Like it or not, your brain drives your behavior. With that, according to pioneering recovery educators and health and well-being practitioners Dave and Susan Kenney, addiction isn’t about a lack of willpower. Instead, it’s about the all-important correlation between an individual’s brain and behavior.
Today’s incredible neurotechnologies allow science to see how the brain—the body’s hard drive—is negatively impacted and changed by myriad environmental and other factors. In the case of Alzheimer’s disease and similar forms of dementia, underlying deterioration stems from a poorly functioning and degenerating brain.
Ensuring that the brain functions as needed is fundamental in keeping it running optimally and hopefully avoiding cognitive impairment as we age. Many of the same principles and recommendations apply to recovery from the shackles of addiction and other self-destructive behaviors.
This realization is at the beating heart of Kenney’s breakthrough addiction recovery and wellness concept: Actualized Recovery.
Table of Contents
The Brain-Behavior Connection
The brain-behavior connection is like the relationship between a sophisticated software program and the computer hard drive it runs on. Think of your brain as a highly advanced hard drive, constantly receiving and interpreting data from sensory inputs like taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound.
The brain then analyzes this data, prompting one or more different responses or actions. For example, if your hand encounters a hot surface, your brain instantly processes this sensation and triggers a reflex to pull away, prioritizing safety.
Such interactions govern every aspect of human behavior, from spontaneous reactions to deliberate choices like choosing a healthy snack over junk food. It’s akin to a complex computer algorithm making real-time decisions based on incoming data. This connection shapes your physical responses, thoughts, emotions, and dreams alike.
Your Brain Drives All Choices
Your brain is responsible for all your interactions with the world, enabling you to engage in favorable or less favorable activities. It determines everything from your relationships to your finances.
The same is true of all of your choices in life. Where you go, what you do, and who you opt to spend time with are all brain-driven. Where do you go after work, to the bar or the gym? Who do you hang out with, smokers or yogis?
Your brain drives all choices. Neuroscience and psychology professionals agree that if you want a different outcome, you need to consider how to reprogram your brain. According to Dave and Susan Kenney, the good news is that you absolutely can.
A Hijacked Hard Drive
When looking at self-destructive behaviors, there are more choices than one may think. Once someone initiates or performs an addictive behavior like drinking alcohol, consuming drugs, gambling, or shopping, one could reasonably argue that they may now be in a powerless state.
In other words, once the negative behavior starts, it may be too late to implement a more favorable choice as the body’s hard drive, the brain, has now been hijacked. The affected individual is now in a reactive state or space. But what if that space exists not only after they started drinking or engaging in another addictive behavior but sometime before?
In that case, they’re not in a powerless state at all. Far from it, in fact.
The Power to Make a Choice
What if that space or gap in time is long before an individual enters, for instance, a bar? What if multiple gaps represent a series of choices that lead them to walk into the bar in the first place? What if that gap happens hours before when drinking friends invite someone out? What if, in that split-second gap, they choose to meet friends at the gym instead?
Making a choice will likely have a different and, hopefully, more positive outcome. It’s precisely that power to think and act differently in the gap between an internal or external stimulus and our response that is at the heart of Actualized Recovery and why addiction is not simply about a lack of willpower.
Actualized Recovery
Actualized Recovery aims to positively and profoundly impact people, helping them realize lasting change. It’s about leveraging education, medicine, science, and technology to create change and enhance human performance, starting with the body’s hard drive – the brain.
The Challenge With 12-Step Programs
Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs first have attendees admit that they’re powerless over alcohol, gambling, gaming, shopping, and other addictions. If you accept that as the truth, you are effectively impotent over your addiction. So, what must we do to restore power, autonomy, and a meaningful sense of reason?
A brain hijacked by addiction and other self-destructive behaviors often results in a loss of a sense of reasoning or sound decision-making abilities. Time and time again, scientific studies show that environmental factors, such as social interactions and our broader surroundings, each play critical roles in substance abuse and other addictions.
Embracing Science and the Power of Change
Evidence of our surroundings playing a leading role in substance abuse and related behaviors has significant implications for addiction treatment and prevention, emphasizing the importance of creating favorable social and environmental conditions for struggling individuals. So, what do we do as a society? It’s still all too common and accepted to shame, blame, and then isolate them.
In essence, we create a punitive environment for people with addiction problems, whether imposed by society, family, or even ourselves. We then wonder why they don’t get better. Dave and Susan Kenney, through Actualized Recovery, want to end the shame and social stigma of addiction and self-sabotaging behavior in favor of pioneering new approaches.
Overcoming addiction is not about willpower or a lack thereof; it’s about embracing science and the power of our brains to change using Actualized Recovery and step into lasting recovery and a life of unparalleled happiness.
