Love what I have the privilege to do; help people reconnect the wiring of addiction and renew relationship to God and each other. We are in a revolution of neuroscientific breakthrough. Inaccurate old school thinking is being replaced by sound science and reason.  For example, the now disproven notion that the brain is static and unchangeable has been replaced with the truth of neuroplasticity…the

brain constantly changes and rewires.  I am a man of faith. In many ways science is catching up to what people of faith have experienced for millenia, namely, we can change, we can be changed by someone something greater than ourselves.

A therapist asked me this week about neuroplasticity, the science that proves the brain can rewire in 90 days.  She asked, “If the brain rewires in 90 days, how do we explain relapse?”

The brain has 109,000 miles of neural pathways, think about wires connecting sight to sound, smell to fear, noticing to sexuality.  These pathways form very specific functions and connect at trillions of locations in the brain.

Addiction neural pathways are in fact wires in the brain that formed due to learning. I learned how to soothe my anxiety or fear with a drug or relationship. Hence addiction neural pathway.

After 90 days of inactivity, that neural pathway prunes, connections diminish and become weaker. Other neural pathways of gratitude and healthy relationships form and we feel better, healthier, the addiction neural pathway loses power.

If I continue to attend to those pathways with healthy relationships and conscious focus, my neural architecture becomes stronger.

Enter anxiety of broken relationship.

Have you ever forgotten how to ride a bike? Did you hear that boy band song from middle school and feel a flood of emotion for your first dance, kiss, crush?

Neurological permanence is the brain’s ability to remember and recall. Get on that bike after 10 years of retirement you get it, yes?  Listen to the Back Street Boys and you have butterflies over your first kiss.  Your brain remembers.

As I work with clients who have struggled with relapse, all of them have slipped due to either resentment or grief, some relationship meltdown.  Relationship disappointment is the top reason for relapse.  (Carnes, 2014)

When we recover from our drug of choice, those specific wires of addiction prune or diminish. However, if we experience grief, resentment, abandonment, those very specific neural pathways or wires can re activate addiction neural pathways to numb the pain of loss, or arouse the system due to pain. Does that make sense?

So what is the awareness necessary to sustain our healing?  Love and acceptance. Rich relationships of meaning and connectivity.  Do you have a higher power?  Connect, love, give back to your community.  Do you have friends? Move from isolation. Pray, meditate, reflect, practice compassion for one another and…yourself. Grieve with people who love you. Attend to amends and forgive your perpetrators…then forgive yourself.

Do you feel better?  Your brain is rewiring…now.  Let’s get together soon…for coffee…for friendship…bike ride anyone? Let’s talk, listen to some boy bands, and I will tell you about my grandchildren…yes?