Brain scans even show that addiction lives in the same system of the brain involved in love, whether with a partner or our children. “That system quite naturally evolved to create compulsive behavior despite consequences,” Maia Szalavitz, an addiction researcher, journalist, and author of Unbroken Brain, told me. “You’d never maintain a relationship with a partner or deal with all the diapers and crying and frustrations that come with raising a kid if there wasn’t some deeper reward that allowed us to persist despite negative consequences.”
