Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

M.I.T. Explains Why Bad Habits Are Hard to Break 231

Posted by CmdrTaco from the also-because-vices-are-fun dept.
Ant writes "CNET News.com says habitual activity (e.g., smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.) changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed. These neural patterns created by habit can be changed or altered. But when a stimulus from the old days returns, the dormant pattern can reassert itself, according to a new study from the M.I.T., putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot... The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

M.I.T. Explains Why Bad Habits Are Hard to Break More

M.I.T. Explains Why Bad Habits Are Hard to Break

Comments Filter:

  • Kicking the Slashdot Habit (Score:5, Funny)

    by lowy ( 91366 ) * on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:30PM (#13838552) Homepage
    So removing the Slashdot button from my bookmark bar might not be sufficient?

  • mystery solved, I hope this isn't hopeless (Score:4, Interesting)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayaguNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:31PM (#13838555) Journal

    Disclaimer: posting on slashdot is a hard habit to break... I can't stop.

    Interesting article, but a little thin on details. But if true in some ways I sigh in relief cuz it helps explain:

    • why I always jump to make an early slashdot post
    • why I always used bulleted lists in my posts (check it out!)
    • why "You" always mod me troll or flamebait
    • dupes
    • why I edit everything with vi(m)
    • why crime show dramas beget crime show dramas (just how many nights a week are CSI and Law and Order on these days?)
    • why the Yankees are a perennial playoff team
    • why the Cubs never make the World Series
    • why Larry King marries wife #X
    • why Donald Trump fires Apprentice #X
    • why Steve Ballmer throws chairs across the room
    • why Bob Dylan mumbles instead of sings (kidding)
    • why people wait at all costs and discomfort to get home and take a dump

    Another mystery solved perhaps.

    My followup question is, is it possible to break these patterns, ever? Or are we destined for eternity to be creatures of our own habits? Should we stop buying self-help books?

    • why I always jump to make an early slashdot post - You fail it.
      why people wait at all costs and discomfort to get home and take a dump - Not me - crap on work time, that's the way. Save on toilet paper too.

    • Re:mystery solved, I hope this isn't hopeless (Score:5, Informative)

      by yali ( 209015 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:43PM (#13839229)
      On a behavioral level, this finding is nothing new. Hermann Ebbinghaus [yorku.ca] introduced the idea of savings in relearning [google.com] in the 19th century. This finding has been replicated countless different ways, including being replicated in neural network simulations.

      Nor is it news that this involves neurons. Hint to cnet: all of mental life involves neurons.

      What's scientifically interesting is which neurons are involved. The researchers are trying to map out the circuits involved in order to better understand the underlying process. That is at least potentially interesting.

      My followup question is, is it possible to break these patterns, ever? Or are we destined for eternity to be creatures of our own habits? Should we stop buying self-help books?

      One way to break an association is to develop a competing association. If Stimulus A triggers Response B, then you develop a new association between Stimulus A with Response C. That makes it harder to fall victim to the savings-in-relearning effect when you're faced with Stimulus A in the future, because you won't just be left hanging to try to suppress your impulse to respond with B.

      And yes, you should stop buying self-help books.

      • Much agreed (Score:3, Interesting)

        by sRev ( 846312 )
        Ignorance of the last 60 years of psychology research is one of the embarrassing secrets of cognitive neuroscience. These researchers have spent their careers becoming competent in methods for obtaining data (MRI, PET, EEG) and are largely ignorant of paradigms, theories, and findings of the experimental psychology literature. At the university level, it is difficult to hire a cognitive neuro person, who is well trained in psychology and whose primary focus is on psychological processes and who see brain im

        • Re:Much agreed (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 )
          In a way, it might be better that the neuroscientists are ignorant about a lot of the psychological case studies. If they can independently come to a lot of the same conclusions as the psychological studies, then that will help reinforce the validity of both. If there's a conflict, then it will be a useful direction for future study.
      • why people wait at all costs and discomfort to get home and take a dump

      This one is so fundamental that you could actually define "home" as the place where you feel most comfortable taking a dump...

  • Will this make people convicted of crimes say they did it because s/goobbehavior/badbehavior/; pattern made her/him do it.

  • Sin is in! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:33PM (#13838582) Homepage Journal
    A day is lacking without the 7 S's:

    1. Shower
    2. Seminate (Sex or self)
    3. Smoke
    4. Shave
    5. Starbucks
    6. Shit
    7. Slashdot

    Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.

    • I feel bad for your acquaintances that 1 isn't a prime number and 3 is...

    • Re:Sin is in! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <shadow DOT wrought AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:44PM (#13838660) Homepage Journal
      Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.


      Er, so #6 isn't a habit for you? Maybe you should get some more fiber in the diet;-)

      • Er, so #6 isn't a habit for you? Maybe you should get some more fiber in the diet;-)

        Er, so #6 is a habit for you? And how would you go about breaking that habit? ;-)
        • Er, so #6 isn't a habit for you? Maybe you should get some more fiber in the diet;-)

          "Er, so #6 is a habit for you? And how would you go about breaking that habit? ;-)"

          I believe if you start taking Tylenol 3, or codeine, you can induce constipation.
          • I believe if you start taking Tylenol 3, or codeine, you can induce constipation. ... and you could stop me from reading Slashdot by gouging out my eyes, but that's not quite the same as breaking a habit, is it?
      • If you tend to do it at the same time (or always after Starbucks, though that could be due to a little too much battery-acid coffee), it could probably become habit. Shitting is a necessity to life, but if you feel the need to go at a specific time per day, or after a certain activity, then it could also be a habit.
    • Do you consider 1 to be a prime? If not, please stay downwind.

  • What we already knew (Score:5, Informative)

    by ReverendLoki ( 663861 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:35PM (#13838591)
    Hell, any former smoker could tell you this much. I smoked for less than a decade, and I quit over 5 years ago, no relapses. However, sometimes an almost reflex gets triggered by the smell of tobacco, or just seeing a cigarrette, and it's like my arm itches to go through the motions, what I've seen described as a "ritual" of sorts, of lighting a smoke. This all occurs in my mind a split second before the conscious mind kicks in and realizes what is occurring, and takes control again.

    Trust me, this is a very accurate description of how some of these habits ingrain themselves into your mind.

    • Aye, I'm an ex-smoker, too, and your words ring true.

      I smoked for 18 years, quit two years ago and haven't cheated. Not once! It's awesome to be free.

      But like you, when I see someone smoking or smell it, well, I still get the urge.

    • Re:What we already knew (Score:4, Informative)

      by dankasfuk ( 885483 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:46PM (#13838678)
      Part of that response it thought to involve the nucleus accumbens, thought to play an important part in the reward pathway. It's also closely tied to the basal ganglia and the amygdala (part of the 'emotional' brain).
    • No, it's totally new knowledge. See, now we know that habits are hard to break because of neural patterns. Before, we just thought it had to do with our brains, but now we know it's neural patterns.

    • Bad habits -- The domino effect (Score:4, Funny)

      by halleluja ( 715870 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:56PM (#13838773)
      More importantly, other people's old habits incite forgotten habits.

      I recently started vomitting again on a regular basis after seeing actual COBOL and FORTRAN code.

    • I have to agree. I smoke for 1 year when I was about 17 years old. I gave up and was a fitness nut until I turned 26. Stupidly, when out drinking one night, I accepted a cigarette. Almost instantly the addiction was back, and for the next 4 years I watched all the fitness and health benefits I'd built up literally go up in smoke. After trying many times, I finally was able to give up (2 years ago)...now, in conversation, I don't refer to myself as an ex smoker, I refer to myself as a nicotene addict..

  • I can stop anytime... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:37PM (#13838610)
    See, this is why I like a little variety in my addictions: alcohol for a couple weeks, smoking the next, Starcraft after that, keeps me from getting pinned down to a single addiction for very long.

    • Re:I can stop anytime... (Score:5, Funny)

      by jonthegm ( 525546 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:46PM (#13838685) Homepage
      See, this is why I like a little variety in my addictions: alcohol for a couple weeks, smoking the next, Starcraft after that, keeps me from getting pinned down to a single addiction for very long.
      Dude, I think that's ADHD.

    • Re:I can stop anytime... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:09PM (#13838864) Homepage
      The best programmer in my undergrad was a skinny asian dude with drug habits that would've made Hunter S. Thompson blush. He never developed any addictions or problems and graduated near the head of his class. I still believe that the reason he never got in trouble was that he never took the same thing twice in a row.
    • You were modded funny, but I think there's great truth to what you say. Everybody have this big void in their lives. You can fill it with boulders or pebbles. Most people latch onto one thing fanatically, drinking, religion, family, TV, heroin, etc. Often when people give one up, they latch onto another, just as fantically (born-agains are a great example, try finding one without a very troubled past). I find it better to have a 1000 different addictions so that I never have enough time for just one and I d

  • WooHoo!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:38PM (#13838618) Journal
    smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.

    Drinking isn't on that list. I guess I don't have any bad habits!

  • also known as the "Civilisation" syndrome (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:41PM (#13838634) Journal
    Civilisation comes out, people obsessively play till 5am regularly so they can 'build this last final World Wonder'. This syndrome continues until the 5 1/4" disks wear out, the mouse cable is frayed, and the EGA monitor has CRT burn in.

    People recover, move on with their lives...then the syndrome re-occurs when Civilization II comes out -- on CDROM!!! Most people feel grunge music was a cultural phenomonen driven by the recession, but oh no -- college kids obsessed with Civ quit their summer jobs and could only afford second hand flannel, sinking 10 hrs a day into a 486 game.

    Advance a few years... Civilisation III late 2000. Dot-com crash late 2000. In this case correlation DOES mean causation.

    And now... Civilisation IV. Fortunately due to MIT's intense investigations into this phenomenon, hopefully a cure is available for addiction. The economy can't take another Enron/Worldcom/Pets.com.

  • This explains..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by 8127972 ( 73495 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:47PM (#13838692)
    ...... The need for Zonk to post dupes.

  • But what can break a habit? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Masa ( 74401 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:54PM (#13838753) Journal
    I would like to know what can break a habit without any obvious reason.

    I used to be a quite heavy smoker and tried to quit many times with no success, but about a year ago I suddenly started to dislike the whole smoking thing and I just dropped the habit. I haven't yet figured out, what could have caused that. And I haven't yet had any desire to start again. However, now I have picked a habit of eating greasy foods and I would like to get rid of that in the same way I dropped smoking.

    • Could be your liver (Score:3, Informative)

      by cshay ( 79326 )
      People with liver problems often stop wanting to smoke.

    • However, now I have picked a habit of eating greasy foods and I would like to get rid of that in the same way I dropped smoking.

      From TFA:

      The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning.

      Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but since addiction and procedural learning reside in the same area of the brain, dealing with cravings by performing a different procedure ( i.e. doing something else until the craving passes ) might help.

    • Most habits are a product of conditioning which have elements of hypnotic reinforcement that are broken by awareness and objectivity. Concentration itslef can be a hypnotic function, and when people worry and struggle with a problem they are actually deepening the psychic hold it has. If a person gets upset about their smoking and struggle with it willfully, it often just makes them want to smoke more. A person who can step back from a compuslion and become objective to it can find themselves free of any ha

  • Nothing new, just not commonly known (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FredThompson ( 183335 ) <fredthompsonNO@SPAMmindspring.com> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @02:55PM (#13838763)
    This came out of alzheimer's research about 15 years ago.

    Your brain optimizes to think what it thinks about a lot. (Why Slashdot readers don't morph into female genitalia or came controllers shows that human thought can't change matter.)

    When you try to "break" an old habit, it's easy at first. After a few days, the brain realizes the optimizations are starting to disappear and it works to reinforce those structures.

    The good side of this is that you don't have to re-learn how to use the toilet, eat, talk, etc. The bad side is you can't choose which thoughts are reinforced other than brute force to get past the recovery period. Even so, it's easy to go back to old optimizations. Think of it as being similar to a fold in a piece of paper. The fold can't ever be removed, just made less prominent. The paper will still have the tendency to fold at that position.
    • Wow. Does this mean that a childhood of watching the simpsons 3x a day has left me with PERMANENT long-term recollection of ridiculously long quotes? ...woo hoo!

    • Re:Nothing new, just not commonly known (Score:4, Informative)

      by Keighvin ( 166133 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @05:07PM (#13840014)
      The parent makes a very inaccurate assumption of why habits are hard to break.

      The brain does not independently attempt to reinforce any particular pattern of its own accord - not even the subconsciousness performs this level of autonomous subversive activity.

      However - the limbik region responsible for manifesting motivation and associating that motivation with behavior makes it feel that way. Which is to say, if someone smokes to relieve stress, and then stops smoking, that stress no longer has the familiar outlet. As the stress then continues to build, the limbik system increases the negative pressure associated with the typical relief and the urge to resume the habit also increases. However, if the stress (or whatever outlet or positive association [such as socialization or pleasurable sensation]) resumes a separate outlet, the motivation is satiated and the originally satisfying habit is more easily overridden.

      The brain does not have an effective back-end cron process for optimization - it does well what it does *frequently*, and is a very very reactive organ.
  • That may explain peoples' weaknesses to their ex-lovers. It would also explain my inability to resist sex. The brain just goes on autopilot. Hehe "don't blame me honey, blame my ganglia!". Hehe and she couldn't blame the ganglia, they're her favourite part of me...
    • It would also explain my inability to resist sex.

      That's one cause of not being able to resist sex. The other is being male.

      Hehe and she couldn't blame the ganglia, they're her favourite part of me...

      I'm not sure that that word means what you *think* it means....?! (-_^)V

  • Not just bad habits, good ones too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:00PM (#13838798)
    In fact it's one of the aims of certain forms of training, martial arts like karate etc train repetitively in order to get you into the habit of standing certain ways, moving, hitting, kicking certain ways on autopilot without thinking. I came back to it after 17 years away and apart from almost lethally bad fitness (yeah that's you) I fell right back into it like riding a bike.

     
    • You said just like riding a bike...but in the case of motorcycles, statistics and my personal experience shows that that sort of motor memory decays over the years. Personally, I started riding again after a 15 year hiatus, and promptly had a minor accident two days into it (as I flew through the air, I remember praying to the Goddess of Sudden and Unexpected Deceleration, "please don't let the bike land on the recently re-chromed parts". Overall, the accident death rate among "Born Again Bikers", that is
    • Absolutely. Sailors do this too. You practice all the time, raising, furling and dowsing sail, tacking, jibing, avoiding lobster pots, docking, navigating, Man-overboard drills, and what-not so that in an emergency when time is of the essence, you don't need to think "Now what do I do?" you just act. When the captain yells 'Get that sail down now!!!" you want to be on deck and reaching for the right halyard without a second thought, because there's generally a very good reason, like a rapidly advancing s

  • ...but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stanistani ( 808333 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:05PM (#13838840) Homepage Journal
    This still doesn't explain that 'dirty feeling' I get when I post here.

    Now I have to go shower.

  • Article abstract (Score:3, Informative)

    by Oxen ( 879661 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:06PM (#13838843)
    Here is a link to the primary article. [nature.com]
     
    And here is the abstract:
    Learning to perform a behavioural procedure as a well-ingrained habit requires extensive repetition of the behavioural sequence, and learning not to perform such behaviours is notoriously difficult. Yet regaining a habit can occur quickly, with even one or a few exposures to cues previously triggering the behaviour. To identify neural mechanisms that might underlie such learning dynamics, we made long-term recordings from multiple neurons in the sensorimotor striatum, a basal ganglia structure implicated in habit formation in rats successively trained on a reward-based procedural task, given extinction training and then given reacquisition training. The spike activity of striatal output neurons, nodal points in cortico-basal ganglia circuits, changed markedly across multiple dimensions during each of these phases of learning. First, new patterns of task-related ensemble firing successively formed, reversed and then re-emerged. Second, task-irrelevant firing was suppressed, then rebounded, and then was suppressed again. These changing spike activity patterns were highly correlated with changes in behavioural performance. We propose that these changes in task representation in cortico-basal ganglia circuits represent neural equivalents of the explore-exploit behaviour characteristic of habit learning.
  • Breaking habits and protocols is a very good habit to get into. Habit in any venue is about unflinching acceptance of a set of presuppositons.

    Gregory Bateson [edge.org] in his book Mind and Nature [amazon.com] deals with examining one's presuppositions. Under minning one's presuppositions is, in one way, what the study of epistemology [wikipedia.org], as it pertains to theories of knowledge vs the methodology of science, is about.

    Creative, or, if you prefer, inventive work is, in large part, about testing the presuppositions underpinning a the

    • "Breaking habits and protocols is a very good habit to get into. Habit in any venue is about unflinching acceptance of a set of presuppositons."

      Yet, there are habits that are good for the individual. I would guess that this mechanism of habit formation evolved because it provided an advantage -- such as being able to hunt more efficiently, or being able to perform repetitive tasks without devoting too much brainpower to them, like gutting fish, skinning rodents, or winnowing grain. This still holds tru

  • Scientology engrams? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobalu ( 1921 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:09PM (#13838862)
    I hate to bring it up for fear of Xenu's revenge, but as I understand it this is the basis for Scientology's "auditing". The idea is to break up those old neural paths so they don't re-assert themselves inappropriately - like telling your boss to f*ck off because he reminds you of your father, for instance.

    I always thought this made some sense, although the rest of their, umm, presentation was pretty scary.

  • Neural imprinting can be a real bitch some time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by multiplexo ( 27356 ) * on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:10PM (#13838867) Journal
    Sure, it's nice not to have to relearn how to wipe your ass every day but on the other hand I've met amputees who had serious damage to their legs and after years of surgery they finally elected to have an amputation so that they could have a fully functional prosthesis rather than a non-functional and painful leg. But the bitch of it is that the chronic pain they suffered rewired their brains to feel chronic pain and a lot of them still have quite a bit of pain after their amputations, even though the affected limb is gone.

  • Vista is great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CDPatten ( 907182 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:10PM (#13838870) Homepage
    This probably explains why you were about to flame me when you saw the title. Its just habbit, anything pro-ms, FLAME!

  • Addicted to Information (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Absentminded-Artist ( 560582 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:10PM (#13838876) Homepage
    Fascinating findings. I find that gathering information is a bad habit of mine. My dad once described himself as an encyclopedia of useless information. As they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He drives a crosscountry rig now (no longer a computer field service technician repairing motherboards as he did in the early 80's and earning far more money) so he's avoided the terrible lure of the internet (except on weekends). I find myself abusing RSS technology to feed this habit of mine. I can't believe how much more info I cram into my brain because of RSS...

    Of course, for many these scientific findings produce a "duh" response. Often science is filled with elaborate studies that simply prove what we already commonly believed or "knew". But no harm done. I think it's exciting to understand the process more fully. I wrote a blog about another study that was done on addictive behavior (ADD: Addicted to Information [blogspot.com]) - specifically drugs - last March. That research worked on showing how this effect of losing willpower to addictive behavior occurs physically/neurologically in the brain. Fascinating stuff. I related it to my addiction for information - an insight of my wife's, btw. I'm not nearly as insightful or clever.

    What I'd like to see, however, is more work being done on how to unlearn habits. How to retrain the mind to not need whatever fix ails it. For instance, I'd like to reclaim an hour of my day without feeling compelled to read more and more news as is the problem this week, or watching too much TV as was the problem last month. My ADDled mind shakes off one habit only to pick up another. I try to build barriers, but as an earlier poster pointed out by example of Brian Eno, we simply bypass the artificial detours we construct. It would be better to retrain ourselves and eliminate those neural pathways that fire up upon familiar stimulus.
    • I wish we could edit our posts here. I meant to say that my dad earns far more money NOW as a truck driver than he ever did as a computer field service technician. He reminds himself of that whenever he feels silly for driving a truck for a living. ;)
    • My ADDled mind shakes off one habit only to pick up another. I try to build barriers, but as an earlier poster pointed out by example of Brian Eno, we simply bypass the artificial detours we construct. It would be better to retrain ourselves and eliminate those neural pathways that fire up upon familiar stimulus.

      Meditation is the practice of making the mind become still. It takes a lot of work and is very difficult in the beginning (like most things worthwhile). Ultimately, though, there is no greater
  • Does this include reading slashdot?
  • get addicts to quit ms-windows...

    Linux or Mac OSX are just too different and they keep re-activating the ms-windows ways whenever they slip back just to do that little quick job that they haven't got the hang of in the other OS yet...

    That's why duel-booting is such a bad thing really... as it's just too easy to boot back to windows rather than taking the trouble to learn how to do it in Linux...

  • The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning.

    So that's why it's always the heavy smoker that sits on their lazy backend and tells people to do it again until they get it right...

  • Peter Cetera said it best (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkGriz ( 520778 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @03:49PM (#13839274)
    I'm addicted to you babe,
    You're a stimulus-induced reassertion of a dormant neural pattern on my basal ganglia

  • Best quote from TFA . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @04:01PM (#13839384)
    "It is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory . . ."

    Definitely worth looking into . . .

  • ...putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot

    When skimming this, I thought "autopilot" was "slashdot" the first time through. Oddly, it didn't seem to change the meaning of the sentence.

  • How about good habits (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Thursday October 20, 2005 @04:23PM (#13839597) Journal
    Not all habits are bad, and by repeating various activities (exercise such as evening walks, or regular gym visits, etc) one would think they could also engrain themselves upon one's psyche. Does this work as well, and what happens when you formula a good habit, fall out of habit, and form a bad one? Do the two conflict?
    • Yep, it's the same system. I teach a behavioral neurobiology class at a university and we just got done talking about addictions and addiction research. It's all the same basal ganglia system (particularly the neucleus accumbens, as someone previously pointed out). The dopamine-producing neurons there (and other parts of the dopaminergic system) respond to anything pleasurable (food, sex, etc.). When drugs make people feel good, they are activating this system. Good habits would be formed through this same
  • That should do the trick.

    Or some last drastic variation that just kills the connections.
  • This is yet another reason why abstaining from destructive habits in the first place is better than starting and breaking them (though the latter is obviously still better than starting and continuing them).

  • addiction science (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron@ho[ ]il.com ['tma' in gap]> on Thursday October 20, 2005 @06:11PM (#13840514) Homepage
    addiction science is pretty interesting. what gets me is that it's pretty common for an ex-opiate addict to start "jonesing" (go through the opiate withdrawal symptoms- cold/flu like symptoms, a lot of pain and have a desire for opiate to fix that) when he gets out of prison or starts to hang around with his old crew. heroin generally can be dropped, physically, in 3 days- or rather, the worst part of the withdrawal can be done in that time. other opiates are longer, but generally you're clean after two years of not using, time spent in jail or in treatment, etc. pretty interesting stuff.
  • This actually supports my completely unscientific theory: that to cut addictions, what you have to do is not loose the "bad habits" completely, but reduce them dramatically.

    WARNING: I suspect that it only works with substances that are do not have strong physical addiction components. I wouldn't know anything about that since I have never consumed them.

    The example in my life has been smoking. I used to smoke a pack a day. I tried to quit many times but then I would light one cigarette after months and w

  • Now we have a quick and effective solution to that nasty nail-biting habit. We simply will direct these three powerful beams of ionizing radiation into your skull, focussing them on your basal ganglia.

    Just don't twitch, or you might forget how to talk.
  • Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times...

Slashdot Top Deals

"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer

Close