addiction

The American Society for Addiction Medicine explains:
We all have the brain reward circuitry that makes food and sex rewarding. In fact, this is a survival mechanism. In a healthy brain, these rewards have feedback mechanisms for satiety or ‘enough.’ In someone with addiction, the circuitry becomes dysfunctional such that the message to the individual becomes ‘more’, which leads to the pathological pursuit of rewards and/or relief through the use of substances and behaviors.

In simpler terms, addiction involves changes in the brain that cause the following (and more):

Good Pictures, Bad Pictures by Kristen A. Jenson and Gail Poyner. I based my talk on this book plus online resources including those below.

All of the resources below include links to relevant research.

Protect Young Minds - Information for parents of younger children, from the authors of Good Pictures, Bad Pictures.

Fight the New Drug - Information for high-school students and older.

Class date: 12/16/18

Quotes:

“That, for both the wise ancient pagans like Aristotle and the even wiser Christian moral tradition, was the real horror of vice or sin: it turned the potential glorious thing, a human being, into a deformed parody, a mockery, a pitiful creature enslaved in his own self-destructiveness, body and soul. To put it in St. Augustine's concise terms, sin is its own punishment.” - Dr. Benjamin Wiker, "Addiction or Sinful Habit?"

“In order to see Jesus, we first need to let him look at us.” – Pope St. John Paul II

“Confession is an act of honesty and courage. It's an act of entrusting ourselves beyond the sin to the mercy of a Loving and Forgiving God.” – Pope St. John Paul II

Article:

The American Society for Addiction Medicine explains:
We all have the brain reward circuitry that makes food and sex rewarding. In fact, this is a survival mechanism. In a healthy brain, these rewards have feedback mechanisms for satiety or ‘enough.’ In someone with addiction, the circuitry becomes dysfunctional such that the message to the individual becomes ‘more’, which leads to the pathological pursuit of rewards and/or relief through the use of substances and behaviors.

In simpler terms, addiction involves changes in the brain that cause the following (and more):