Never Enough—The Neuroscience of Addiction: TEDx Talk

Addiction certainly feels complicated to those going through it, but elements of it can be pretty easy to understand when explained simply and concisely. That's what Dr. Judy Grisel aims to do in this short TEDx Talk: illustrate why the brain responds to drugs, and what goes wrong when it's exposed to them too much for too long.

Grisel, author of New York Times bestseller Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction, is in long-term recovery herself, and jokes (?) that she first pursued a Ph.D. in neuroscience to figure out an addiction cure in order to keep using. She didn't, but her explanation of how drugs excite the brain—like the smell of bacon to a dog—is illuminating. Eventually, drug use warps a person's "homeostatic baseline," your everyday average feeling. It improves when it's your birthday or you first get high—but "you can only have so many birthdays." Give her talk a watch!

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