Have you ever been transported back in time by a piece of music? You know the sort of thing I’m talking about: it might be a favourite pop song from your youth – or something else that has the power to overwhelm you with strong memories.
You hear it by chance and suddenly it’s as if you’re back in the day. You’re 16 years old again, and you can literally feel the past come alive. Tangible emotions are stirred up – happy or sad – and all from just overhearing a simple tune.
I call this a ‘Sgt. Pepper moment’, because that’s the one song that always triggers it for me. It reminds me of the time when, as a shy and scared teenager, I went to a record shop before going into college and bought a copy of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. When I took the record into college everybody was falling over themselves to look at it because I was the first guy in town to buy it.
So there I was, sitting in the physics laboratory with this big vinyl record. I opened up the sleeve and saw a large, close-up colour picture of the four Beatles dressed in silk military-style suits – and I felt just fantastic. I had the first copy of the album everybody wanted, and it was all mine.
This happened during the 1960s, but to this day, my memory of those feelings is still vivid, and remembering that moment fills me with emotion. Recently, I was in a record shop and I saw a CD of Sgt. Pepper with the original artwork on the cover – the one with the famous drum and all the faces in the crowd. You can guess what happened next: I thought, I have to buy that!
When I got the CD home and opened it up, I saw the same full-colour picture of The Beatles that I’d stared at all those years ago. I was overwhelmed by the memories it evoked within me. It was as if I was back in that physics lab, with my life still ahead of me. Even thinking about it now makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, because it brings back every intense feeling of joy and fear I experienced as a teenager.
It’s not only musical cues and photographs that have the power to do this. Similar memory-feelings can be stirred up by smells, noises, colours and events. We all experience these from time to time, and when they happen it’s likely that the area of our brain called the limbic system is at work.
The limbic system consists of the parts of our mind that govern our feelings and emotions, and our long-term memory. It operates by influencing something called the autonomic nervous system, which is a control network that functions independently of our conscious awareness. It’s highly interlinked with the brain’s pleasure centre, which plays a key role in sexual arousal, and also in the highs we feel from recreational drugs.
This area of the brain is also the part that will keep us alive in an emergency – and for this reason it has the power to override everything that we do. I think of it as being a bit like a flight computer on a passenger jet that’s flying by the wire. When the plane’s nice and steady the computer is dormant in the background – quietly monitoring everything.
But if the plane suddenly hits an air pocket or turbulence, the computer overrides the flight instructions and compensates for any sudden loss in altitude in order to stop the plane from plunging earthwards. The limbic system has a similar function in our brain when we encounter danger.
Here’s a good example of the limbic system at work:
Imagine you’re in a room and I’m about to throw a baseball at your head with all my strength. As the ball hurtles towards your face at great speed, your instincts tell you that when it connects it will almost certainly smash some of your teeth and facial bones.
So, what do you do? You instantly duck, and attempt to block it, of course. You do this without thinking: it’s a reflex action over which you’ve no control. Your brain processes the information about an incoming threat and your limbic system kicks in to react in superfast time. Bang! It does this in order to protect you, and it happens without the need for conscious thought.
The important thing here is that your reflexes react in a way that’s beyond your control. You probably couldn’t stop yourself from ducking, even if you wanted to. It’s a prime example of how our gut instincts and feelings – in this case fear of being hit by a baseball – can cause us to react in a certain way without our having any control over it.
Our limbic system has the ability to override our conscious actions, and we’re powerless over its effect on us.
Remember how, in the previous chapter, we discussed the fact that addiction is all about a loss of control? Well, if our limbic system can cause us to act without control on autopilot, I believe the same process can cause the lack of control that people experience when they’re addicted to something.
It explains how a heavy drinker can intend to have only one or two drinks on a night out, but then slip into downing a bucketful without thinking about it. After many years spent working with heavy drinkers, and people suffering from other forms of addiction, I’m convinced there’s an overwhelmingly strong connection between the limbic system and addictive behaviour.
Our limbic brain is capable of creating strong associations between memories and emotions. When we perceive a threat it creates powerful feelings that the brain is capable of storing away. Here’s an example that illustrates this process:
Imagine you’re a small child out in the street with your parents. Suddenly, a big dog comes over, and before your mother or father can intervene, the animal jumps up at you. The dog might just want to be friendly, but as you’re very young, you don’t know whether this creature with big teeth will hurt you or not. As far as you’re concerned, it’s a dangerous animal and your parents might not be close enough to protect you.
What happens next is very interesting. A part of your neurological system called the thalamus (which is the brain’s telephone switchboard) takes the information about the big dog and sends it to your amygdala, the part of the limbic system that governs your feelings of fear and reward. The amygdala can react in several ways, one of which is to go: This is a threat! FREEZE.
If this happens, you’ll be frozen to the spot with fear. And from that moment on, if you see a big dog, you’ll experience an urge to freeze. If the effect is powerful enough, this may stay with you for life: some people who have an unpleasant encounter with a dog when they are very young can be afraid of the animals till the day they die.
Here’s one more example of your limbic system in action:
You’re walking down the street when you hear a car backfire, causing an almighty noise. The sound startles you, and it makes you physically jump out of your skin. Again, this is an involuntary act over which you’ve no control. You do it without thinking.
Your limbic system does many things like this, and one of its most important functions is to act like a radar warning system that’s on constant alert for danger. It’s a bit like a sixth sense. In fact, in my opinion, that’s exactly what it is.
Our limbic system works via a whole range of feelings and emotions – we feel scared and we react accordingly. We sense that something isn’t quite right. We become aware of danger and take evasive action.
Our brain does this by tuning in to complex nuances in our surroundings that go beyond our conscious understanding of normal visual and audible signals. When we walk into a room where other people are present, we start analyzing thousands of subtle pieces of information. Without realizing it, we’re constantly monitoring body language, smells, temperature and ambience. This process is fed by our five physical senses of vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste.
I believe that when all of this data is combined in the limbic part of the brain it creates a sixth sense – our emotional ability to read a situation and translate it into feelings. This has been called many things throughout history: our intuition; our instinct; our sense of deja vu. It’s our ability to just know when something doesn’t feel quite right, without actually being able to explain why.
Our sixth sense is a process that operates all the time, without our knowledge, and it guides us via our feelings.
If our limbic brain has the power to override our conscious thoughts, this means we cannot easily influence how it makes us behave. The process is hardwired into our very nature as human beings. We have no control over our jump reflex when we’re startled, and in the same way, an addict has no control over his or her addiction. This lack of control explains why addicts are so prone to relapse, even when they’re determined to stay clean.
As a therapist, one of the things that puzzled me for many years was the way people could walk out of rehab centres having seemingly overcome their demons, only to go back to their old habits. There seemed to be no explanation for this. When patients leave a treatment centre like the Priory they’re hopefully no longer physically dependent on substances or alcohol. In that sense they’re ‘clean’, and when they say they’ll never pick up another drink or drug they’re 100 per cent committed to that.
Many addicts are intelligent, considerate people with good jobs and loving families. Yet around a third of them revert to their old behaviour when they get back into daily life. It’s as if the pressure of an ordinary lifestyle is simply too much for them. They’ll often resume drinking in the full knowledge of the enormous dangers involved, yet something beyond their control makes them do it. I believe what actually happens is that their limbic system kicks in and causes them to react in a way that they don’t understand.
Throughout nature we see many examples of animals with highly developed limbic systems, and humans share many of these characteristics. Horses, in particular, are incredibly attuned to their surroundings, and they’re very astute at reading the emotions of people and other animals. Anybody who’s worked with horses will tell you that they’ll instantly pick up on our moods and react accordingly. If a rider is in a bad temper, or giving off aggressive vibes, the horse will quickly become agitated too. But show a horse love and care and it will relax and cooperate.
In this respect, horses are the perfect limbic beings. They’re at one with nature. We can learn a lot from them about the dynamics of addiction. In fact, for this reason, many treatment centres use equine therapy as a way of helping addicts re-connect with their feelings. At treatment centres like the Priory, therapists take a group of patients to a riding school and invite them to lead horses and ponies around obstacles.
The humans quickly learn that the horses pick up on their moods and will happily respond to positive influences, but the opposite occurs if they try to use force (I guess the old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink is true!) This is something that addicts empathize with, because without knowing it, they do exactly the same.
Addicts are very sensitive to other people’s feelings. Yet, paradoxically, when they’re in the grip of their addiction these same people are capable of being extremely selfish – I know that I certainly was when I was a heavy drinker. It’s as if addicts build a dark castle to hide inside – one full of mistruths, lies, manipulation and denial.
When I was boozing I wouldn’t think twice about lying to my partner if it meant I could create an opportunity to guzzle a drink. Before I knew it, I’d be telling lies on top of lies without even pausing to think. Just so I could get a sly drop of alcohol.
There’s a dark side to the limbic system that’s visceral by nature. It operates beyond our conscious control and it can lead us to react to people and situations in ways that we know are bad for our long-term wellbeing.
This type of behaviour is very common, and it can be enormously hard on the family and friends of addicts, who cannot understand why their loved one (who is so kind and caring in normal circumstances) can act in such a selfish way.
How often have you heard someone say something like, ‘I know it was wrong of me, but I can’t help the way I feel.’ You’ll usually hear this when someone’s done something wrong, like having a huge outburst of temper or cheating on a partner. This is interesting because it shows that our feelings and emotions – through our limbic system – can have a hold over us in ways that we don’t fully appreciate or understand.
The point here is that we don’t always react in a considered way: we can become a slave to our emotions. If a person tells me they’ve been fired from their job for smelling of alcohol, I know it’s likely that they’re already pretty far down the road to a very serious addiction. By the time they reach this stage they’ll be weighed down by years of deceit around their drinking. This is invariably the case, regardless of their background. An important factor in understanding addiction is to acknowledge that it affects people from all walks of life.
Addicts come in all shapes and sizes, but their problems are always similar. It’s often said in therapy circles that addiction is ‘an equal opportunities illness’.
One alcoholic I know has a photograph of himself with a group of fellow patients in a rehab centre. Among them are an affluent banker, a failed musician, a photocopier salesman, a relative of a Hollywood star, an accountant, an unemployed teenager and a retired nurse. On any given day in the Priory you’ll find patients from a wide variety of backgrounds (the only common factor is that they’ve been lucky enough to get into private treatment).
These people suffer from a wide range of compulsive behaviours, from alcoholism and hard drugs through to food and gambling addictions. Yet in all cases their problem causes them to act in a similar way. It’s as if there’s something at work deep within human nature. I believe that what we’re witnessing here is the limbic system misfiring and influencing us in a negative way.
I freely admit that as a violent alcoholic I lost control over my own behaviour. I simply had to indulge in booze or drugs, regardless of the consequences. All I can say is that my problem seemed to come from deep within me. It was visceral by nature, and it defied logical explanation.
My experience may have been extreme, but perhaps it holds an important clue for understanding our nature as human beings. In my subsequent life as a leading therapist, I’ve met thousands of people who’ve become addicted to everyday things, ranging from sex to spending. My work has led me to conclude that the urge to overindulge may be far more universal than we currently understand.