Stress and Drug Seeking Behavior:  Bridging the Gap from Neuroscience to Human Experience.

2.  During a given critical period, control of a specific operation must be 

gained before its window closes, otherwise a developmental arrest will 

occur.   Such an arrest creates a permanent "wound" with associated 

behavioral sensitivities tied to the present.  This is because failure to control a 

fundamental process opens vulnerability to death itself. 

See: Neuropsychology
 
 

3.  Essentially all of us have sustained developmental arrests due to lack of

completion of at least some of the many critical periods.  Periods associated 

with gaining control in relating to ourselves, our parents, and our siblings

appear to be very important.  People vary widely as to which periods were 

not completed.
 
 

4.  Developmental arrests are the origin of selective, life-long repetitive bouts 

of ego arousal, neurotic behavior, and personal stress associated with being 

out of control, and thus in mortal danger.  They form a major element of our

personalities.
 
 

5.  This ego arousal results from the excitation of noradrenergic sympathetic

alarm system centered in the locus coeruleus, due to an earlier-similar

memory analysis of incoming psychosocial stimuli.  Alarm also suppresses the

reward system.  Often stress is prolonged, producing a dysphoria bordering on

depression.
 
 

6. All drugs of abuse directly or indirectly inhibit the locus coeruleus to turn 

off alarm and dis-inhibit reward.  Some drugs additionally stimulate the 

reward system directly.
 
 

7.  We can be viewed as highly evolved pain-avoiding, pleasure-seeking

survival-maximizing mechanisms, who also carry developmental arrest-based

personal stress.  Thus, for us to experience the loss of anxiety and the

pleasure released by a drug of abuse is to introduce and activate drug seeking

behavior!
 
 

8.  While we can discover the value of reducing our own, or society's drug 

use, developmental arrest-based demand powerfully drives the system.  Thus, 

neither prohibition, interdiction, or punishment are effective in stopping drug 

seeking behavior.  However, the elimination of the developmental arrest

source of drug demand is.
 
 

9.  Since the source of drug seeking behavior comes from the developmental 

arrest-driven stress of failure to control, the psychological gaining of control, 

or more powerfully, the giving of control to one's higher Self (the Source, 

Holy Spirit, God Within), greatly reduces stress and the consequent drug 

seeking drive.
 
 

10.  An immediate way to psychologically gain control and stop being

victimized by life and one's developmental arrests is to Choose what IS as the

most perfect that things now are, and take responsibility for having personally

created it so.  This enables one both to ride and enjoy the waves of life out of

choice, rather than being dragged and traumatized by them as their victim.

Inherent in taking personal responsibility, is the activation of the drive to

improve conditions, so as to optimize the survival of family, others, and

ultimately of the species and its life support ecosystems.
 
 

11.  Long-term research goals are to identify all psychosocial critical periods 

and to facilitate their mastery by children, and successfully to repair 

developmental arrests in adults.
 
 

12.  In the mean time, pharmaceuticals are available (namely, serotonin- 

specific reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs], such as Paxil) that neurochemically 

uncouple the stress of dyscontrol from locus coeruleus activation.  Will these 

highly effective substances that greatly reduce drug seeking become widely 

used valuable medicines or dietary supplements?  Or will they become the 

next generation of prohibited drugs of abuse?