“Addiction is a brain disease,” Alan Leshner declared in Science in 1997. Back then it was dopamine the magical molecule that explained destructive substance use (and before that, tolerance…). Dopamine drove craving, dopamine made pleasurable irresistible, dopamine made addicts chase rewards that existed only in warped neural chemistry.I am drinking a fine Pinot Grigio as I write those words. Sure, the wine and the taste and pleasure can be reduced to brain chemicals. But does that really explain why I bought this bottle, crystalline, on my wife’s first day back to full time work? Does it explain our “cheers” before dinner, and the memories of other Pinot Grigios with my wife? No, of course not. Craving matters, and deeply so in addiction. But it is not the whole story...
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Daniel Lende @'PLOS'
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