endorphins
I pass someone, someone I see regularly in my neighborhood, lighting a crack pipe in the corner of a dunking donuts by the bathroom. Barely steady enough for the flame to settle. During a Monday afternoon dog walk, I see two people, park regulars, take turns putting a coat over their head, lighting up. And as I watch curls of smoke freely crawl out from underneath their street worn black, I wish they too could crawl out.
The other night on a commute home from Judson Church, a man hangs off a citibike in the catatonic droop induced by opioids and when I asked if he wanted coconut water, he perked up with an exuberant “yes” as if he’d been trapped on a desert alone for days without any human connection or hydration. And hasn’t he. Upon the pass of liquid gold, my gaze couldn’t divert from the hand 5x the size of his head, too swollen to function. “You need to fix your hand.” Embarrassed, he tries to stretch out the sleeve with his functioning not-as-swollen-hand to cover the openly raised wound on his forearm where I recognize injections must go. The only in without an out. No exit sign, no one stronger than the initial dopamine rush or the unbearable amount of pain when in isn’t being fed from heroin.
These are sights I will never forget. Increasingly everyday post COVID. And I want to know why. I want to know why it’s so easy to get addicted to drugs, why opioids work so damn well. I want to know why there were more people in the park getting high than gathering for the 52 anniversary of Earth Day when scientists have given us 7 years to make drastic changes before reaching a tipping point of climate change.
When I want to know why, I always turn to Nature’s brain. While washing the dishes it seemed clearer then the stream of water running across the plate. Addiction is simply the path of least resistance. Water moves downhill. Like the natural world, neurobiology’s normal development is to do something enough so it requires less and less of a cognitive load. Nature is always trying to conserve resources for survival. Why sweat in a hot yoga studio when you could be sitting on the couch instead? We will always be up against the path of least resistance. And then add trauma. In this frame, external drugs hijack normal neurobiological development. It’s not about willpower or morals. I’m not even sure calling it a disease as if it’s the end of a sentence does justice. If it is, then we are all diseased.
So here’s why you choose to sweat: Because if you don’t use it, you loose it. Not just the muscle mass, the emotional endurance and stamina for boredom and discomfort.
The first time I did hot yoga as someone who struggles with dizziness and positional vertigo - meaning every time my head changes positions quickly it’s as if I’m on one of those spinny things they banned in playgrounds - I felt like I was going to die. Here’s the thing, I didn’t. The next time I did hot yoga I felt like I was going to die. I didn’t. The next time, I felt less like I was going to die and it felt just a smidge easier. Thus the pattern of a new path begins. And so does the drug. Our very own opioids, endorphins. Like the heat for our muscles, endorphins are hormones that lubricate connections in our nervous system that make us feel good even under stress.
The first time I experienced runners high in track as a kid I understood why Forest Gump just kept running. Because endorphins don’t just take away pain they remove the concept of time based on the anticipation of escaping now. When endorphins are released there is only now and you relish in the presence.
Nature makes us work hard for these implicit valuable natural drugs. Because if our biology released endorphins all the time, we would’t apply the effort to self-organize, collaborate, adapt, survive, and evolve. These drugs are harder to obtain than a crack pipe on Broadway, but unlike an external drug they are regenerative and renewable.
As a product of Nature, humans are given these perimeters: designed to take the path of least resistance and granted great reward when we resist the path of least resistance with enough repetition. The feedback loop on either side of a habit is just as strong - be it obsessively swiping social media on the couch or exercising with others in a gym - but not every path reiterated beyond moderation is sustainable for optimal well-being. And the more we replace internally sourced drugs with external ones, the harder it is to secure the bond between neurotransmitter and receptor. The brain says why create or receive dopamine when something else has done my job? If we don’t use it, we loose it.
The good news is, if we get over the really really hard uncomfortable might-kill-us-but-doesn’t-transitional hump, be it fossil fuels or opioids, our bodies might have the opportunity to grow again in a different direction. Even flowers bloom where radioactive explosions once occurred in Chernobyl.
Hot yoga is 104 degrees and definitely not for everyone. But everyone who goes in comes out alive. And something else beyond physical and emotional endurance is possible. A total stranger dripping in sweat, looked at me in the hallway after class and said, “good job.” Natural endorphins strengthen not just individual stamina but the connective tissue between you and the stranger next to you.
Kinsbourne, my neuroscience professor would repeat until our own student brains couldn’t possibly forget, Neurons that fire together, wire together. And it’s true. So why not allow our own dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins to fire building stronger connections not just in our brain, but between brains. Scientists are showing increasing evidence that oxytocin is released in bonding not just within a species but across species. Think petting your dog.
Back to the park on Earth Day. I stood there between a paper made tree and a man rolling a joint laced with something not weed. The other man mentioned fentanyl. I pray my students don’t buy the wrong joint. Cops administer Narcan or throw their hands up. Apathy consumes us. The path of least resistance. Apathy like fossil fuels like opioids is not regenerative. It is in fact toxic.
What would happen if we shifted our attention enough to come up to an almost unbearable edge. The reality of climate change. And we sat on that edge until it wasn’t an edge anymore, it was the beginning of another side.
Photo: Dancing in the streets, 2017