Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

But if we start drinking at fourteen or younger, the odds of addiction become 50 percent. A coin flip. These same figures hold for most drugs and maladaptive behaviors. And this brain component is not unique to drugs. “Drugs and our other addictive behaviors and substances are potent, but they’re not magic,” said Kent Berridge, the University of Michigan neuroscientist. PSAs tell us that using a drug just once leads to addiction. But Berridge told me to picture the following scenario: Let’s say we give a group of people a powerful drug like heroin. Despite the drug spiking dopamine a thousandfold, about a third of people will hate the feeling it delivers. Hate it. Another third will feel indifferent to it. They could take it or leave it but have other things they’d rather do. That could be another drug, or something else they find more pleasurable, like eating cake, shopping, playing video games, or exercising. A third of those people will enjoy it. And if those people who enjoy heroin continue to use it regularly, “about 15 percent will become addicted to it,” said Berridge. That figure is based on multiple well-controlled studies and surveys conducted over decades. About 10 to 20 percent of regular users of even the most powerful drugs develop addiction. Marijuana’s addiction rate is less than 10 percent. Other drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin hover between 10 and 20. Tobacco has the highest rate of addiction for regular users, at 30 percent.