Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

by Judith Grisel

I was clean for close to two years and had been volunteering in my biopsychology professor’s laboratory to get some research experience. One part of the protocol required daily administration of an experimental drug into the subjects’ (rats’) peritoneum, which is the sac that loosely constrains the abdominal organs. The standard procedure is to cup the rat gently in one hand, insert the needle with the other, and create negative pressure by pulling slightly back on the needle to be sure the injection isn’t going straight into a blood vessel. I thought I’d fully extinguished any personal associations with needles, having performed hundreds of injections by this time, but one day when I pulled back and the needle filled with blood, I heard clamorous ringing in my ears and a taste in my mouth that were characteristic of cocaine going into my vein. It was years later, in a completely different context, and I had not a whit of desire to use at that moment, but just seeing blood filling the syringe caused an instantaneous reaction. I let my colleague finish the injections and went back to my dorm sobered by the astounding power of memory.