Sublime

It should: sugar, in the way it stimulates the release of dopamine, resembles drugs of abuse.

Our brains are not evolved for this world of plenty. As Dr. Tom Finucane, who studies diabetes in the setting of chronic sedentary feeding, said, “We are cacti in the rain forest.” And like cacti adapted to an arid climate, we are drowning in dopamine.

Prescriptions of stimulants (Adderall, Ritalin) in the United States doubled between 2006 and 2016, including in children younger than five years old.

Self-binding is the term to describe Jacob’s act of throwing out his machine. It is the way we intentionally and willingly create barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice in order to mitigate compulsive overconsumption. Self-binding is not primarily a matter of will, although personal agency plays some part. Rather, self-binding openly

The use of these drugs is not helpful if the insights gained from them are not integrated into the person’s normal state of consciousness.

Neuroscientist Nora Volkow and colleagues have shown that heavy, prolonged consumption of high-dopamine substances eventually leads to a dopamine deficit state. Volkow examined dopamine transmission in the brains of healthy controls compared to people addicted to a variety of drugs two weeks after they stopped using. The brain images are striking.

He believes you can only ethically give out drugs if you are also at the same time trying to solve the deeper problem.