Never Enough Quotes

“...there will never be enough drug, because the brain's capacity to learn and adapt is basically infinite.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“However, it was there that I began to realize that my initial intuitions about alcohol and other drugs were precisely upside down. Rather than provide a solution to my problems with living, they had chipped away at every prospect until only the barest shred of life remained. I’d sought wellness and became sick; fun, but lived in a constant state of anxious dread; freedom, and was enslaved. In just ten years, my sources for solace had totally betrayed me, carving out a canyon deep and unlivable. Drugs were destroying every aspect of my life, yet my days revolved around self-administering until I passed out.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“A victim of virtually any disease usually elicits pity, addicts mostly evoke revulsion. What is it about the irrational behavior of an addict that makes everyone want to turn away?”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The very definition of an addictive drug is one that stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, but there are three general axioms in psychopharmacology that also apply to all drugs:

1. All drugs act by changing the rate of what is already going on.

2. All drugs have side effects.

3. The brain adapts to all drugs that affect it by counteracting the drug’s effects.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“I'd sought wellness and became sick; fun, but lived in a constant state of anxious dread; freedom, and was enslaved.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“Thus the most profound law of drug use is this: there is no free lunch.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“In the United States, more than a quarter of people over eighteen reported that they engaged in binge drinking during the previous month. This pattern is even more prevalent among college students, nearly 40 percent of whom reported binge drinking in the previous month. Whether cause or effect, about half of these students (20 percent) meet the criteria for an alcohol use disorder, and 25 percent report academic consequences from drinking. Binge drinking is risky for anyone, but particularly for those whose brains are still developing. The impact of high alcohol concentrations during this “plastic” period leads to lasting alterations in brain structure and function and is more likely to result in an alcohol use disorder. The converse is also true: one of the most effective ways to curtail the risk of addiction is to avoid intoxication during periods of rapid brain development.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“As always with addictive drugs, tolerance spoils the fun...”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“Regular drinkers don’t have cocktails in order to relax after a rough day; their day is filled with tension and anxiety because they drink so much.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“Thousands of people have lost their families, jobs, homes, and lives because the ability of cocaine to extend dopamine’s presence in the synapse seemed worth giving up relatively unimportant stimuli like relationships, a livelihood, and teeth.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“Another quirk of stimulant use is that over repeated exposures there is often a growing aversion to the drug, so that what initially presented as pure pleasure becomes an ambivalent mix of wanting and not wanting, measured in the lab by compulsive approach behavior as well as avoidant behavior. The more exposure to the drug one has, the larger the conflict grows.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The cost of abstinence seemed too high: Without drugs, what would there be to live for anyway?”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“As with every addict, my days of actually getting “high” were long past. My using was compulsive and aimed more at escaping reality than at getting off. I’d banged my head against the wall long enough to realize that nothing new was going to happen—except perhaps through the ultimate escape, death, which frankly didn’t seem like that big a deal.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The brain's response to a drug is always to facilitate the opposite state. Therefore, the only way for any regular user to feel normal is to take the drug. Getting high, if it occurs at all, is increasingly short lived and so the purpose of using is to stay above withdrawal.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“the aim of science is not to open a door to infinite wisdom but rather to set a limit on infinite ignorance.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“Vast swaths of nonprotein-coding DNA, making up about 98 percent of the genome, are sensitive to an unending stream of environmental input and translate these signals to affect gene transcription. That is, they use stimuli such as nurturing by a parent, the contents of our meals, a roller-coaster ride, or a difficult interaction with a boss to guide suppression or enhancement of protein synthesis, orchestrating a symphony of molecular changes that plays from a score of everything we experience—what’s in the air, in the news, the background and foreground of our lives.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The very definition of an addictive drug is one that stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, but there are three general axioms in psychopharmacology that also apply to all drugs: All drugs act by changing the rate of what is already going on. All drugs have side effects. The brain adapts to all drugs that affect it by counteracting the drug’s effects.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The truth is, we all contribute to the prevalence of these drugs in our communities by swallowing whole the illusion that suffering is avoidable by some outside "fix". Together with our doctors, we've been in collective denial about the fact that these drugs are unable to provide a sustainable solution to the pains of living.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The terrible truth for all those who love mind-altering chemicals is that if the chemicals are used with regularity, the brain always adapts to compensate. An addict doesn't drink coffee because she is tired; she is tired because she drinks coffee.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“In other words, the brain is so well organized to counteract perturbations that it uses its exceptional learning skills to anticipate disruptions, rather than wait for the changes themselves, and begins to dampen drug effects before the drug has even been delivered.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“For my part, it’s a miracle I didn’t get what I deserved, and being sure of this is much better than thinking I deserve more than I’ve gotten.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction