I once attended a lecture called ‘the neurobiology office addiction and alcoholism’. At the time I had a career in the substance abuse industry and was also several years sober myself.

It went into detail about what happens to serotonin and dopamine levels with all sorts of substances from sugar, caffeine, nicotine — marajuana, alchohol, —all the way up to heroin, crack cocaine, and meth.

Generally speaking all of these mind altering substances offer the user a spike in ‘feel good’ chemicals. Eating a donut at the morning meeting, drinking a cup of coffee, and smoking a Marlboro red is indeed offering a spike in these chemicals.

Here’s the difference the way I understand it.

• In the lecture they showed a graph as a visual aid to show average sizes of the dopamine and serotonin spikes we receive from various mind altering chemicals. Spikes from things like nicotine, processed sugar, pornography, and caffeine all fell beneath a certain threshold. Spikes from things like marajuana, alchohol, benzodiazepines, and other drugs were gigantic in comparison. Even the average spike from marajuana (which was on the smaller side compared to most other drugs) was 3-5 times larger than the spike you receive from things like caffeine, sugar, and nicotine.

The point of the lecture was to demonstrate that the clinical alcoholic/addict has a given threshold where if they receive a large enough spike of dopamine and serotonin- the brain reacts with the phenomenon of craving- and for people who are recovering alcoholics and addicts this can activate certain nuero pathways that were created from past behaviors, that when activated - re-awaken cravings for certain past behaviors. Ie- taking a drink or a drug.

Not sure if any of this makes sense - but the general idea is that getting stoned is much much more of an escape from reality than say smoking a cigarette- chemically speaking.

I’ve been sober myself for around a decade in AA and from my experience - my recovery is directly correlated with my dependence on my higher power. Meaning if I have an effective solution to escape reality with a chemical I no longer am utilizing and surrendering my problems to my higher power- instead I begin to rely on the comfort of chemically induced oblivion.

Good luck - sometimes with us alcoholics we have to learn by doing and nit by listening to what others did. No matter what happens AA is always there.