioned through storytelling, each priority, its own narrative. We apply the priority's template (model) to our current environment, and create a menu of options (option space) we might use to tell the success story of how we met our needs– each option, a goal, a sub-model, a series of steps towards a preference(s). Observing the sub-models (goals) through behavior, we in-turn respond to the changing environment by replacing ineffective with effective goals, matching our SFS body model to the environment. And when our priority changes, we change the menu of goals.
If a behavior interferes with our ability to function, if it causes harm, it’s considered an addiction. As a maladaptive reward strategy where costs outweigh benefits, the driver of addiction is more the environment, rather than the moral character of an individual. For example, when rats are given a choice between water or heroin, the environment plays an outsized role in which option they landed on.
Rats, like humans, are social creatures, and when imprisoned, heroin’s preferred, but when in “rat park,” full of friends and fun, water’s preferred. A rat’s reward strategy in the broken environment of an isolated cage was unhealthy, just as it was healthy in a satisfying society. In both cases, the rats’ preference to escape pain (heroin) and chase pleasure (rewarding social relationships) drove their option space– that range of possible actions (AST or SFS body models) they might apply to their environment.
The rats’ story was to feel good. In prison, heroin, yum; water, meh. In rat park, lots of healthy sleep, food, and playtime, yum; heroin, meh. In both cases, the rats sought to tell their story by fulfilling their preferences– both “addicted” to their lifestyle. The only difference, one shortly killed the rat, while the other, made for a long, happy life.
For some people, “cold-turkey” is their only option, and works best with a healthy change of environment. As the Vietnam War was winding down, when many heroin-addicted soldiers, forced to first detox, finally returned home, very few continued their heroin use. Why? Because they were no longer driven by the neural chemistry, nor surrounded by their triggers, obliterating that first step in the cycle. In order to reestablish the cycle, the “friction” of having to find a new dealer, secure a spot to shoot up, and not go broke in the process stood in the way. For most veterans, it was easier to embrace their new, drug-free situation. In fact, given time, most addictions will spontaneously “resolve” in a healthy environment. But what if we can’t find a healthy environment?
The Novel Universe Model uses three considerations to bend the reward cycle towards health in a less than healthy environment: proportion, limitation, and order. Order is the timing of consumption, when and how the trigger invokes reaction– any number of things might create friction, delaying that first sip. Limitation addresses the quantity of consumption, how much we engage the addiction– the number of shots in a day. Proportion is the rate of consumption, how and what we drink– beer, wine, hard liquor? To better illustrate NUM’s method for dealing with addiction, we’ll use the example of Greg.
Greg started socially drinking with friends in High School. He’d had a few benders in college, but got his law degree, and never considered his habit of a few drinks on the weekends an issue. After a nasty divorce followed by the lost of his dream job, the habit progressed to a daily routine. The only work Greg could get was for a shady law firm as an “ambulance chaser.” He hated it, but it paid the mounting bills. Entering middle-age, that handful of drinks after a hard day became a dozen on workdays, and countess more on weekends. Those core components of health (sleep, diet, and exercise) were no longer part of the plan. One Friday night, Greg left his favorite bar, and shortly found himself behind bars, nearly disbarred. Realizing how lucky he was that no one was injured in the minor accident, and that he got to keep his law license, Greg sought help. Preferring it never happens again, he told himself a new story– he might not be an alcoholic, but was pointed in that direction, and was ready for professional help.
The Court left Greg no choice; he’d join AA. Greg traveled the most painful, dangerous, and lest reliable way to beat addiction– white-knuckling it through abstinence. Instead of bending those models into shape over time, he’d attempt to instantly create all-new models. This required he express a Herculean level of freewill. Changing the narrative, he’d be tethered to his addiction by publicly admitting, “Hi, my name’s Greg, and I’m an alcoholic.”
Unfortunately for Greg, the chances of long-term recovery through programs such as AA is no better than going it alone– as many people spontaneously recover each year as those who seek help. After his mandated calendar of meetings ended, Greg joined the vast majority of people who relapse. A new story was told, he was an alcoholic, so, why not embrace it? If Greg had wanted to truly succeed in going cold-turkey, changing some degree of his environment would have eliminated / diminished those triggers. On the other hand, although Greg could not change his situation, he would find long-term addiction mitigation through incremental behavior modification– NUM’s approach to effectively alter Greg’s SFS body.
Greg discovers the Novel Universe Model’s vision of addition: like a hill of sand, each time he responds to his trigger, water pours, deepening that stream of a few drinks into a river of liquor, slicing a wide canyon into that hill. Greg knows it took a long time to create, and if he wants to follow NUM’s remodeling approach, it’ll also take a long time to “nudge” that behavior towards a healthy lifestyle. But there’s an expected benefit. By reconstructing the canyon, inch-by-inch, he’ll eventually have changed the landscape, and that old gouge of binge-drinking to excess will simply no longer exist.
Counter-factually, Greg could have chosen to continue his AA-inspired strategy, and form a new canyon of equal depth, but he’d have to leave intact the open fissure of consumption. If he’d been able to find a new environment where it would’ve been difficult / impossible to pour more “water,” this may have worked. In this case, however, it would have also been true that if he’d relapsed (again pouring water), the raging depth would require the same binge-drinking flow– why so many relapses are followed with such serious medical complications (including death). The danger of abstinence is the near certainty of relapsing into behavior that is just as out-of-control as the first day of abstinence. Greg could see that this is true. Each time he quit– sometimes for months– when he’d pick up the bottle, he’d return to a river that was just as deep and scary as it had always been.
NUM teaches Greg a new story about alcoholism. True “alcoholics” don’t ever have to have a drink to be an alcoholic, as their genetics alter the chemistry into an opioid-like response– reason enough for this population to find absolute abstinence the healthiest option. The first drink a true alcoholic takes is experienced very differently from non-alcoholics. NUM’s story for Greg is, “I’m clearly not an alcoholic. I know this, because I spent years as a social drinker, never having experienced the dramatic effects of a true alcoholic. What I am is someone who drinks more than I want, and I can change that.”
First, Greg quits the idea of quitting, and decides to reconstruct that river into a stream. This will take work, and he’s prepared to employ the three stages of modification: order, quantity, and proportion.
Greg attacks the issue of order– his trigger response– by placing a calendar in a central spot where he’ll often see it. Upon waking each day, he starts a timer, stopping it the moment he takes his first sip. He writes the time down. With mindfulness and the effort of freewill, he slowly extends the time, going from minutes to hours each day. Greg cuts out certain times of day and activities where he doesn’t drink as a matter of practice– no more beer at lunch. Whenever he feels like he’s backsliding, he reminds himself, “This is not just a goal, but a lifestyle I practice every day. Tomorrow, I’ll try again, because I’ll either drink more, less, or the same. As long as it’s not the first, I’ve met my goal. And even when mess up, truthfully accounting is participation, and that’s all the progress I’ll ever need!”
Greg reduces order-friction by replacing his favorite cocktails with mocktails, mindful that these are designed to delay the onset of drinking by manipulating the response to his favorite trigger-response behavior– the intricate mediation of preparing his favorite beverages. He also removes other triggers from sight: his trusted shot glass, the prized bottles lining the cabinet tops, the garbage full of cans and glassware, etc. He then increases order-friction by forcing himself to go to the liquor store to buy just enough for a few days. Later, he increases the friction, now traveling across town to an out-of-the-way shop. Another increase includes reducing the number of days he’s buying for, until he’s at the point where he’s gotta go each time. One of the added benefits to this strategy is naturally engaging the next step: limitation.
Every time Greg drinks, he measures the exact amount of liquor and writes it down on his calendar. He’s careful not to cheat himself by fudging the numbers or measurements. Bad days are valued, as they stand in contrast to good days, both working in coordination to detail his struggle, providing proof of his long-term progress. Without any of that white-knuckling effort, after a few months of religiously keeping track, he compiles the numbers and sees a stark pattern, he’s drinking less.
Now it’s time to pour on the gas, and introduce the final element: proportion. Greg dilutes his cocktails, eventually replacing all the flavors and mixes with water. This allows Greg’s senses to upregulate, become more sensitive to the taste of his tequila. Metaphorically, he’s filling in that canyon with dirt, changing his neural circuity, his AST model for what it is like to drink alcohol.
It takes years for Greg to go even a single day without a drink, and even longer before he’s a responsible drinker, but with vigilance, accountability, and a focus on where he’s going instead of where he is (or doesn’t want to be), Greg resists the urge to beat himself up, and eventually finds that deep river remodeled, knowing he’ll never again have that addictive urge to binge-drink. Eventually, the calendar is retired, Greg no longer vulnerable to a single drink. Instead of abstaining, of leaving the riverbed in place, he transforms it into a stream, by modifying his trigger-reaction-reward cycle.
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