Addiction - Choice?

Addiction is everywhere.  While psychological dependencies of the mind are primarily associated with physical dependencies of substances such as drugs and alcohol, they also include uncontrollable behaviors relating to gambling, self-mutilation, overeating, cosmetic surgery, the internet, and just about anything else.  What I want to focus on is addiction as it relates to drugs and alcohol.

A Harvard psychologist, Gene Heyman, has written a book that is causing quite a stir in the world of addiction treatment.  In , “Addiction: A Disorder of Choice”, Heyman argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, addiction is not a disease, but rather a lack of individual self-control, an inability to take a long term perspective.  Not a disease, but a choice.  Wow! If this is true, it should throw a large wrench into the workings of a whole host of treatment programs and health-care policies.

Science appeared to have supported the view that addiction was a disease.  Neuroscience showed that the brains of addicts were uniformly abnormal.  Surely, this was evidence that addicts were just unfortunate souls, victims to the same sort of life lottery that claimed other victims of other diseases.  The uncontrollable behaviors of addicts had to be viewed sympathetically because these behaviors were beyond the influence of rewards, punishments and societal expectations.  But were the poor choices of addicts coming from their brain abnormalities or were the brain abnormalities coming from the poor choices?  For Heyman, the disease model of addiction just wasn’t adding up.  Why were addicts that never entered treatment programs more successful in achieving sobriety than addicts that went through treatment programs?  Why did 70 - 90% of addicts going through standard treatment programs, relapse within the first year of completing treatment?  Why did some treatment programs, such as those for airline pilots, which threatened job termination if the pilots were unsuccessful in their recovery, have success rates of over 80%.  For Heyman, the explanation for the poor success rate of treatment centers, came from research that showed that many of these addicts also suffered from other mental disorders.  As Heyman delved into the case histories of recovered addicts, the common thread for recovery was some cataclysmic event that ultimately led them to make the choice to quit their addiction.  Whether it was a car crash, a DUI charge, or their spouse leaving them, something occurred that made the addict realize they could no longer sacrifice the long term for their short term pleasure.

Heyman’s book reminded me of a Stanford University study involving marshmallows, four-year-olds, and choice.  Walter Mischel,  a Stanford professor of psychology, conducted the experiment on campus at the Bing Nursery School in the late 1960’s.  In a small room with a desk and a chair, the children were taken individually and asked to select a treat from an assortment of goodies.  Most chose the marshmallow.  Then the experimenter told the children they could eat the one marshmallow right away, or they could wait until the experimenter left the room to run a small errand, and when they returned, the child would get not one, but two marshmallows.  If, while attempting to wait for the second marshmallow, the four-year-old decided he or she couldn’t wait any longer, they just had to ring a bell and the researcher would return to the room, allow the child to eat the one marshmallow, but the second marshmallow would be denied.

Video tape of the experiment is quite revealing.  Some children ate the marshmallow right away.  Some agonized over the marshmallow, hiding their eyes, playing with their hair, kicking at the desk, until finally ringing the bell and eating the one marshmallow.  Most of the children lasted 3 minutes before ringing the bell and succumbing to their temptation.  However, 30% of the children held out for the required 15 minutes, and received their second marshmallow.  They delayed their gratification, and it paid off.

Starting in 1981, Mischel went back to locate the 653 children used in his experiment.  The children were now in high school.  He sent questionnaires to their parents and teachers and requested their S.A.T. scores.  There was evidence that children who delayed their gratification, had less behavioral problems at home and in school, dealt with stress better, had better relationships, concentrated better, and had higher S.A.T. scores than those children who could not wait to eat their marshmallow.  A child that waited 15 minutes to eat their marshmallow, on average, had an S.A.T. score 210 points above the child who waited only 30 seconds before eating his marshmallow.

Mischel tracked the subjects into their late 30’s, and found that the four-year-olds with little self-control, grew up to be adults with little self-control.  They had significantly higher body-mass indexes and often had problems with drugs.  Mischel’s research continues, but his findings say something about choice and delaying gratification.

But just what does it say?  Only, that we should be cautioned about making choices for the short term at the expense of the long term.  That, while we seek the freedom to do what we want, the desire for immediate gratifications often makes us irrational about the long term.  Lung cancer doesn’t enter the mind of a smoker as the next cigarette is lit up; addiction seems irrelevant as the next drink is downed by the border-line alcoholic; a troubled marriage is a distant thought as a spouse looks lustfully into the eyes of a stranger.  Our world today offers us more pleasure than ever before in history.  Unfortunately, without a little self-control, these pleasures will become curses.

Pugwash Estate

Today, as General Motors dies, one can look to the future by looking at the past.

In the early 1900’s, the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, became friends with a street minister named Dr. Charles Aubrey Eaton.  In addition to his street ministry, Dr. Eaton also served as the pastor of Euclid Avenue Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio.  The church catered to the inhabitants of “millionaire’s row”, a string of luxurious mansions on Euclid Avenue, owned by some of North America’s wealthiest leaders in finance and industry.

Rockefeller lived most of the year in New York City, but in the summers he returned to his country estate, Forest Hill, just outside of Cleveland.  It was here that Dr. Eaton brought his young nephew, Cyrus Eaton, to meet Rockefeller.  Although Cyrus was just a young university student from the small hamlet of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, he somehow managed to impress the wealthy industrialist.  Rockefeller took Cyrus under his wing and Cyrus was to become a successful businessman and investment banker.  Capitalizing on the growth of the automobile industry, Cyrus himself, was to become a steel magnate and philanthropist.  By the late 1950’s, Eaton was looking to use his fortune to save mankind from nuclear destruction.

On July 9th, 1955, the mathematician-philosopher, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto.  In it, the two giants of intellectual thought, appealed to humanity to step back from a path of nuclear destruction.

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

After reading the manifesto, Cyrus Eaton, sent a letter to Russell offering his estate in Pugwash as a meeting place for scientists to develop plans to resist nuclear warfare.  In 1957, 22 eminent scientists from around the world attended the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs.  Unfortunately, Einstein had died a few days after signing the manifesto and Russell was too ill to attend.  Since then, there have been hundreds of workshops and conferences held at locations all around the world.  The 58th annual main conference is being held this year in The Hague, Netherlands.  In 1995, Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their “efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the long run, to eliminate such arms”.  The Chair of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Council, John Holdren, accepted the prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conference.

John Holdren

Fast forward to 2009.  John Holdren is now Obama’s Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  Over the last number of years, Holdren has shifted much of his focus from nuclear warfare to climate change, but he sees both as being paramount threats to humanity.  In a 1995 article he co-wrote with Paul Ehrlich, Holdren described the ills that development must address.  In terms of human frailties, Holder listed “greed, selfishness, intolerance, and shortsightedness”.  Surely, these are the same human frailties that are at the heart of the current world financial crisis and our indifference to climate change and the plight of the developing world.  But what role will science ultimately play in overcoming our human frailties?

Obama has initiated a paradigm shift.  We are in the midst of a “violent intellectual revolution”, that will rely on science to set the course for the future.  It is ironical that Cyrus Eaton, the man who built his fortune on supplying the light steel of the American automobile industry, and was instrumental in establishing the Pugwash Conferences around which John Holdren built his reputation, may ultimately be a force in ending the automobile industry as we know it. 

 On May 19th, 2009, in front of executives of 10 of the world’s largest automobile manufacturers, Obama announced his nation-wide plan to increase automobile fuel efficiency and reduce green house gas emissions. 

The new fuel efficiency standards, covering model years 2012-2016, ultimately require an average fuel economy standard of 35.5 mpg in 2016. They are projected to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce 900 million metric tons in greenhouse gas emissions, the White House said.

“In the past, an agreement such as this would have been considered impossible,” Obama said. “That is why this announcement is so important, for it represents not only a change in policy in Washington, but the harbinger of a change in the way business is done in Washington.”

John Holder, the Pugwashite instrumental in the policy formulation, was in attendance.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood.

Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)

What to do with China?

Let’s face it, the financial crisis is nothing but confusing.  But if you want to see complete and utter confusion, take a look at how the Obama administration is dealing with China.  On January 23, Obama’s soon to be Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, accused the Chinese of “manipulating their currency”.  Basically Geithner scolded the Chinese for keeping its currency artificially low, spurring domestic employment and exports, and then increasing their foreign exchange reserves by buying U.S. treasury securities with the proceeds.

However one month later, Obama’s Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, traveled to Beijing and all but begged the Chinese government not to sell their U.S. Treasury securities and to please, please, continue to buy them in the future.

China has become the world’s largest foreign holder of U.S. treasury securities, with $780 billion of the $3.1 trillion in U.S. treasury securities held by foreign interests.  The U.S. needs China to finance their stimulus packages but China themselves are going to have to finance their own stimulus package.  China, however, is sitting on the world’s largest stash of cash, with $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.

Some think the financial crisis is signaling the end of the American Empire, and with it the end of the U.S. dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency.  The fact is, however,  that while the credibility of the U.S. dollar is at risk, conditions are not yet right for a run on the dollar.  The mere prospect of an Obama administration implementing better foreign and domestic policies is enough to postpone a massive liquidation of U.S. dollars by foreign investors.  I believe the seemingly contradictory policy statements of Clinton and Geithner, are in fact a reflection of a coordinated Obama strategy.  The dollar lost 15% to the yen and 40% to the euro over the 8 years that Bush pretended to be following a strong dollar policy.  Obama comes from the Paul Volker school of, “a country is stronger with a strong currency, not weaker”, and so he is just more believable than Bush when promoting a strong dollar.  There is a lot of deflationary pressure with the unwinding of leverage around the world, but I suspect Obama would support a Federal Reserve decision to start raising interest rates if inflation was on the horizon.  While Obama’s policies and stimulus will cost plenty, his withdrawal from Iraq will save the U.S. Treasury plenty.  The Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has estimated that the Iraq war will have cost U.S. taxpayers $3 trillion dollars.  At the very least, Obama is moving America in a new direction.

The dollar is in jeopardy, not because the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low in the face of inflation, but because of the “twin deficits” (current account and fiscal), that the U.S. has allowed to balloon.  In this era of globalization, a country’s current account is a vital barometer of its economy.  When a country spends and invests more than its domestic income and savings, it has to fund the deficit with large inflows of foreign capital.  The U.S. consumer has been the driving force of much of the world’s economy, but this consumption has occurred on borrowed money.  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the U.S. to have a current account deficit of $615 billion in 2008, while China will have a current account surplus of $386 billion.  Could the renminbi be the world’s reserve currency of the future?

The other crucial deficit affecting the dollar is the U.S. fiscal deficit.  This deficit is likely to reach $2 trillion in 2009, before dropping to $1.5 trillion in 2010.  Again, this deficit has to be financed mostly by non-residents, and while the world community is likely to bet on Obama in the short term, a protracted failure of U.S. policies will result in a flight from the American currency.

The pressure on Obama is immense.  By the end of his first term we should know if the reign of the American Empire will continue or be replaced by regional financial powers (China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Iran), and a much diminished role for the American dollar.  If there is the perception that the U.S. is falling into the abyss, the first sign of the dollar’s collapse may come from discussions in the Gulf countries revolving around revaluing their crude oil sales based on a basket of currencies.  A lot of very smart people are betting against the dollar  (Nouriel Roubini, Jim Rogers, Nassim Taleb), but I believe the U.S. will have one more kick at the can.  This optimism can be explained in two words - Chu and Varmus.  Huh! That’s right Chu and Varmas.  When Obama named Steven Chu as his Energy Secretary and Harold Varmus as his co-chair of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, he signaled that the U.S. government was going to embrace science and technology to get us out of this mess.  The two Nobel prize laureates are a reflection of Obama’s intelligence.  Obama is smart enough to get technology leaders into policy making positions and to lead us in a new direction.  My belief is that he will do the same in finance and foreign policy.

Those that think we are in for a prolonged (some say 10 year) deep recession/depression, don’t understand the speed at which the global economy now works.  Policy decisions, good and bad, that played out over years during the depression of the 1930’s, now would play out in a matter of days.  Let’s hope this fact is good news for Barack Obama and the American dollar.

Science and Religion Come Together

Nirvana is at long last attainable.  You’ll just have to first suffer a brain hemorrage, or become a Tibetan Buddhist monk or a Franciscan nun.

Neurotheology attempts to bridge the divide between science and religion.  Two books serve as building blocks in this bridge; Andrew Newberg’s, “Why God Won’t Go Away”, and Jill Bolte Taylor’s, “My Stroke of Insight”.

At age 37, Taylor, a brain scientist, almost died from a severe stroke.  Remarkably, as her left cerebral cortex was exploding, Taylor found refuge in the right side of her brain.  As Taylor describes it, she could retreat into the right side of her brain - to a peaceful, blissful place where the energy matter of her own body melded into the surrounding energy of the universe.  There was no me in this place and no past or future, just the present.  It was, Nirvana.   However, the damn left side of her brain kept interfering with this euphoria.  Taylor’s damaged left cerebral cortex pestered her with brain chatter.  What was happening?  Who should she call for help?  How was her life going to be forever altered?  What had to be the next step of her recovery? The thoughts coming from the left side of her brain were only concerned with her as an individual.  This part of her psyche forced her to separate from the rest of the universe and focus on her own life.  For 8 years Taylor struggled to recover.  Each day, she was confronted with staying within the “heaven” of her right brain, or leaving this safe, peaceful place, to enter the world of her left brain - a world that existed for the painful struggle to relearn how to speak, write, and think.  Only by forcing herself into her left brain was Taylor able to restore her place in the world.

Andrew Newberg studies the effects of religious experiences on the brain.   Using a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) camera, Newberg can follow injected radioactive particles in a person’s blood stream and analyze how their brain is functioning.  Newberg’s findings from studying the mystical experiences of Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns at prayer, show that in both cases there was unusual activity in the right rear part of the brain called the posterior superior parietal lobe.  This is the area of the brain associated with orienting us in relation to our surroundings.  The mystical, euphoric, out-of-body, feelings experienced by the meditators and nuns, closely resemble those of Taylor’s retreat into the right side of her brain.  But why would the spiritual experiences of Tibetan Buddhist meditators and Christian nuns, map out so similarly in their brains?  Could there truly be some scientific common ground for practitioners of the world’s religions?  Could peoples from around the world tolerate other diverse concepts of God, simply through an understanding that, at a bare minimum, we all experience God in similar ways?

Neurobiology may yet provide us with the missing link to finding God?  Dots are being connected.  Dostoevsky’s belief that he “touched God” during some of his eptileptic seizures is not so far from Carl Jung’s believe in the “collective unconscious”, or the mystical experiences of nuns and monks.  I for one suspect that science will bring us closer to God, not further away.