Behavioral Immunity - WHITEHEADBOOKS.com

Summary

The issue of immunity has justly received a great deal of attention and scrutiny within the scientific community. The evolution of immune functions is an inevitable consequence of the process of evolution by natural selection. It is not widely recognized, though, that the concept of immunity can be extended to the arena of human and animal behavior. Within the realm of animal behavior immunity begins with focal attention. Carried to its logical conclusion, this insight clarifies both the persistence of addictions of all types, and their association with the distortions of awareness clinicians term “denial.” Distortions of perception and logic appear when a behavioral virus disrupts the addict’s behavioral immunity.

Introduction

This essay is about immunity. But it’s not about biological immunity. Instead, the topic is immunity within the sphere of human behavior. When it comes to behavior, immunity is our ability to avoid falling into habits that are pathological – that is, “sick” habits. It has long been a mystery why we do some of the crazy, destructive things we do. Just as perplexing are our bizarre rationalizations for doing these things. Alcoholism illustrates this enigma quite well. It is a nonsensical, repetitive, intensely destructive pattern.

Alcoholics continue to drink despite substantial harm, harm which is obvious to others. Why don’t they stop drinking? The answer only deepens the mystery: they don’t stop largely because they seem unable to think straight about what is happening to them. They are said to be “in denial.” In this essay we’ll reframe both addictions and denial in terms of disease. While this may not be a familiar way of looking at them, it offers a substantial advantage – it makes sense of both the out-of-control habit and the addict’s denial.

Here’s an old joke about alcoholic denial:

After years of heavy drinking, Mary feels sick. Her doctor diagnoses her with alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. “There’s some mistake,” she protests. “I’m not an alcoholic.” The doctor nods. “Let’s review your history. You’ve racked up five DWIs, right?” Mary replies, “Yeah, but only because the cops know me. They wait for me outside the bar.” The doctor nods. “You were fired for drinking on the job, right?” Mary says, “It was the job! It was so stressful I had to keep a bottle with me at all times.” The doctor nods. “I understand your husband left you because of your alcohol use.” Mary is incensed. “Not my fault! I had to stay buzzed just to live with that jerk!” The doctor nods. Then he gravely addresses her. “Please understand, Mary. Every alcoholic falls into denial, without exception. That’s because it allows them to keep on drinking despite the harmful effects. Denial is a sure sign of alcohol addiction. Do you understand, Mary?” She ponders his words deeply. Suddenly her face lights up. “I see what you mean, doctor! No denial, so I’m not an alcoholic!”

Sure, it’s just a joke. But there’s a grim reality behind it. For some reason Mary is blind to a monster that’s right in front of her. That monster is leading her by her nose, but because she can’t see it, she is powerless to deal with it. She stays entangled in a dangerous pattern that is painfully clear to friends, family, and associates. Most alcoholics are well aware that there is something wrong with their lives. Many are suffering intensely. But they can’t quite put their finger on the true source of their difficulties.

Well, are alcoholics just stupid? No, intelligence has nothing to do with this kind of cluelessness. The deficit is built into the disease. It’s common to all addictive disorders – and a multitude of other problematic behaviors as well. We use the label “denial” to refer to the pervasive perceptual and conceptual distortions that accompany addiction.

Around 1990 a 23-member multidisciplinary committee of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and the American Society of Addiction Medicine conducted a two-year study of the definition of alcoholism. One of the defining characteristics they identified was “distortions in thinking, most notably denial.” 1 A person’s consumption of alcohol would probably never reach the destructive proportions we see in full-blown alcoholism without the perceptual and conceptual distortion that characterize the disorder. 2

According to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, denial is “the tendency of alcoholics or addicts to either disavow or distort variables associated with their drinking or drug use in spite of evidence to the contrary…” 3 The fact that denial and addictions go hand in hand suggests that it is central to the process. It’s clear that the distortion is masking the ongoing damage, the full awareness of which would halt the addiction.

In her book Drinking: A Love Story author Caroline Knapp tells the story of her personal struggle with alcohol addiction. Here’s what she writes about the function of denial:

You’ll often hear in AA meetings that denial is the disease of alcoholism, not just its primary symptom, and it’s not hard to see why. Denial is what keeps you in there, keeps you entrenched, keeps your feet glued to the floor. Denial can make your drinking feel as elusive and changeable as Proteus, capable of altering form in the blink of an eye. Every time an active alcoholic looks at his or her drinking, it’s shifted into something else, something that makes it seem acceptable. 4

Author Albert LaChance goes further in his book Cultural Addiction. He emphasizes that denial is the defining characteristic of all addictive processes, whether it be alcoholism, drug addiction, addiction to pornography, or some other form of spiritual infirmity. He writes,

Alcoholism, and the other names for addictions, might be misnomers for this illness of the spirit, mind, and body. Denialism might be a better word for the real problem. Addictions of all kinds, alcoholism included, are symptoms of denial. Then, too, denial becomes a symptom of addiction. Denialism is an illness that is involuntary. People do not choose to die horrible, alcoholic deaths. Denialism and the addictions that result from it are not a refusal to admit to what is real. Denialism is the inability to do so. 5

Is the denial that is so characteristic of addiction the same thing as lying? Not at all. Lying is knowing the truth, but concealing it. Denial is the inability to know the truth. Addictions expert Robert Lefever stresses the importance of distinguishing one from the other.

We need to differentiate lying from denial. Denial is the basic psychopathology of addiction, where we genuinely don’t see what we’re doing… I’m telling the truth, but you can see that my truth is wrong. That is denial. And it’s very difficult for other people to tell the difference between denial and lying. The chap who says (in a noticeably slurred voice) “I haven’t had a drink” is telling the truth. He’s telling absolute God’s truth. You know that it’s not true. His truth is wrong. But he doesn’t know that, or she doesn’t know that. 6

The fog of denial clouds our view, and so disables our resistance. 7 Consequently most drug/alcohol rehab programs see breaking through it as an essential step in recovery. Penetrating the denial brings awareness of the truth about the havoc being wreaked by the addiction. Once the truth is perceived and fully accepted, recovery slides within reach.

A useful analogy

We can compare denial to the immune inhibition that comes with viral infection. Denial benefits destructive habits the same way immune inhibition benefits infectious disease. To illustrate, cellular viruses partly disable our immune response. It has long been known that both the measles and HIV viruses suppress immunity as part of their reproductive strategy. Degradation of immunity frees the virus to replicate unhindered within its human host. With biological immunity impaired, the door is open to infections of all types. In a similar way, we can interpret denial and distortion as the hallmark of disabled “behavioral immunity,” our human capacity to resist destructive habits.

Objectives

In this little essay we will explore behavioral immunity, emphasizing its similarity to biological immunity. The essay has three objectives:

First, we hope to cast new light on the out-of-control behavior that is so typical of addictions. We will explain such malignant behavior in disease terms. How do these seemingly self-sustaining habits arise? And why are they so persistent?
Second, we will reframe the meaning of denial, the blindness that is so typical of the affected party. How do we account for an intelligent addict’s foolish behavior? And how can we restore his or her insight?
Third, we will explore behavioral immunity. All of us have the capacity to protect ourselves from slipping into destructive habits. How and when does this capacity fail? And how can we enhance our ability to defend ourselves?

I believe these goals are worth pursuing. But achieving them means entertaining ideas that are unfamiliar to some readers. We will begin by considering the things that evolution passes from one generation to the next.

Replicators

In 1976 science writer Richard Dawkins published an influential book entitled The Selfish Gene. Dawkins voiced his opinion that individual genes, which he called replicators, were all looking out for themselves. 8 They were focused on getting themselves reproduced. To accomplish this, they band together with other genes to create the genomes we find in complex animals. Dawkins was saying that gene replicators team up to construct animal “vehicles” for the purpose of transporting themselves into the next generation. Dawkins was offering a truly original insight. He reversed the relationship between animals and their genes. He was saying that animals don’t have genes. Rather, genes have animals. This flipped-around way of looking at things has had substantial impact within the scientific community.

In the same book, Dawkins introduced another influential idea. He speculated that there might be replicators that flourish in media other than DNA and RNA. The medium of human behavior, for example. Ideas and behaviors might spread from human host to human host through imitation. Behavioral replicators might reproduce themselves much as a virus does – by getting a host to repeat them. In stating this possibility, Dawkins was flipping around another relationship – the relationship between ideas and people. In his view, ideas and habits are replicators that use humans to duplicate them. Humans don’t have ideas; ideas have humans. In order to reproduce, they transfer themselves from one mind to another.

When Dawkins introduced this idea, it struck many scientists as almost blasphemous. Behavioral replicators? The accepted doctrine was that replicators could exist only as strings of DNA or RNA. Then, as luck would have it, certain events began to unravel the DNA/RNA-only doctrine. Scientists confirmed the existence of prion diseases – self-replicating, viral-like proteins that don’t contain any DNA or RNA at all. The medium through which prions replicated was 100% protein. This discovery removed any doubt that there can be replicators in media other than DNA and RNA. A little later, “computer viruses” became a major concern. Though they are human inventions, these malicious little software programs are infectious. They spread from computer to computer much as biological viruses spread from cell to cell. The little snippets of software were seemingly “virus-like,” able to replicate themselves in a completely non-physical, electronic medium. 9

Given the existence of these odd replicators, it now seems more plausible that we might discover self-replicating, viral-like, illness-inducing patterns within the medium of behavior – that is, behavioral viruses. If we were to look for a virus-like behavioral replicator, what characteristics might we expect? As we have suggested, addictions have the features of the hypothetical behavioral viruses. It was many years ago, in fact, that addiction experts began describing addictions as “disease-like.” Could it be that the features of addiction go beyond mere similarity? Careful observations have produced intriguing evidence to suggest addictions can usefully be understood as behavioral replicators – self-reproducing, parasitic patterns that exist and spread within the behavior of a host.

We know quite a bit about biological parasites, life-forms that make their living by exploiting our physical bodies. We are also well aware that there are malignant habits, persistent behavioral patterns that have gotten out of our control. We even know that some injurious habits get so far out of control that they seem to be controlling themselves. Addictions are a case in point. I call such out-of-control behaviors “rogue habits.” 10 These are habits that seem to be self-sustaining and self-replicating – acting in a virus-like way.

Does it make sense to apply the word “virus” to these patterns? It does, for the same reason we call malicious software programs “computer viruses.” The virus analogy helps to clarify their ability to perpetuate themselves. Like viruses, rogue habits are simple, self-reproducing patterns that spread like viral diseases. Alcoholism is a habitual pattern that persists within the individual alcoholic over time despite its malignant nature, and can spread to others. The alcoholic pattern can be interpreted as a virus-like replicator. Maybe, a la Dawkins, Mary doesn’t have alcoholism. Maybe alcoholism has Mary. Over the millennia we humans have evolved ways to resist the development of destructive habits, and to counteract them when they do appear. It makes sense to think of our resistance as “behavioral immunity” because it protects our behavior just as biological immunity protects our bodies.

A parasite of any kind is driven to develop some means of thwarting the immune system of its animal host. Rogue habits can be viewed as parasitic replicators. So each rogue habit is likewise driven to develop some means of thwarting behavioral immunity. If the rogue habit could not thwart host immunity, it could not persist. In fact, it could never have gotten out of control in the first place. So there is an ongoing conflict between behavioral immunity and the wayward habit’s resistance to that immunity. The practical consequences of this power struggle are astounding.

The power of parasites

Evolution through natural selection is the mainstream theory about the development of life on earth. In the mid-1850s Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace dreamed up the idea independently at about the same time. It was already common knowledge that human breeders could alter animals’ characteristics by selecting individuals with the features they wanted. It occurred to Darwin and Wallace that nature herself could make the selection. The individuals that functioned best within their species’ ecological niches were the ones that nature allowed to survive, and so to pass their characteristics on to future generations. In this way natural selection explains how species progressively adapt themselves to their environments. Ultimately, it explains how human beings came to be the way we are.

Back in the day, parasites didn’t seem all that significant. They were generally small, and hard to detect. So Darwin and Wallace failed to consider that parasites might considerably influence the evolution of species. That was unfortunate, because as it turns out the impact of parasites is monumental.

The word “parasite” means the same as “disease organism.” When a parasite is very small, we call it a “disease.” For example, when an unfriendly bacterium invades our intestines we say we say we have an intestinal disease. But when the beast in our gut is larger – say the size of a tapeworm – we call it an intestinal parasite. The concept is the same in either case: we are talking about an organism that lives by exploiting the resources of its host.

Viruses are the simplest of parasites. They are so simple that many biologists don’t even consider them to be alive. Like larger parasites, though, a virus exploits the capabilities of a host to reproduce itself. In this case the host is a cell. A cellular virus consists of a few genes that make up a short string of DNA or RNA. The viral string gains control of a host cell, and repurposes the machinery of the cell to manufacture more viruses.

In most cases this viral takeover doesn’t end well for the host cell. In fact it usually ends up killing it. If that cell is part of a larger host animal, one made up of many cells, the host animal gets “sick” as a result of the infection. Sick animals have a harder time making a living in the world, and sometimes they die. Sickness and death make it less likely that the host will be able to pass on its genes to the next generation. So infection creates a strong “selection pressure” that guides the species’ evolution toward the development of immunity.

Inevitable immunity

Let’s entertain for a moment the idea that addictions truly are parasitic behavioral patterns, patterns that exploit their human hosts in order to replicate themselves. That assumption leads us straight to the topic of immunity. Why? Because the relationship between a parasite and its host always involves (1) immunity in the host, and (2) the parasite’s resistance to the host’s immunity. These two forces are always present, and they are always locked in mortal combat with each other. The very logic of the host/parasite relationship guarantees the presence of both, and also guarantees that they will be at war. Both host and parasite are subject to natural selection, and each is driven to evolve ways of dealing with the other. 11

A shorthand way of describing natural selection is “survival of the fittest.” But it’s important to recognize that fitness isn’t an absolute. It is the ability to flourish within a specific niche or environment. Natural selection requires variation and selection: (a) variation in the organism’s offspring; and (b) higher reproductive success among the best adapted variants. By allowing them to survive and reproduce nature selects those individuals that do best within their species’ niche.

Think about how survival of the fittest works for the host animal. Its environment includes not only its physical surroundings, but also its parasites. Parasites steal host resources, weakening the host and reducing its viability. So vulnerable hosts are at a selective disadvantage. Parasite-infested animals are more likely to die before they can reproduce. Further, members of sexually reproducing species avoid potential mates showing evidence of parasites. Where parasites are common, any animal that reproduces likely has greater resistance than its deceased peers had. That resistance is passed on to the survivor’s offspring. Over the generations, then, a host species always accumulates a bag of tricks that help it deal with parasites. It is this accumulated bag of tricks that we label host immunity.

Now look at things from the parasite’s perspective. It’s survival of the fittest here too. Natural selection also shapes the parasite species. Its environment incorporates the resources of the host, to be sure. But it includes its host’s immunity as well. The individual parasites having greater resistance to host immunity are more likely to survive. These individuals pass that resistance on to their offspring. Over time the parasite species evolves its own bag of tricks, in this case its tricks for thwarting host immunity. 12

So the logic of natural selection itself leads us to an inescapable conclusion: a predictable part of every host/parasite relationship is a tension between host immunity and parasitic resistance to immunity. Now, how does this logic apply to behavior? As we will see, the tension between behavioral immunity and resistance accounts for the perceptual/conceptual distortion of denial.

Drives and habits

Behavioral viruses are nothing more than habits that have escaped our control – habits gone rogue. To understand how a habit can go rogue, you have to grasp how habits normally work. Our learned habits, for the most part, lead us toward health. Evolution has arranged things so that a learned habit serves one or more of our needs. Higher animals like us do not inherit many specific, hardwired behaviors. As “higher” animals, our behavior is more flexible. We’re not like “lower” creatures such as jellyfish and worms, whose behavior is directly inherited. What higher animals do inherit is general “drives” that push us toward expressing them as learned habits. It’s as if our ancestors bequeathed us only the blueprints for appropriate behavior. We use those blueprints to construct the specific habits ourselves. This Drive/Habit system gives us tremendous flexibility in our behavior. But it also creates a special vulnerability – the possibility that a learned habit can get out of control.

About 100 years ago behavioral scientist Edward L. Thorndike formulated his “Law of Effect” to describe the way the Drive/Habit system works. Paraphrasing Thorndike’s law, we express one of our drives through a trial behavior, and then automatically evaluate the outcome of that behavior through an experience of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. As we evaluate successive variants of our habits, they evolve to more and more effectively fill our needs.

How do we decide whether to feel good or bad about the outcome of our acts? Built into every drive is a “value” that leads to a subjective feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The built-in values depend upon the way that the species in question makes its living. A rat might experience joy and fulfillment when it discovers a piece of moldy bread in a dark alley. A cat might experience joy and fulfillment when it discovers the rat. The values in their drives are different, because over the ages natural selection has made them different. 13 These built-in values, expressed subjectively as feelings, are the key to their survival. 14 Drive/Habit animals remember the most satisfying variants. These are the variants they are most likely to repeat the next time the drive is triggered.

The evolution of habits

The refinement of habits happens in a cyclical way that parallels natural selection. Expression and evaluation make up one cycle of the habit development process, one “generation” of the habit. Each cycle begins with input – the habit from the previous cycle – and ends with output – a further refinement of the habit. This is called “iterative refinement.” Over time, our acts are tuned more and more precisely toward the experience of satisfaction. Under the press of the inborn drive, the learned habit evolves to become ever more effective in satisfying a need.

All learned habits, then, are part of a never-ending iterative process. Learned habits are progressively refined for the benefit of the animal. This iterative process works for the animal only because the selection of habit variants is value-driven. Variants are selected specifically to express a drive, a drive that evolved to enhance the animal’s survival. The selected habit variants harmonize with the value part of the inherited drive. In other words, the judgment of which habit variants are “best” is under the control of that inborn drive. And the value portion of the drive has been shaped by evolution to serve the interests of the evolving animal. Drives are beneficial for the same reason as any of the animal’s body parts are beneficial. Just as the liver evolved to aid survival, so did drives evolve to aid survival.

Most of the time the Drive/Habit system works well. More or less automatically, the system creates and refines habits that address our needs. Generally speaking, over time destructive or unsatisfying behaviors tend to drop out of our habit repertoire, simply because they aren’t subjectively fulfilling. That is, acting that way doesn’t feel good. Constructive, satisfying habits come to predominate more and more.

Here’s a homely example of normal habit development. Suppose a rat is living on the streets of a large city. This is a rich environment, one with many potential sources of satisfaction for the rat. It is a Drive/Habit animal, and has an inborn drive to seek nourishment. Let’s say the rat explores an alley behind a restaurant. It happens that the restaurant disposes of food waste in a barrel stored in the alley. In its explorations the rat discovers bits of food around this barrel. It begins to develop the habit of visiting the barrel. Having found a reliable source of food, it reduces its exploration of other areas. Eventually it finds a good place to live within the alley itself, making trips to the barrel more convenient. It refines the habit further by coming to visit the barrel only in the wee hours of the morning – a time when the barrel has been freshly stocked, and dangers are at a minimum.

This developing habit is a specific expression of its general drive to seek nourishment. The habit’s development is guided and maintained by the values embedded in its drive. Engaging in the habit brings the rat a feeling of fulfillment. That’s a normal habit, one developed under the strict control of a drive.

But habit development can go off the rails. Under special circumstances the process can go wrong. This happens when habit variants come to be selected not by the value portion of the drive, but by the habit itself. Here’s an explanation.

Self-perpetuating habits

We have noted that most experts don’t consider biological viruses to be truly alive. They’re just strings of amino acids. Despite their nonliving status, these tiny parasites influence their living hosts to reproduce them. Clearly, a virus doesn’t have to be very complex to get itself replicated. Without being complicated itself, a virus is able to get its complicated replication to happen by exploiting the complexity of its host. That would be like getting a good meal at a restaurant, even though you know nothing about cooking. You don’t need to have any of the things that are necessary – a winning recipe, good ingredients, useful kitchen tools, cooking skill. You don’t need them because the restaurant has all those things. All you need is a ticket in. It’s the same with cellular viruses and their host cells. A simple virus can replicate within the complex environment of its host.

A simple behavioral virus can get itself replicated too. It isn’t alive either. It’s just a string – not a string of amino acids, but of behaviors. The virus-like thing about this kind of string is its ability to provoke its host to replicate it. Robert does something, and the very act of doing it biases him toward doing it again. The outcome of his act invites him to repeat the act. And the repetition invites another repetition. And so on. The impact of executing the sequence of acts triggers its replication.

We can interpret this kind of self-replication from two perspectives – Robert’s viewpoint, and the viewpoint of the replicator itself. From Robert’s perspective, he has somehow gotten stuck in a loop. He’s doing the same thing over and over, and maybe he can’t figure why. This is the dilemma of the addict. From the replicator’s perspective, it is using Robert’s capabilities to make copies of itself. From that second perspective, the string is a self-replicating behavioral virus. Choosing habit variants A normal habit and a behavioral virus are both just habits. Both refine themselves over time toward greater efficiency. The critical difference between them is how the variants of the habit are selected for further refinement. The selection criterion makes all the difference in the world. In a normal habit, the value portion of the drive determines the selection. Again, that choice is made through the subjective experience of fulfillment. If the results of an act feel “good” or “right” the variant is selected. The selection remains under the guidance of the drive. Because drives have been shaped over the eons specifically to meet the animal’s needs, the animal is the beneficiary of the resulting learned habits.

In stark contrast, with a behavioral virus the sole criterion for selection is its own success in replication. Here the habit is guiding its selection. It is evolving independently of the host. It is selecting versions that are better and better at triggering further reproduction. It is making itself more and more irresistible, by whatever means happen to work. The beneficiary in this case is the habit, not the host animal. In fact, the habit may evolve to a form that substantially harms the animal, yet be quite successful in provoking the animal to repeat it.

Moment to moment

Behavioral viruses and biological viruses have both similarities and differences. One important similarity is that they both evolve over succeeding generations. Behavioral viruses evolve just as biological viruses do. Because we never repeat our acts exactly, there is variation in the repetition of any habit. Naturally, some variants are more likely to provoke their own repetition than others. One variant is selected over the others by virtue of the strength of the repetition compulsion it induces. So a behavioral virus will evolve over time toward a form that makes repetition more and more likely.

A significant difference is that while biological viruses replicate from one individual cell to another, behavioral viruses replicate themselves from one moment to another within the same individual. We will illustrate this with an analogy.

An irritating analogy

Suppose you’ve gotten into some poison ivy. The leaves of this plant are coated with oils that are extremely irritating. A spot on your arm starts to itch. Without thinking, you scratch the itchy spot for a moment. That’s one instance of the behavior. But with that irritating oil on your skin, scratching the itchy spot doesn’t stop the itch. It can even make it itchier. 15 So your scratching leaves you with more itching, which leads to more scratching, then more itching, and so on. The act of scratching is not continuous. It comes in episodes that happen one after the other. When it comes to poison ivy, each episode of scratching leads to another. The chain of repetitions can continue for some time.

It is to be emphasized that there’s nothing wrong with the impulse to scratch itchy spots on our bodies. Under normal circumstances that impulse fills a need. Scratching helps protect us from fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and other parasites. That’s why we have this inborn drive, and that’s why scratching an itch feels satisfying. Under normal circumstances itching leads to scratching, which brings relief. The underlying cause of the itching is removed, and that’s the end of the story. But contact with poison ivy creates a special circumstance that isn’t normal at all.

When you’ve come into contact with poison ivy, scratching is briefly gratifying. It is psychologically satisfying. But the underlying purpose of the drive is to dislodge the source of irritation. In this case that doesn’t happen. The itching continues, and so leads to another episode of scratching, which leads to more itching. At best, given these abnormal conditions, the expression of the habit repeatedly fails to eliminate the trigger. The drive is never turned off. At worst, scratching intensifies the very conditions that triggered it in the first place. In either case the itching doesn’t stop, and neither does the scratching. The press of the drive and the ineffective response continue in a repetitive loop. The circumstances have turned a normal scratching habit into something that replicates itself in a virus-like way.

A recipe for disaster

The logic here is straightforward enough that we can write a simple “recipe” for cooking up the abnormally repetitive habits we are calling behavioral viruses. Here’s that recipe:

Select as a subject any Drive/Habit animal. Any mammal, for example.
Choose one of the subject’s inborn drives to work with.
Arrange an environment that severely limits options for that drive’s expression.
Arrange for something in the environment to continuously trigger the drive.
Allow one or more responses to provide psychological (but not physiological) satisfaction.
Ensure that none of the subject’s responses can deactivate the trigger.

This recipe will reliably produce repetitive, stereotypical, and compulsive habits in any Drive/Habit animal. Dysfunctional habits that bear a striking resemblance to addictions.

This isn’t an empty claim. A mountain of data shows that any higher animal is at risk of evolving a repetitive and stereotyped habit when “unable to execute a behavior pattern that it is highly motivated to perform, such as feeding behavior; when it cannot escape or avoid a stressful or fearful situation; or when it is kept in confinement or social isolation.” 16

The evidence springs from practical experience with frustrated animals housed in farms, ranches, equine facilities, zoos, pet stores, and elsewhere. Here is the key observation: Whenever satisfactory expression of an animal’s natural drives is artificially restricted, the animal is likely to evolve a pattern of stereotypic, repetitive, and unproductive behavior instead. The greater the difference between the natural environment and the artificial environment, the greater the likelihood that the animal will fall into persistent and abnormally stereotyped habits. 17

Researchers M. Lewis and colleagues summarize this universal finding succinctly, saying

Abnormal repetitive behaviors are commonly displayed in animals housed in zoos, farms, and laboratory environments, as well as animals subjected to early social deprivation. Indeed, repetitive behaviors are the most common category of abnormal behavior observed in confined animals. For example, pacing and route-tracing in birds, sham-chewing and bar-mouthing in pigs; crib-biting and head-shaking in horses; vertical-jumping and backward somersaulting in deer mice; body-rocking and tail-biting in rhesus monkeys; pacing and over-grooming in prosimians; and head-twirling in minks are but some examples of aberrant repetitive behaviors observed in animals maintained in confinement. Repetitive motor behavior appears to be an invariant consequence of experiential deprivation or restriction of all species tested. 18

According to these researchers, abnormally repetitive habits are “an invariant consequence of experimental deprivation or restriction of all species tested.” Invariant. All species tested. Hmm. All the species they tested were Drive/Habit animals. Humans are Drive/Habit animals. Are addictions simply one of these abnormally repetitive habits? There’s experimental evidence strongly suggesting that they can indeed be understood this way.

The true roots of addiction

In the early 1960s researchers conducted studies where they enabled animals to inject themselves with drugs simply by pressing a lever. In carefully conducted experiments rats, mice, monkeys, and other mammals voluntarily injected themselves with large doses of drugs. Sometimes they would descend into a frenzy of use, injecting so much so fast that it killed them. The scientific community surmised that if certain drugs get into a mammal’s system, they will unavoidably bring that animal to ruin. Some called this notion the “demon drug” hypothesis. 19

But by the late 1970s researcher Bruce K. Alexander and his associates were voicing doubts about this conclusion. They speculated that the animals might be falling into addictive patterns because of the artificially restrictive laboratory environments in which the experiments were conducted. The tiny, isolated lab cages did not permit fulfilling expression of these animals’ natural drives. Living one’s entire life cooped up alone in a cramped cage is a horrible experience. It is unpleasant for any animal – even for the lowly rat. Under those conditions, with natural fulfillment out of reach, use of drugs might provide the most satisfying experience available.

Alexander and his colleagues wanted to see if animals living in a more fulfilling environment would find drugs as appealing. Would they welcome a drug getaway if there was less motivation for escape? This group of researchers built a more pleasant home for rats. They constructed in their lab a veritable rodent Disneyland.

“Rat Park,” as it came to be called, was airy and spacious, with about 200 times the square footage of the standard laboratory cage. It was also scenic, with a peaceful, British Columbia forest painted on the plywood walls, and rat-friendly with empty tins, wood scraps, and other desiderata strewn about the floor. Finally, relative to the standard laboratory housing of its day, it was a psychosocial paradise, with 16-20 rats of both sexes in residence at once. 20

The researchers compared the drug consumption of rats confined to the standard lab cages with residents of Rat Park. Both groups had equal access to plain water and to morphine-laced water. It was the individual rat’s choice which to drink. In a long series of careful studies the researchers determined that animals living in the more fulfilling environment “had little appetite for morphine compared with the rats housed in isolation.” In some of the studies, rats confined to the standard cages consumed nearly twenty times as much morphine as those in Rat Park. 21

Alexander went even further with his exploration. He first got rats physically addicted to morphine by keeping them alone for over a month in lab cages with nothing but morphine-laced water to drink. Only then did he transfer the furry little addicts to Rat Park. Though morphine water was also freely available to them in that more pleasant environment, most of the rats spontaneously abandoned the drug, and returned to a more rat-typical lifestyle.

Normal conditions for the rat are those that permit satisfactory expression of inborn drives – for food, socialization, exploration, and play. Alexander’s studies showed that rats are biased toward addiction when these natural satisfactions are denied. In a sense, the “addictive” substance is a red herring that obscures the truth. The ready availability of a psychoactive substance is just one of several things pushing a rat toward addictive behavior. It is a factor, to be sure. But it is just one of several factors in the pattern’s development, and not even the most important one. More influential, as Alexander’s studies showed, was the miserable reality of endless imprisonment, the ongoing frustration of virtually every drive with which the animal had been born. It is only under these thoroughly abnormal circumstances that a rat’s natural drive spawns the looping pattern of a behavioral virus.

Self-control

Let’s return for a moment to the poison-ivy-induced scratching. The unrelenting itching invites us to repeat the habit in a way that’s not good for us. Does that mean the scratching habit has somehow turned evil? No. The ill-advised habit is just a behavior pattern. It isn’t alive. It doesn’t have any bad intentions. It isn’t out to control or hurt us. It doesn’t have any will, or any plan, or any purpose. It’s just that within the special context of poison ivy expression of the habit biases us to repeat it. It may seem strange that this could happen. But we should remind ourselves that the same thing is true of biological viruses. They do what they do without any will, or plan, or purpose. It is only within the special environment of a cell that a cellular virus ends up reproducing itself.

But wait. A bad habit couldn’t possibly operate like an actual virus, could it? There’s a big difference, isn’t there? A difference that boils down to control. Viruses, we are told, take control of the host cell. That cell has no choice in the matter. The host cell has no free will. But we humans are not like that. Our habits can’t control us. We control our habits! We have free will. We make choices. We decide what we will and won’t do! So even if poison ivy creates a powerful itch, we can will ourselves not to scratch. We can resist, right?

Yes, exactly right. Free will means we have the ability to resist doing things that aren’t good for us, the power to thwart bad habits, no matter how tempting. That ability to resist is behavioral immunity.

Free will and behavioral immunity

As we have seen, both immunity and resistance to immunity are inevitable in every host/parasite relationship. This truth leads us to a critical question. When it comes to the arena of behavior, what does immunity look like? And what might resistance to immunity look like?

We can tentatively answer this question in a simple way – by referring to our own experience. Each of us has at some point teetered on the verge of becoming the unwilling host to an out-of-control habit. Some aspect of our behavior was getting out of hand. Maybe we were spending too much money, or wasting too much time playing video games, or getting too wrapped up in social media, or reading too many trashy romance novels, or eating too many of those delicious jalapeno cheese Cheetos, or drinking too much alcohol too often. Had we failed to pull back from the slippery slope that leads to a true addiction, the quality of our lives would surely have taken a hit. So how did we escape this horrible fate? How did we save ourselves from addiction?

No doubt the first step was snapping to what was going on – bringing the focus of our attention to the problem in order to bring it fully into our awareness. Once clear that what we were doing was harmful to us, we made a decision to change it. Finally, we developed and implemented some effective countermeasures. Our own experience, then, says behavioral immunity takes the form of this sequence: attention, awareness, and change.

Leaving Kansas

So behavioral immunity manifests as attention, awareness, and change. This conclusion isn’t likely to shock anyone. In fact it’s a platitude, something as obvious and as corny as Kansas in August. But when we look at parasitic resistance to that immunity, it seems we’re not in Kansas anymore. Both logic and direct observation lead us to conclude that resistance manifests as a form of blindness. That might not seem possible. But in fact it happens via a mechanism that has been extensively validated by perceptual scientists.

The logic is straightforward, if disconcerting. Decades ago, psychologists demonstrated that failure to focus our attention on something effectively prevents that something from entering our conscious awareness. Until we focus our attention on something, it doesn’t seem to exist. An addict in denial is strangely unable to focus attention upon the addiction into which he or she has fallen. Without focused attention, the addiction seems not to exist. The technical term for this surprising phenomenon is inattentional blindness. You can make it happen easily by diverting the subject’s attention, focusing it on something else.

Any parasite, no matter what kind, finds ways to evade host immunity. Why? Because the ones that manage to evade immunity are the only ones that live to reproduce themselves. All the others are toast. Only the survivors pass their characteristics on to future generations. Among the things they pass on is their bag of tricks for evading immunity. But as we have seen, when it comes to behavioral parasites the host’s immune function comes in the form of focal attention. Logic tells us, then, that any successful behavioral parasite has found a way to steer clear of the spotlight of the host’s attention.

Behavioral AIDS

Addicts are always found to be in denial. The label “denial” is unfortunate, because it implies choice. As it is commonly used, that term would hint that the stubborn alcoholic is simply refusing to admit a truth she knows full well. But alcoholic denial is not something that is chosen. Sure, the alcoholic is likely to tell you, “I’m not an alcoholic,” and that’s a denial. But the real issue is why she is saying that. The reason lies in a perceptual malfunction. We’re really talking about pervasive changes in the addict’s capacity to perceive and think accurately. More specifically, the alcoholic finds it virtually impossible to focus attention on anything that might disrupt the drinking pattern. With attention derailed, the sufferer is blind to the problem. And because she can’t see the problem, there’s no impulse toward corrective action.

In other words, what we call denial is not a “choice.” In fact, the denial, distortion, and chaos in the alcoholic’s life are there because he or she has lost the power to choose. Choice is not available because the alcoholic’s behavioral immunity has been disabled. This statement can best be explained by comparing denial to biological immune deficiency.

When someone first comes down with an HIV infection, there is no immediate devastation. Relatively normal life is still possible. But the full-blown AIDS syndrome is something else entirely. Like many viruses, HIV protects itself by disabling the host’s immune system. HIV is particularly effective in doing so. With immunity disabled, the individual becomes vulnerable not just to HIV, but to diseases of all kinds. AIDS is a health disaster. It’s fair to say that the AIDS syndrome is the clinical picture we get when the virus shatters biological immunity.

The syndrome we call alcoholic denial comes about in a similar way. The perceptual and conceptual distortion we call denial is the clinical picture that results when behavioral immunity is shattered. Without our behavioral immunity, without our capacity to focus our attention upon the problem, we are at the mercy of the rogue habit of alcoholism. Over the course of the disease, our perception and our thinking are progressively skewed. In the end, we are powerless to attend to and identify the source of our suffering, and therefore powerless to take corrective action. Again, the alcoholic knows she is miserable – she can feel it. But she can’t see why. Inattentional blindness is the most accurate way to describe what’s going on here. A mnemonic slogan for this mind-boggling situation is this: “Denial is behavioral AIDS.”

Prevention and management

We conclude this essay with a pleasant surprise. The moment we recast addictions as parasite-induced behavioral illnesses, we inherit a gift of incalculable value: an entire array of effective techniques for dealing with this kind of illness. That’s because a great many of the methods we have worked out to manage physical sickness can be reworked for use with sick behavior.

At this point in the development of psychology, it is still common to blame the addict for her problems. Blame might seem a justified response to her completely nonsensical lifestyle. Since we assume people are responsible for their own behavior, blaming the person who is behaving badly makes some superficial sense. But many years ago we were blaming sick people for their physical illnesses. Real progress in medicine began when we stopped passing judgment, and started looking objectively at the causes of disease. At present, we don’t interpret Jeff’s cold-induced sneezes or Jane’s parasite-induced lethargy as irresponsible behavior. Nor do we interpret these things as disfavor in the eyes of God, as we have in times past. Now we know that when we come down with a cold or an infection, the cause is a parasite. Our newly-acquired knowledge of the true causes of sickness, along with our understanding of immunity, has allowed us to work out effective methods for disease prevention and intervention.

Here are two examples of disease management technologies that can easily be repurposed for use with parasitic behavioral patterns. There are many others.

Immunize. In medicine, immunization takes advantage of our “adaptive immunity.” This kind of immunity has a memory. Immunization involves exposing someone to a pathogen before that pathogen is actually encountered, so that the disease entity won’t be able gain a foothold. Later, when that antigen is detected again, adaptive immunity already “has its number.” The immune system has a running start enabling it to mount a quicker, stronger, and more effective response. Many drug prevention programs use a similar approach. They educate the potential user about the nature and costs of addiction before any actual encounter in real life. The idea is to ground the individual in the truth before the wool can be pulled over her eyes by a rogue habit.
Eliminate risk factors. In medicine, the spread of diseases can be dramatically reduced by eliminating environmental factors that enable transmission. To illustrate, adequate sewage treatment, elimination of standing water, hand-washing, and sterile hospital procedures can all reduce disease transmission. Increasing general physical health can heighten resistance to disease of all types. When it comes to behavior, we know quite well that lack of personal fulfillment is a significant risk factor for the development of addiction. Any truly authentic “war on drugs” must for this reason include increased opportunities for personal fulfillment in populations where drug use is common. 22

What if the addict’s crazy acts are simply the manifestations of a disease? What if the addict’s “lies” are just a side effect of an actual illness? Could it be that blame isn’t the most productive response to sick behavior? Perhaps it is time to begin a revolution our thinking about maladaptive behavior. You will find a more extensive discussion of this intriguing topic in my upcoming book, Rogue Habits: Understanding out-of-control behavior in disease terms. 23

Notes and References

Morse, R and Flavin, D. The definition of alcoholism. Journal of the American Medical Association, 1992, 268, 8, 1012-1014. Page 1012.
The DSM 5 does not include denial as one of the defining characteristics of the disorder. This omission places a roadblock in the path of those seeking to more deeply understand the dynamics of serious alcohol abuse. In the absence of denial, it is difficult to comprehend why the alcoholic doesn’t stop drinking as soon as it becomes obvious that it is destroying his life. As we will see, most addiction treatment professionals do see denial as central.
Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Breaking through denial is an alcoholic’s first step in recovery. February 1, 2015. Online article available at http://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/articles/breaking-through-denial-is-first-step-in-recovery-for-alcoholic. Retrieved 8/20/2016.
Knapp C. Drinking: A love story. Dell publishing, New York, 1996. Page 148.
LaChance AJ. Cultural Addiction: The Greenspirit guide to recovery. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1991. Page 3.
LeFever R. Addiction – Denial or Lying. Video presentation detailing the philosophy of Promis Treatment Centers, July 3, 2012. Available online at https://www.YouTube.com/watch?y=O3dO0A06icg.
Pickard H. Denial in addiction. Mind & Language, 2016, 31, 3, 277-299. Pages 277-278. Available online at http://www.hannapickard.com/uploads/3/1/5/5/31550141/denialaddictionhpickard.pdf. Accessed 9/27/16.
For the sake of clarity, I am anthromorphizing my description of replicators. Of course, DNA replicators are not people, and do not act purposefully as people do.
The claim that imitation was too flimsy to support transmission was also off the mark. But this is the subject of my essay “The baby in memetic bathwater,” so we won’t deal with it here.
Whitehead T0. Rogue Habits: Understanding out-of-control behavior in disease terms. Currently in late draft, seeking publisher.
Science writer Matt Ridley explores the fascinating consequences of this conflict in this book: [Ridley M. The Red Queen: Sex and the evolution of human nature. Viking Books, London, 1993.]
Immunity in the host and resistance to immunity in the parasite are actually the same thing. Each is a collection of tools that helps the lifeform overcome environmental threats. It’s just that the environment of the host is very different from the environment of the parasite.
Carl Jung captured some of the flavor of the Drive/Habit system, with its built-in value, in his notion of the unconscious archetype. In his view, archetypes are inherited predispositions reflecting the way ancestors have gone about making their living in the world. As he stressed, archetypes are “forms of instinct” that remain unconscious until they are expressed as specific thoughts, images, or behaviors. Source: [Jung CG. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books, New York, 1962. Page 168.]
Antonio Damasio goes into great detail about the function of subjective experiences. Highly recommended: [Damasio AR. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1999.]
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, the irritation from contact with poison ivy is caused by an irritating plant oil that clings to skin and clothing. Scratching the itch tends to increase the irritation, and oil remaining on the skin can be spread to other areas the body by scratching. The Academy advises, “If you can rinse your skin immediately after touching poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac, you may be able to rinse off some of the oil. This helps ensure that the oil does not spread to other areas of the body and cause additional rashes.” Source: [American Academy of Dermatology. Treating poison ivy: Ease the itch with tips from dermatologists. Online article posted April 4, 2014. Available online at https://www.aad.org/media/news-releases/treating-poison-ivy-ease-the-itch-with-tips-from-dermatologists]
Wickens CL, Heleski CR. Crib-biting behavior in horses: A review. Applied Animal Behavior Science, 2010, 128, 1-9. Pages 1-2.
McBride SD and Parker MO. The disrupted basal ganglia and behavioral control: an integrative cross-domain perspective of spontaneous stereotypy. Behavioral Brain Research, 2015, 276, 1, 45-58. Page 46.
Lewis M, et al. Animal models of restricted repetitive behavior in autism. Behavioural Brain Research, 2000, 176, 66-74. Page 68.
Alexander BK. The Globalization of Addiction: A study in poverty of the spirit. 2008, Oxford University Press, New York. Pages 193-195. To visit Alexander’s website, click here.
Alexander BK et al, 2008. Page 195.
Alexander BK et al, 2008. Page 195.
Bruce K. Alexander repeatedly stresses this point in his 2008 book, The Globalization of Addiction.
Whitehead T0. Rogue Habits: Understanding out-of-control behavior in disease terms. Currently in late draft, seeking publisher.