The Science of Addiction and Recovery | Dr Russell Surasky

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (0:00)
Welcome to The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, where cutting-edge science meets innovation and practical application for anybody. If you or someone you love or know or have encountered has suffered with addiction, this podcast episode with Dr. Russell Surasky is for you. This is a critical podcast to raise awareness on addiction, opioid addiction, alcohol addiction, any of the things that can ruin lives. Please sit down with me with Dr. Russell Surasky.
Russell Surasky, thank you so much for coming on the show. I believe that you are going to share with the listeners one of the most powerful messages that we have heard. You know, we talk all about on this podcast, health and wellness longevity. But I think that there are very few things that kill someone in an instant. And you're gonna address that. In fact, you have a book that says, this book will save your life. Welcome to the show.

**Dr. Russell Surasky** (1:06)
That's correct, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (1:09)
You are a board-certified neurologist and addiction physician, addiction specialist, addiction doctor. And tell me, what is it that you want the world to know?

**Dr. Russell Surasky** (1:21)
Well, first of all, that addiction is a brain disease. This is not an issue of a moral problem or a poor upbringing or a weakness of character or a psychological problem. It is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. And so says my clinical experience, as well as now the American Society of Addiction Medicine defines it that way. We know from brain scans that we have now, like PET scans, that there are fundamental changes in the brain of somebody who has addiction. And we also see it clinically. We have medicines now that can target very specific receptors in the brain. And when you say you inject medicine, in someone who is having a horrific addiction, it will shut down those behaviors, not permanently but temporarily. And so we, based on that, based on the PET scans, and just based on seeing what happens to people with addiction. I mean, people live in the streets to use drugs one more time. You see girls prostituting.
You see people, a lot of these people you see that are suffering with addiction living that way. They have family that loves them and warm homes. But the brain has become so hijacked by these drugs.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (2:34)
And when you say addiction, can you clarify, are we talking about drug addiction? Is drug addiction from opioids different than drug addiction to, say, I don't know, a methamphetamine? How are we thinking about addiction? Yeah, because I'm sure that they're all different. For example, an addiction to porn might be different than a substance addiction.

**Dr. Russell Surasky** (2:58)
Well, so, actually, you know, fundamentally, anything that leads to addiction, and just to define addiction for a moment, addiction is this loss of control where you continuously use the drug or engage in a behavior that is causing significant harm to your life and your world, but you can't stop. It's this loss of control. And so, you know, when any drug or behavior that leads to addiction, it goes through the same exact pathway in the brain. So, when we talk about opioids or alcohol, these drugs ultimately will cause addiction through the same pathway in the brain, which I'm sure we'll get into, but they tap into the same system, the same reward system in the brain, this limbic system in the brain, and that's what traps people and traps their brain and causes this disease.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (3:48)
Or are people equally likely to become addicted if it's a chronic brain disease? Is my addiction potential different than your addiction potential, different than my best friend's addiction potential?

**Dr. Russell Surasky** (4:02)
It's a great question. So much like every other condition in medicine, right? We all have our genetic predispositions, and we have things, we have genetic protections that we don't even know what we're protected against. But you can have a genetic predisposition towards addiction, and it's very complex, the genes. It's not you have it or you don't. It's a cluster of genes that confer upon you a degree of susceptibility. So you can be somewhat susceptible or very easily susceptible. In somebody who has the ability to develop addiction more quickly because of their genes, they only need to expose their brain to a small amount of the drug, and that switch will go off, whereas someone else may be able to use drugs for a while before that would happen. So there's a strong degree of genetic susceptibility.

**Dr. Gabrielle Lyon** (4:47)