Reward Deficiency Syndrome
In this Special Report, Siobhan Morse, Executive Director of the National Institute For Holistic Addiction Studies, explains Reward Deficiency Syndrome also known as RDS.
Reward Deficiency Syndrome is a group of disorders which includes compulsive disorders, impulsive disorders, substance abuse disorders and some personality disorders.
Basically, Reward Deficiency Syndrome has to do with the release and utilization of a neurotransmitter in the brain called dopamine.
What is Reward Deficiency Syndrome?
The most important thing you need to know about dopamine is that dopamine is responsible for our ability to experience pleasure and for our ability to manage stress. So you can only imagine what it would be like to live without proper utilization or functioning of the dopamine systems.
You’d feel highly anxious and stressed or nervous, and you’d be unable to experience rewarding experiences or fulfillment or satisfaction.
An analogy that I have for what it’s like to have Reward Deficiency Syndrome is from when I was a little girl. When I was about six years old, my father used to take me to get hot fudge sundaes. Now this was a really big hot fudge sundae.
If you can imagine like those large, styrofoam cups, it was that size, and it would come with a very long spoon so you could get all of it, and it was a vanilla ice cream that was delicious and homemade.
It was orange with those little brown flecks and chunks of ice, and then it was covered and layered in hot fudge that was hot and gooey and delicious and it would have the ice cream melting just a little bit, and then topped all off with delicious whipped cream.
I would eat this entire ice cream sundae and I would look at my dad and I would say, “Wow! That was good! Could I have another one?” because what I was experiencing was an inability to get the reward, to get to the place where I’m satisfied or feel fulfilled. Right?
It’s totally natural, normal and expected that human beings are going to experience anticipation and that they are going to experience some pleasure during events, and that at a certain point which is related to the release of dopamine, they are also going to experience satisfaction.
Individuals who have Reward Deficiency Syndrome do not get to that point where they experience satisfaction, and where they can actually look up and say, “Okay, that’s enough.” Right?
Addiction is also called “the disease of never enough,” and we have found that people with Reward Deficiency Syndrome are 74% more likely to be in the experience of one of the addiction disorders.
So, when you think about the ice cream sundae, that’s a little bit about what it feels like to be addicted, to never be in the experience of having enough, to never be in the experience of feeling fulfilled or of getting that final reward.
What is Reward Deficiency Syndrome
Click Here to Download a PDF version of this report.
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