Irresistible

by Adam Alter

  Addiction originally meant: Etymology of “addiction”: Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, www.oup.com; see also Mark Peters, “The Word We’re Addicted To,” CNN, March 23, 2010, www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/03/23/addicted.to.addiction/.

  DNA evidence suggests: Justin R. Garcia and others, “Associations Between Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene Variation with Both Infidelity and Sexual Promiscuity,” Plos One, 2010, journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014162; see also: B. P. Zietsch and others, “Genetics and Environmental Influences on Risky Sexual Behaviour and Its Relationship with Personality,” Behavioral Genetics 40, no. 1 (2010): 12–21; David Cesarini and others, “Genetic Variation in Financial Decision-making,” The Journal of Finance 65, no. 5 (October 2010): 1725–54; David Cesarini and others, “Genetic Variation in Preferences for Giving and Risk Taking,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 124, no. 2 (2009): 809–42; Songfa Zhong and others, “The Heritability of Attitude Toward Economic Risk,” Twin Research and Human Genetics 12, no. 1 (2009): 103–7.

  he or she lived: See, for example, Tammy Saah, “The Evolutionary Origins and Significance of Drug Addiction,” Harm Reduction Journal 2, no 8 (2005), harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1477-7517-2-8.

  The betel nut: History of addictions from: Jonathan Wynne-Jones, “Stone Age Man Took Drugs, Say Scientists,” Telegraph, October 19, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3225729/Stone-Age-man-took-drugs-say-scientists.html; Marc-Antoine Crocq, “Historical and Cultural Aspects of Man’s Relationship with Addictive Drugs,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 9, no. 4 (2007): 355–61; Tammy Saah, “The Evolutionary Origins and Significance of Drug Addiction,” Harm Reduction Journal 2, no. 8 (2005) harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1477-7517-2-8; Nguyên Xuân Hiên, “Betel-Chewing in Vietnam: Its Past and Current Importance,” Anthropos 101 (2006): 499–516; Hilary Whiteman, “Nothing to Smile About: Asia’s Deadly Addiction to Betel Nuts,” CNN, November 5, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/11/04/world/asia/myanmar-betel-nut-cancer.

  In 1875 the: David F. Musto, “America’s First Cocaine Epidemic,” The Wilson Quarterly 13, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 59–64; Curtis Marez, Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Robert Christison, “Observations on the Effects of the Leaves of Erythroxylon Coca,” British Medical Journal 1 (April 29, 1876): 527–31.

  It began with: A good summary of Freud and “Über Coca”: “Über Coca, by Sigmund Freud,” scicurious, May 28, 2008, scicurious.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/uber-coca-by-sigmund-freud/; Sigmund Freud, “Über Coca” classics revisited, Journal of Substance Abuse and Treatment 1 (1984), 206–17; Howard Markel, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug, Cocaine (New York: Vintage 2012).

  Like any good: On Pemberton and Coca-Cola: Bruce S. Schoenberg, “Coke’s the One: The Centennial of the ‘Ideal Brain Tonic’ That Became a Symbol of America,” Southern Medical Journal 81, no. 1 (1988): 69–74; M. M. King, “Dr. John S. Pemberton: Originator of Coca-Cola,” Pharmacy in History 29, no. 2 (1987): 85–89; Guy R. Hasegawa, “Pharmacy in the American Civil War,” American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy 57, no. 5 (2000): 457–89; Richard Gardiner, “The Civil War Origin of Coca-Cola in Columbus, Georgia,” Muscogiana: Journal of the Muscogee Genealogical Society 23 (2012): 21–24; Dominic Streatfeild, Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography (London: Macmillan, 2003); Richard Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics (New York: Norton, 2004).

  In 2013, a psychologist: Catherine Steiner-Adair, The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age (New York: Harper, 2013).

  using head-mounted: Chen Yu and Linda B. Smith. “The Social Origins of Sustained Attention in One-year-old Human Infants,” Current Biology 26, no. 9 (May 9, 2016): 1235–40.

  According to the paper’s: Indiana University, “Infant Attention Span Suffers When Parents’ Eyes Wander During Playtime: Eye-tracking Study First to Suggest Connection between Caregiver Focus and Key Cognitive Development Indicator in Infants,” ScienceDaily, April 28, 2016, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160428131954.htm.

  Like Steiner-Adair: Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers (New York: Knopf, 2016).

  Echoing Sales’s account: Jessica Contrera. “13, Right Now,” Washington Post, May 25, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/wp/2016/05/25/2016/05/25/13-right-now-this-is-what-its-like-to-grow-up-in-the-age-of-likes-lols-and-longing/.

  In May 2013: On Dong Nguyen and Flappy Bird: Much of the information in this section is from the original Flappy Bird download page, which is no longer available online. Other references include: John Boudreau and Aaron Clark, “Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Offers Swing Copters Game,” Bloomberg Technology, August 22, 2014, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-22/flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-offers-swing-copters-game; Laura Stampler, “Flappy Bird Creator Says ‘It’s Gone Forever’,” Time, February 11, 2014, http://time.com/6217/flappy-bird-app-dong-nguyen-addictive/; James Hookway, “Flappy Bird Creator Pulled Game Because It Was ‘Too Addictive,’” Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2014, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303874504579376323271110900; Lananh Nguyen, “Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App ‘Gone Forever’ Because It Was “An Addictive Product,’” Forbes, February 11, 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/lananhnguyen/2014/02/11/exclusive-flappy-bird-creator-dong-nguyen-says-app-gone-forever-because-it-was-an-addictive-product/.

  Just recently a: Kathryn Yung and others, “Internet Addiction Disorder and Problematic Use of Google Glass in Patient Treated at a Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program,” Addictive Behaviors 41 (2015): 58–60; James Eng, “Google Glass Addiction? Doctors Report First Case of Disorder,” NBC News, October 14, 2014, www.nbcnews.com/tech/Internet/google-glass-addiction-doctors-report-first-case-disorder-n225801.

  CHAPTER 2: THE ADDICT IN ALL OF US

  Most war films: Jason Massad, “Vietnam Veteran Recalls Firefights, Boredom and Beer,” Reporter Newspapers, November 4, 2010, www.reporternewspapers.net/2010/11/04/vietnam-veteran-recalls-firefights-boredom-beer/.

  Vietnam lies just: Background on the Golden Triangle heroin trade during the Vietnam War, and Nixon’s response: Alfred W. McCoy, Cathleen B. Read, and Leonard P. Adams II, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1990); Liz Ronk, “The War Within: Portraits of Vietnam War Veterans Fighting Heroin Addiction, Time, January 20, 2014, time.com/3878718/vietnam-veterans-heroin-addiction-treatment-photos/; Aimee Groth, “This Vietnam Study about Heroin Reveals the Most Important Thing about Kicking Addictions,” Business Insider, January 3, 2012, www.businessinsider.com/vietnam-study-addictions-2012-1; Dirk Hanson, “Heroin in Vietnam: The Robins Study,” Addiction Inbox, July 24, 2010, addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com/2010/07/heroin-in-viet-nam-robins-study.html; Jeremy Kuzmarov, The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009); Alix Spiegel, “What Vietnam Taught Us about Breaking Bad Habits,” NPR, January 2, 2012, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits; Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press, (New York: Verso, 1997).

  When British researchers: David Nutt, Leslie A. King, William Saulsbury, and Colin Blakemore, “Development of a Rational Scale to Assess the Harm of Drugs of Potential Misuse,” Lancet 369, no. 9566 (March 2007): 1047–53.

  In Vietnam, Major: Peter Brush, “Higher and Higher: American Drug Use in Vietnam,” Vietnam Magazine, December 2002, nintharticle.com/vietnam-drug-usage.htm; Alfred W. McCoy, Cathleen B. Read, and Leonard P. Adams II, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

  At home, the: Background on Lee Robins, and her own reports: Lee
N. Robins, “Vietnam Veterans’ Rapid Recovery from Heroin Addiction: A Fluke or Normal Expectation?,” Addiction 88, no. 8 (1993), 1041–54; Lee N. Robins, John E. Helzer, and Darlene H. Davis, “Narcotic Use in Southeast Asia and Afterward,” Archives of General Psychiatry 32, no. 8 (1975): 955–961; Lee N. Robins and S. Slobodyan, “Post-Vietnam Heroin Use and Injection by Returning US Veterans: Clues to Preventing Injection Today,” Addiction 98, no. 8 (2003): 1053–60; Lee N. Robins, Darlene H. Davis, and Donald W. Goodwin, “Drug Use by U.S. Army Enlisted Men in Vietnam: A Follow-up on Their Return Home,” American Journal of Epidemiology 99, no. 4 (May 1974): 235–49; Lee N. Robins, The Vietnam Drug User Returns, final report, Special Action Office Monograph, Series A, Number 2, May 1974, prhome.defense.gov/Portals/52/Documents/RFM/Readiness/DDRP/docs/35%20Final%20Report.%20The%20Vietnam%20drug%20user%20returns.pdf; Lee N. Robins, John E. Helzer, Michie Hesselbrock, and Eric Wish, “Vietnam Veterans Three Years after Vietnam: How Our Study Changed Our View of Heroin,” American Journal on Addictions 19, 203–11 (2010); Thomas H. Maugh II, “Lee N. Robins Dies at 87; Pioneer in Field of Psychiatric Epidemiology,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2009, www.latimes.com/nation/la-me-lee-robins6-2009oct06-story.html.

  If the engineer: Information on Olds and Milner comes from two sources—interviews with their students: Bob Wurtz, Gary Aston-Jones, Aryeh Routtenberg, and John Disterhoft; and various written resources: James Olds and Peter Milner, “Positive Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of Septal Area and Other Regions of Rat Brain,” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47, no. 6 (December 1954): 419–27; James Olds, “Pleasure Centers in the Brain,” Scientific American 195 (1956): 105–16; James Olds and M. E. Olds, “Positive Reinforcement Produced by Stimulating Hypothalamus with Iproniazid and Other Compounds,” Science 127, no. 3307 (May 16, 1958): 1155–56; Robert H. Wurtz, Autobiography, n.d., www.sfn.org/~/media/SfN/Documents/TheHistoryofNeuroscience/Volume%207/c16.ashx; Richard F. Thompson, James Olds: Biography (National Academies Press, 1999) www.nap.edu/read/9681/chapter/16.

  Isaac Vaisberg, a: Background on Vaisberg, including his addiction to WoW and his affilitation with reSTART, from two interviews with Vaisberg.

  CHAPTER 3: THE BIOLOGY OF BEHAVIORAL ADDICTION

  There’s a modern-day: Anne-Marie Chang, Daniel Aeschbach, Jeanne F. Duffy, and Charles A. Czeisler, “Evening Use of Light-emitting eReaders Negatively Affects Sleep, Circadian Timing, and Next-morning Alertness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 4 (2015): 1232–37; Brittany Wood, Mark S. Rea, Barbara Plitnick, and Mariana G. Figueiro, “Light Level and Duration of Exposure Determine the Impact of Self-luminous Tablets on Melatonin Suppression,” Applied Ergonomics 44, no. 2 (March 2013) 237–40. Apple recently introduced a function called Night Shift into its screen-based devices, which changes the color of the screen through the day to reduce blue light before bedtime: www.apple.com/ios/preview/. More on this: Margaret Rhodes, “Amazon and Apple Want to Save Your Sleep by Tweaking Screen Colors,” Wired, January 1, 2016, www.wired.com/2016/01/amazon-and-apple-want-to-improve-your-sleep-by-tweaking-screen-colors/; TechCrunch, “Arianna Huffington on Technology Addiction and the Sleep Revolution,” January 20, 2016, techcrunch.com/video/arianna-huffington-on-politics-and-her-new-book-the-sleep-revolution/519432319/.

  The human brain exhibits: K. M. O’Craven and N. Kanwisher, “Mental Imagery of Faces and Places Activates Corresponding Stimulus-Specific Brain Regions,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12, no. 6 (2000): 1013–23; Nancy Kanwisher, Josh McDermott, and Marvin M. Chun, “The Fusiform Face Area: A Module in Human Extrastriate Cortex Specialized for Face Perception,” Journal of Neuroscience 17, no. 11 (June 1, 1997): 4302–311.

  There’s also a: Much of the information in this chapter comes from interviews with addiction and physiological psychology researchers and experts: Claire Gillan, Nicole Avena, Jessica Barson, Kent Berridge, Andrew Lawrence, Stanton Peele, and Maia Szalavitz.

  In one article: Maia Szalavitz, “Most of Us Still Don’t Get It: Addiction Is a Learning Disorder,” Pacific Standard, August 4, 2014, www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/us-still-dont-get-addiction-learning-disorder-87431; see also Maia Szalavitz, “How the War on Drugs Is Hurting Chronic Pain Patients,” Vice, July 16, 2015, www.vice.com/read/how-the-war-on-drugs-is-hurting-chronic-pain-patients-716; Maia Szalavitz, “Curbing Pain Prescriptions Won’t Reduce Overdoses. More Drug Treatment Will,” Guardian. March 26, 2016, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/prescription-drug-abuse-addiction-treatment-painkiller.

  In 2005, an: Arthur Aron and others, “Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love,” Journal of Neurophysiology 94, no. 1 (July 1, 2005), 327–37; see also: Helen Fisher, “Love Is Like Cocaine,” Nautilus, February 4, 2016, nautil.us/issue/33/attraction/love-is-like-cocaine. See also: Richard A. Friedman, “I Heart Unpredictable Love,” New York Times, November 2, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/i-heart-unpredictable-love.html; Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy L. Brown, “Romantic Love: An fMRI Study of a Neural Mechanism for Mate Choice,” Journal of Comparative Neurology 493 (2005): 58-62.

  In the 1970s, a psychologist: Information on Peele comes from an interview with Peele, and three books: Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky, Love and Addiction (New York: Taplinger, 1975); Stanton Peele, The Meaning of Addiction: An Unconventional View (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985); Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky, with Mary Arnold, The Truth about Addiction and Recovery: The Life Process Program for Outgrowing Destructive Habits (New York: Fireside, 1991).

  In a 1990: Isaac Marks, “Behavioural (Non-chemical) Addictions,” British Journal of Psychiatry 85, no. 11 (November 1990): 1389–94.

  Every fifteen years: American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.), Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013).

  In the 1960s, even: Information on Rylander and punding from interviews with Andrew Lawrence and Kent Berridge; also see Andrew D. Lawrence, Andrew H. Evans, and Andrew J. Lees, “Compulsive Use of Dopamine Replacement in Parkinson’s Disease: Reward Systems Gone Awry?,” Lancet: Neurology 2, no. 10 (October 2003): 595–604; A. H. Evans and others, “Punding in Parkinson’s Disease: Its Relation to the Dopamine Dysregulation Syndrome,” Movement Disorders 19, no. 4 (April 2004): 397–405; Gösta Rylander, “Psychoses and the Punding and Choreiform Syndromes in Addiction to Central Stimulant Drugs,” Psychiatria, Neurologia, and Neurochirurgia 75, no. 3 (May–June 1972): 203–12; H. H. Fernandez and J. H. Friedman, “Punding on L-Dopa,” Movement Disorders 14, no. 5 (September 1999): 836–38; Kent C. Berridge, Isabel L. Venier, and Terry E. Robinson, “Taste reactivity analysis of 6-Hydroxydopamine-Induced Aphasia: Implications for Arousal and Anhedonia Hypotheses of Dopamine Function,” Behavioral Neuroscience 103, no. 1 (February 1989): 36–45. Both Berridge and Lawrence have published dozens of papers on the brain and addiction; for more, see: Berridge: lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/Publications.htm; Lawrence: psych.cf.ac.uk/contactsandpeople/academics/lawrence.php#publications.

  When Billy Connolly: Video of Connolly discussing Parkinson’s disease and his treatment on Conan O’Brien: teamcoco.com/video/billy-connolly-hobbit-hater.

  One recent study suggests: Xianchi Dai, Ping Dong, Jayson S. Jia, “When Does Playing Hard to Get Increase Romantic Attraction?,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143, no. 2 (April 2014): 521–26.

  CHAPTER 4: GOALS

  In 1987, three: J. W. Dunne, G. J. Hankey, and R. H. Edis, “Parkinsonism: Upturned Walking Stick as an Aid to Locomotion,” Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 68, no. 6 (June 1987): 380–81.

  But that’s not how the: Eric J. Allen, Patricia M. Dechow, Devin G. Pope, and George Wu, “Reference-Dependent Preferences: Evidence from Marathon Runners,” NBER Working Paper No. 20343, July 2014, www.nber.org/papers/w20343.

  R
obert Beamon was: Rob Bagchi, “50 Stunning Olympic Moments, No. 2: Bob Beamon’s Great Leap Forward,” Guardian, November 23, 2011, www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2011/nov/23/50-stunning-olympic-bob-beamon.

  Larson was known: Larson’s episode on Press Your Luck is discussed and broadcast during a documentary titled Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal (James P. Taylor Jr. [director], Game Show Network, 2003); Larson’s story is also recounted in: Alan Bellows, “Who Wants to Be a Thousandaire?,” Damn Interesting, September 12, 2011, www.damninteresting.com/who-wants-to-be-a-thousandaire/; This American Life, “Million Dollar Idea,” NPR, July 16, 2010, www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea.

  There’s plenty of: These searches were conducted on Google’s Ngram Viewer: books.google.com/ngrams.

  How long do: Thomas Jackson, Ray Dawson, and Darren Wilson, “Reducing the Effect of Email Interruptions on Employees, International Journal of Information Management 23, no. 1 (February 2003): 55–65.

  The researchers monitored: Information on the role of emailing at work from: Gloria J. Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand V. Cardello, “‘A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (2012): 555–64; Megan Garber, “The Latest ‘Ordinary Thing That Will Probably Kill You’? Email,” The Atlantic, May 4, 2012, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/the-latest-ordinary-thing-that-will-probably-kill-you-email/256742/; Joe Pinsker, “Inbox Zero vs. Inbox 5,000: A Unified Theory,” The Atlantic, May 27, 2015, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/05/why-some-people-cant-stand-having-unread-emails/394031/; Stephen R. Barley, Debra E. Myerson, and Stine Grodal, “E-mail as a Source and Symbol of Stress,” Organization Science 22, no. 4 (July–August 2011): 887–906; Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite, “A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions,” Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (2004): 175–82; Laura A. Dabbish and Robert E. Kraut, “Email Overload at Work: An Analysis of Factors Associated with Email Strain,” Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (2011): 431–40; Chuck Klosterman, “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” New York Times, December 3, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html; Karen Renaud, Judith Ramsay, and Mario Hair, “‘You’ve Got E-Mail!’ . . . Shall I Deal with It Now? Electronic Mail from the Recipient’s Perspective,” International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 21, no. 3 (2006): 313–32.