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Addiction and the Brain: Why You Can’t Just Stop (And What Actually Helps) · Moving Minds Forward

• 0:10
  Gary Johannes: Hello, and welcome to Moving Minds Forward. Today, we're talking about addiction. Remember, people aren't broken. Whatever you're carrying, and however long you've carried it, there's always a way forward. Sometimes, it just needs a different route from the one you've been trying.
• 0:31
  I'm Gary Johannes, Solution Focus hypnotherapist, founder of Inspire to Change, and lecturer at CPHT Hypnotherapy Training. One episode, what's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps. I left school at 14 with no qualifications, one of nine children, joined the RAF at 16, and then when I left, I went into sales, and years of running bars, night clubs, and restaurants. Long hours, late finishes. And some people, they chose to have a drink at the end of every shift, because that's just how the trade worked for most of them.
• 1:13
  I watched good people slide from unwinding into something they couldn't switch off. Well, know the type if you've worked in that world. Sharp and brilliant first thing, foggy by the end of the night, swearing every Monday that this week, they'll cut back. Years later, in the therapy room, I met the same story in different clothes. Parents who have a couple of glasses of wine at the end of the night when the kids have gone to bed and quietly hide the empties.
• 1:48
  People who've lost serious money on a betting app and haven't told a soul at home. People who've started with a line of Coke at the weekend and now can't face a Saturday without one or more. People who smoke weed every night because it's the only thing that switches their head off. Different habits, same pattern, and nearly always the same belief sitting underneath it. I should be able to sort this out myself.
• 2:18
  If you've ever made yourself a promise in the morning and broke it by tea time and told no one because you'd rather deal with it yourself on your own, this one's for you. Stay with me. Let's get into it. It's half past five on a Thursday. You've had one of those days.
• 2:38
  Nothing dramatic, just a 100 small things, one after another. This morning, you told yourself, not tonight. You meant it. On the way home, a thought arrives quietly. Just one.
• 2:53
  You've earned it. You don't argue with it. You're too tired to argue. By the time you're in the kitchen, it feels like the decision was made somewhere else without you. The first few minutes bring relief.
• 3:08
  Later, that low of shame and another promise, tomorrow. If that's familiar, whether it's a glass of wine, a joint, a line, a bet, a screen, keep listening. Here's the first thing I want you to hold on to. Nobody chooses this. Nobody wakes up one day and decides they'd like to lose control of their life.
• 3:35
  Addiction starts as relief, a drink that takes the edge off, a bet that makes a great Tuesday feel like something, food that fills a space that isn't about hunger, a joint that quietens the busy head, a line of code that makes you feel ten feet tall for an hour, not a weakness, pain, and a brain that found something that worked. So this is not a character flaw. It isn't proof that you're weak or selfish or lacking willpower. Some of the most disciplined people I've worked with, people running businesses, running households, were the ones struggling most quietly. What you're dealing with is a system in your brain doing exactly what it's built to do, finding relief fast and remembering where it found it.
• 4:36
  It's just aimed at the wrong target. And unlike character, the learned pattern can be changed. Let's be clear about what this episode isn't about. Enjoying a glass of wine with dinner, a flutter on the Grand National, losing an evening to a good game. Most people do these things and can take or leave them.
• 5:02
  The line isn't simply how much or how often, though those matter. The line is whether you're still choosing when something has become your main way of coping, when you keep going despite what it's costing you, when you try and stop and can't, when you start hiding it or arranging your day around it, that's what we're talking about today. We're gonna cover what addiction actually is, what's happening in the brain, what causes it, what keeps it going, what actually helps. If you find this useful, hit subscribe wherever you're listening. There's a lot more to come.
• 5:48
  Let's get into it. Abiction is something you started doing for a reason. To relax, to cope, to get through, turns into something you feel you need to do even when it's working against you. It can be a substance, alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, cocaine, prescription painkillers, or it can be a behavior, gambling, gaming, shopping, food, corn, the phone in your hand. The thing changes.
• 6:24
  The pattern underneath barely does. Craving, a short burst of relief, a cost, then craving again. It often gets mistaken for a bad habit, a habit you can drop when it stops suiting you. Addiction comes with the pull, the bargaining, the secrecy. In England, around three hundred and thirty thousand adults were in contract with drug and alcohol treatment services in the year to March 2025, and that's according to the government's own treatment figures.
• 6:59
  And it's not just the people in treatment. The Office for National Statistics estimate that in the same year, around one in fifteen adults aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales used cannabis, and about one in fifty used powdered cocaine. And here's the part that matters for this episode. Research from the University of York published last year found that most dependent drinkers in England and most people using heroin or crack aren't in any structured treatment at all. Those numbers don't even touch gambling, gaming, food.
• 7:46
  So if you're dealing with this on your own, you're not the exception. You're the majority. You're not rare. You're not uniquely broken. And the shame telling you to keep it hidden, that's part of what's keeping it going.
• 8:02
  So deep in your brain is a reward system. Its job is simple. When something helps you survive, food, warmth, connection, it releases dopamine and leaves a note. That worked. Do it again.
• 8:19
  Dopamine isn't really the pleasure chemical. It's the wanting chemical that pulls towards alcohol, weed, cocaine, win on a slot, a stream of notifications on your phone. These hit the system harder and faster than anything nature designed. So the brain does what it does best. It learns quickly.
• 8:48
  And because it's been flooded so often, the brain turns its own volume down and needs more to get the same effect, which means ordinary life starts to feel flat. A good meal, a laugh with mates, a small win that just don't land like they used to. The brain has recalibrated itself around bigger hits. That's not a flaw. That's neuroplasticity pointed in the wrong direction.
• 9:22
  Now add stress. Your amygdala, the brain's smoke alarm, picks up a threat, not just real danger, a hard day, a row, a bill, an empty house. It floods you with adrenaline and cortisol and starts hunting for the quickest known route to relief, and it already knows one. Meanwhile, your prefrontal cortex, the part that plans, weighs things up, and remembers the promise you made this morning, gets pushed aside. That's why it can feel as though the decision happened without you.
• 10:04
  In a way, it did. The thinking part of your brain made the promise. The survival part made the choice. That's why willpower so often fails on its own. You're not failing to try hard enough.
• 10:20
  You're up against a survival system that has decided through repetition that this thing keeps you safe, and it will keep pulling in that direction until something changes the story it's been told. Then come the cues, the route home, the time of day, the sound of a cork, the payday text. Your brain has linked them all to relief. So the craving starts before you've even had a single conscious thought about it. A craving isn't a command.
• 11:01
  It's an old memory of relief asking to be repeated. There's rarely a single cause. Genes can load the dice. Studies suggest roughly half of a person's vulnerability is inherited. Early experiences can teach the brain that the world isn't safe and comfortable.
• 11:23
  It's scarce. And I don't just mean dramatic trauma. Sometimes it's years of being unseen, In a home where hard feelings had nowhere to go, anxiety and depression raise the risk too, because pain with no outlet will find one. Environment matters too. If anyone around you drinks to unwind, it doesn't look like a problem until it is.
• 11:51
  Pain plays its part too. Physical or emotional, many people start using one thing to manage another. And don't underestimate isolation and boredom. Empty hours are where a lot of habits grow. Then there's the stress bucket.
• 12:11
  Every pressure in your life, work, money, relationships, health, worry, pours into one bucket. Sleep is a tap at the bottom, especially the dreaming sleep, where the brain processes the day. When more pours in than drains out, the bucket overflows, and it spills wherever your system is already primed to leak. For some people, that's anxiety. For some, it's anger.
• 12:45
  For you, it may be the bottle, the bet, the scream. And here's the cool twist. Alcohol, in particular, disrupts that dreaming sleep. The very thing you're using to empty the bucket is quietly blocking the drain. A short but important note, especially if you're trying to do this alone, If you're drinking heavily every day or you're dependent on tranquilizers like benzodiazepam, please don't stop suddenly by yourself.
• 13:18
  Withdrawal from these can be dangerous, and it needs medical support. And if you're mixing cocaine with drinking, know that the two together put extra strain on your heart. Start with your GP or your local drug and alcohol advice service. In England, these are free, and you can usually refer yourself. And if you're having any thoughts of harming yourself or someone else, get support quickly.
• 13:48
  Call 999 in an emergency or the Samaritans on 116123 anytime. That isn't failure. That's care. First, rehearsal. By three in the afternoon, a lot of people have already had a drink in their head.
• 14:10
  The brain is practicing the reward before it arrives. And afterwards, the replaying and the self criticism tip more stress into the bucket, ready for tomorrow. Second, the trade off. The relief comes now. The cost comes later, and the brain under pressure will always value now.
• 14:35
  Third, tolerance. Over time, you need more to get the same effect. So the cost rises while relief shrinks. With gambling, there's an extra hook. Unpredictable rewards grip the brand harder than reliable ones.
• 14:53
  You don't always win, and that uncertainty is exactly what keeps you chasing. It's the same principle that makes slot machines so effective. Fourth, hiding. Avoiding the feelings, avoiding the people who might notice, keeping the evidence out of sight. Secrecy keeps it in the dark, and the shame grows best in the dark.
• 15:23
  And then there's everyone around you, a partner walking on eggshells, children noticing more than you think, friends drifting. Those connections mean fewer sources of comfort, which means more reliance on the one thing that always shows up, stress, craving, relief, cost, shame. More stress, round and round. The thing you're using to cope becomes one of the things you need to cope with. But cycles that feed themselves can also be broken.
• 16:02
  What actually helps? Well, in solution focused work, we don't spend months digging into the root cause. You've probably got plenty of theories already. Instead, we ask a different question. Imagine you wake up tomorrow, and this isn't running the show anymore.
• 16:25
  What's the first thing you'd notice? What would that Tuesday at half five look like instead? Where would you be? Who'd be there? What would you be doing with your hands?
• 16:39
  Most people have spent years pitching what they're trying to stop. Almost nobody has pictured what they're moving towards. Give your brain a target, and it has something to aim at. Then we build on the three pillars. Positive interaction.
• 17:00
  Addiction thrives on isolation. So the first step is often one person, not the whole world. One, a friend, your GP, a support group, a therapist. Connection gives your brain some of what it's chasing in the first place, and you don't have to do this alone to prove you can do it. Positive action.
• 17:27
  Don't just remove the ritual. Replace it. Change the route home. Fill that half an hour with something that involves your hands or your body. A walk, a shower, cooking, a call, small, specific, repeated.
• 17:46
  That's how new routes get laid down. Positive thinking, not pretending everything's fine. Just noticing what's going right. The evening you didn't, the hour you delayed, the time you were honest with someone. If you only ever count the slips, you train your brain to see you as someone who fails.
• 18:11
  Count the wins, and start to see someone who's changing and widen the lens. If the bucket's overflowing, the answer may not be about the drink or the bet. It might be about the job, the debt, the relationship, the sleep. Lower what's pouring into it, and the pull often softens with it. Work on the habit alone without touching what's feeding it, and you're mopping the floor whilst the tap's still running.
• 18:47
  This is where solution focused hypnotherapy fits. Trance isn't sleep, You're not hand and over control. It's a relaxed, focused state where your prefrontal cortex stays switched on. In that state, we rehearse a different response to the cues, the kitchen, the Thursday, the payday text, and you walk through them calmly, choosing differently. The brain doesn't sharply distinguish between vivid rehearsal and real experience.
• 19:24
  So each rehearsal strengthens the new route. And because trance is deeply relaxing, helps drain the bucket too. Where there's physical dependency, this works alongside medical support, not instead of it. And a word on recovery itself is rarely a straight line. Slips are common, and for a lot of people, they're part of the process.
• 19:50
  A slip isn't the end of the story. It's information about where more support is needed. What matters is what happens next. This isn't wishful thinking. Researchers at Stanford, led by professor David Spiegel, scanned people's brains during hypnosis and found measurable changes in how brain regions linked to focus, body awareness, and self reflection talk to each other.
• 20:22
  Hypnosis is a real brain state, not a stage trick. And the wider science of neuroplasticity is clear. Brains change with what we repeatedly do. The pathway that learned this pattern isn't fixed. It can be weakened, and new ones can be built.
• 20:45
  Next time the urge arrives, pause for a moment before you act. Not to fight it, just to ask. What am I actually feeling right now? Not what do I want. What am I feeling?
• 21:01
  Stressed? Lonely? Bored? Name it. Out loud if you can.
• 21:07
  And then give it fifteen minutes and do something with your hands. Here's why it works. Addiction very often runs on feelings that were managed but never named. Putting a feeling into words brings your prefrontal cortex back online and turns the volume down on the alarm. That small gap between trigger and response is where something different becomes possible.
• 21:35
  And cravings behave like waves. They rise, peak, and fall, usually within minutes. If you don't feed them, every time you watch one pass, your brain learns something new. The urge is in an order. So let me speak to you directly.
• 21:58
  If this is you, you're not broken, you're not weak, and you're not alone, even if it feels that way right now. Hundreds of thousands of people are carrying exactly what you're carrying, most of them quietly. This isn't a verdict on who you are. It's a brain that found a way to cope with pain and then got stuck doing it long after it needed to. Doing this on your own has taken more strength than anyone knows, but you don't have to keep proving them.
• 22:35
  The same brain that learns this pattern can learn something different. That's not me being kind. That's neuroscience. Understanding what's going on is where it starts. You've just done that.
• 22:50
  If this episode has helped, subscribe and leave a review if you fancy wherever you're listening. It helps the next person find it when they need it. One condition per episode. What's going on, what's keeping it going, and what actually helps. And if you'd like to find out whether Inspire to Change can help you with an addiction, we have a nationwide network of solution focused hypnotherapist across The UK.
• 23:21
  You can find your nearest therapist, read more about how we work, and book a free initial consultation at inspiredtochange.biz. The link is in the description below. See you on the next one.