Neural Pathways for Reward, Habit, Addiction, and How They Affect Our Happiness

“No person is free who is not master of himself.”

-Epictetus

There’s a saying by a famous spiritual author, Michael Singer: “True freedom is freedom from yourself, not freedom for yourself”. Struggling with self-evaluation is a difficulty humans have wrestled with since ancient times, making us blame others for our misfortunes and believe in extrinsic values to pacify our unhappiness. But when we take a moment to be mindful of the thoughts and feelings behind our actions, to understand both the emotional and neural mechanisms underlying them, we open the capacity to see our unhealthy habits as they truly are - as well as to change them. Why do we seek solace in harmful habits and addictions even when knowing they are not good for us? Do we actually feel happy when we act on them? Or are they only numbing a deeper source of our unhappiness? 

Over millions of years, evolution promoted the development of neural reward pathways that helped us survive. Those same ancient pathways are triggered in both healthy (e.g. safety, social cohesion, nutrients) and unhealthy (e.g. poor social media use, junk food, addictive drugs) habitual actions. The unfolding of these evolutionarily determined needs through the development of our culture and beliefs has resulted in a society that promotes “rugged” individualism over community, excess consumption over sharing, instant gratification over long term mental health. Our habits of thought and action can make choosing unhealthy actions and thought patterns easy, and the healthy ones hard. Habits are formed in the process of Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward: imagine you’re doing homework and feel stressed (Cue), and you want to relieve your stress (Craving), so you go on social media (Response), and associate social media with relaxation and/or feeling your needs met (social acceptance, love, etc.) (Reward). Neurally, this process involves these main brain parts: the hippocampus (important for memory formation), the striatum (important for subconscious habit formation), the ventral tegmental area (aka VTA, reward pathway that sends pleasure signals to nucleus accumbens (NAc) and releasing dopamine; it’s connected to several pleasure/reward pathways throughout the brain), amygdala (important for emotions and emotional associations), and the prefrontal cortex (important for logic and response inhibition, so is reduced in effectiveness during habit formation, especially in addictions). 

It’s important to note that habits are not just actions - we are also addicted to our thoughts and feelings, especially negative ones. We are wired to look out for threats in our environment for survival, but this comes at a price when our culture thrives off our fears, even creating them when they’re non-existent (think of news media highlighting more crime when crime rates were at an all time low).  By recognizing and knowing our unhealthy habits of thought and action, we can begin to take action - action to lead a more skillful life of positive engagement.