The key to unravelling addiction is understanding deficit.

Life As An Addict (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The effect of the substance or substances on the brain smothers perception. The human mind is peculiarly vulnerable to trauma threw addiction, especially when young – addiction starts to be induced which turns cognition off. Cognition ceases. The mind is ‘ill’. It pays the addict not to know what is happening, or who is doing what, to him or her. This is variously described as ‘denial’, dissociation, projection, repression – what have you – the upshot is that the addict daren’t look, so cannot see the full picture of addiction. 

The addict works on the malperception that “full cognition or visualisation of this event is terminal”. And once the addict stops seeing, and this can happen quite suddenly , then they are thereafter incapable of telling whether or not the trauma of addiction has stopped or is even happening to them. “This isn’t happening to me” leads inexorably to the inability to say or think or believe that “this has stopped happening to me” – or even very clearly what “this” is. Addiction stops cognition by smothering the perception and adjusting the individual to a childlike dependency on a substance or a set of circumstances. The social group shrinks leavingn the addict isolated. This smothering of perception is treatable, but the return to full cognition takes time and nutritional treatment.  EVOPROJECT seeks to understand the effect of addiction on the working of the brain and its effects on the individual.

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