“Just because a child is smart doesn’t mean he/she is mature enough to have good judgment about drugs and alcohol.” – CBS News
As commonly happens, when I investigate someone’s position or something new about addiction, I am led to other ideas and concepts. While writing “Counterpoint”, I researched information sources and took a critical look at concepts that I now take as facts. Most of the information that I found reinforced my concepts, but this research also led me to some interesting, new information on the adolescent brain. Please join me in this post, “The Adolescent Brain – Follow-up to Part I” as we expand our understanding of the adolescent brain.
What the Hell Were You Thinking?
Several times, I have run across coincidences that surprise me, such as, the prevalence in recovery circles of the Serenity Prayer that I viewed so personally. Someone recommended a podcast to me about the adolescent brain and coincidentally to me it was titled “What Were You Thinking? (a slightly more polite way of referring to this period of development than I use). I have since concluded that these coincidences are not coincidences at all, rather just a commonality in the way that we view and approach various issues. Great minds think alike, right? Maybe smart-ass minds think alike, whatever.
“What Were You Thinking? Inside the Adolescent Brain” is a six-part podcast on Audible about various aspects of the adolescent brain, some of which are relevant to our discussions of the susceptibility of the adolescent brain to addiction. In this series, they frequently state that experts consider the adolescent brain to include ages 13 to 24 which is a much more concise way of stating the group that I included in discussing the adolescent brain. So, for the purposes of this blog, let’s agree that the adolescent brain includes ages up to the mid-twenties.
Dopamine. Again? That Stuff is Everywhere
The most significant thing that I learned about the adolescent brain has to do with dopamine. As you will recall, dopamine is the feel-good chemical that our brain produces and that I have theorized is a conditioning system to drive us do some things that have been important for survival of the human race. Addictive substances hijack or more accurately, overwhelm that system and cause addictive behavior to become deeply rooted within an addict’s brain.
Research has determined that the adolescent brain appears to have a lower baseline of dopamine while at the same time it has an increased dopamine response to stimuli. In other words, adolescents tend to complain of being bored because they have a lower level of the feel-good chemical in their brain under normal circumstances. They tend to partake in risky behavior because they get a bigger rush of the feel-good chemical in response to that risky behavior.
I tend to think of adolescent risk taking as the result of a lack of impulse control due to a lack of development of the logic and risk evaluation centers in the prefrontal cortex. This is true, there is a lack of impulse control that can be reduced by getting adolescents to pause and think about potential outcomes (risks v. rewards). What I have learned is that adolescent brains are primed for risk taking by the larger difference in dopamine release between normal circumstances and risk taking.
As I have said several times before, our brains and bodies are amazing systems in which everything has a purpose. What then is the purpose of an exaggerated dopamine response in the adolescent brain? The obvious answer lies in the fact that during adolescence we are transitioning from parent-dependent childhood to independent adulthood. During this time, we need to get out of our comfort-zone and explore new things, which is a risk-taking behavior. It is good for adolescents to take increased risks, up to a point.
More Bad News About Adolescents and Addiction
As you already know, dopamine is one of the major players in addiction. It is the massive flood of dopamine that gets us high and it is that same flood that makes us want more. Finally, it is conditioning of our brain because of this flood of dopamine that causes a drug user to transition into someone who needs the drug, an addict. Obviously, the heightened dopamine response in the adolescent brain means that all of these responses are acting at a higher level. So, adolescents are more inclined to partake in the risky behavior of substance abuse and they experience a stronger response. I think that parents and teachers need to be aware of this; adolescents need to understand their increased susceptibility to addiction; and we need to teach them ways to protect themselves from foolish mistakes, such as substance abuse. 
Adolescent Brian Myelination
Brain myelination sounds like a highly scientific, complex concept, so it makes me sound smart when I make it my subheading. It’s not really that difficult to understand, just a good 50-cent word. Adolescence is a time of great physical change in the human brain that aligns with a great change in our role in society. In order to change from a child to an adult, we must get rid of the things in our brain that support childish, dependent thoughts and behavior and replace them with the things that we need to be functioning adults.
Remember when we talked about neural pathways and interconnections and we compared them to roadways or electrical wiring. We said that addiction causes new highways (neural pathways) to be built that support addiction and roadways that interfere with addiction to be neglected. During adolescence, our brain undertakes myelination or the process of creating new neural pathways and pruning neural pathways that are no longer needed. Our brain removes the bike paths of childhood and replaces them with adult roadways. As addiction causes similar changes to this natural re-wiring in our brains, it is likely that the changes to our brain brought by addiction can occur more readily.
If a severe trauma or stress occurs during adolescence, this myelination process can be disturbed and cause psychological issues. These issues can range from emotional issues to psychoses. This is why mental illness frequently manifests itself in late adolescence. In short, the trauma or severe stress caused some of the brain’s wiring to get crossed-up.
Fun Science Fact: Myelin is the mixture of fats and proteins that surround neurons, protecting them and making them more efficient at transmitting the signals within our brain. Myelin is white and therefore the neural network within our brain falls under the group of white matter. Gray matter is associated with processing and storage of information within the brain. Hence, when the Three Stooges were in medieval times Curly was know as the Baron of Gray Matter.
Interesting but Not Related to Substance Abuse
Listening to the podcasts that I mentioned earlier, I learned some intriguing things that fit in on the periphery of our discussion of addiction and the adolescent brain.
Adolescents and Terrorists
I learned terrorists recruit “soldiers” from foreign countries by specifically target adolescents. Those Bastards! They understand the tendency for risk-taking and the lack of impulse control in the adolescent brain and they play on this to recruit young people to join their fight. There are many instances of adolescents leaving to join a terrorist group and when they are caught, they admit that they didn’t really understand what they were getting into nor did they have a great philosophical commitment. Terrorists recruit men in their mid to later twenties within their own culture because they are more useful and devoted, but they recruit the more vulnerable outside their culture.
Internet and Cellphone Addiction(?)
There was also a discussion of the adolescent brain and smartphone, internet gaming, and social media use. Again, since the adolescent brain is primed to respond more powerfully to stimuli, there is a greater tendency for adolescents to get caught up in electronic media. Asia, and in particular South Korea, seems to have much more use of electronic media. In fact, there are places dedicated to providing a welcoming environment in which to play internet games and use social media. We tend to think of this type of behavior as addiction. Studies in South Korea however, indicate that the changes in the brain associated with addiction are not occurring even in individuals whose lives are negatively impacted by their use of electronic media. According to this research, the behavior is more along the lines of a compulsion. This is good news because compulsions are much more responsive to cognitive behavioral therapy than addiction is.
Summary
Adolescence, which we now define as the teenage years up to the mid-twenties, is a time of great change as we mature from parent-dependent children to independent adults. These changes serve an important role, but they also greatly increase the susceptibility of adolescents to addiction. These changes include:
• The development of the prefrontal cortex is the last area of the brain to change and mature. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions such as, logic, self-control, risk evaluation, and empathy. For this reason, adolescent decision-making is much more emotional than logical resulting in an underestimation of current and future risk and the common question “What the Hell were you thinking?”.
• Addiction causes a stunting of the development of the pre-frontal cortex, compounding the effects listed above. For this reason, addicts in their late-20s, 30s, and even 40s may exhibit some of the exasperating flaws in decision-making that are characteristic of adolescents.
• Adolescents are very socially-driven which makes the opinions of their peers very important. As these peers suffer from the same underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, collective decision-making is worse. Teens in groups make even worse decisions than they do alone.
• Adolescent brains have a generally lower level of dopamine but their dopamine response to a stimulus is greater. This wide swing in dopamine levels causes adolescents to be inclined toward risky behavior that causes a release of dopamine.
• During adolescence, the brain is going through a period of re-wiring (myelination) where new neural pathways are being created and pathways not necessary in adulthood are being pruned. We know that addiction causes the creation of new neural pathways and this may be exaggerated during this time of natural neural pathway construction. Since the brain is already re-wiring itself in many areas, it may be easier for the changes to occur that support addiction.
A tendency for risky-behavior combined with a desire to impress their peers and general poor judgement is a recipe for disaster during the teenage years. Furthermore, substance abuse may be much more effective at developing the neural pathways that support addictive behavior because the brain is in a stage of natural neural pathway construction and pruning. We must help our adolescents, no matter how much they resist, to understand how these factors make them much more susceptible to addiction.
I would like to hear your thoughts or experiences regarding this post? If you wish to go back and read the early post on changes to the adolescent brain, please click on this link to Part I The Adolescent Brain.