Purposefully, this first lesson will likely be the most difficult to understand. The human puzzle is a complex one that we must learn in pieces. We must first begin to comprehend our complex inner workings. Thanks to great advances in science, we are capable of understanding what thinkers of the past could only guess at. We will be exploring the simplified ideas presented in Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion. In some cases, I have used her exact definitions for our purposes here. Take your time with the following lesson and do not feel daunted by the technical jargon.
This first lesson will lay the foundation of understanding the biology, or more specifically, the physicality of being. We must look at our complex human lives as the result of millions of years of evolutionary language developing into a product of immeasurable meaning. Therefore, we must begin to learn how to comprehend the language our body speaks to itself with. To peel back causality from our minute-to-minute behavior gives us insight into how we can affect change in our lives beginning with sheer will. Ergo, the argument proves itself in that one must begin to understand the biochemical building blocks of behavior and feeling in order to change them in whatever way deemed desirable.
It would be perfectly normal for someone to act in accordance with how a behavior makes them feel. Very few would admit to enjoying feeling angry, or embarrassed. The “pursuit of happiness” is a cornerstone of our society, and I would argue a cancerous ideology when we begin to disregard our negative feelings for that feeling of bliss. Let us first examine how feelings and the biological are linked. Think of something that makes you truly afraid, whether it be drowning, heights, or spiders. Conjure them powerfully in your mind, and watch how you create your own fear. Did your heart rate start increasing? How about when you feel shock or anger? Our physical bodies, such as our blood vessels react to such mental thoughts, you may become “white as a sheet” or “tomato red” simply from receiving information. Though, if I commanded you to constrict or dilate your blood vessels, you may not have been capable of such a manual change. These simple examples are demonstrations of the link between emotional and physical feeling. We must begin to investigate exactly how our body and mind feel and in what ways we can use these mechanisms to improve our lives.
In Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin observed the commonality of facial expressions throughout the world, regardless of culture. Persons from Asia and America share the same facial expressions when experiencing disgust or anger. Even more interesting is that we humans share facial expressions with animals as well. A wolf baring its fangs uses the same facial musculature as any human does when angry or threatened. Anyone that has pets will tell you how emotionally robust their animals can be, and how those emotions can be used to train their behaviors. Darwin theorized that the same simple physiology of emotions have been preserved and used again and again over evolutionary eons and across species. On this basis, he speculated that emotions must play a key role in the “survival of the fittest.” For instance, think on your favorite food. It is not only a key part in sustenance, you also have emotional feelings tied to said food. I don’t just eat broccoli, I love broccoli. When it comes time for us to seek food, our drives for our favorite foods are linked directly to an emotion that taught us to feel strongly about them.
As much as we feign to know it, we share much in common with the life around us. One such commonality is how we process information about the world around us. Yes, that means you and every other living being utilizes the same type of internal information system: the psychosomatic network. On each and every single little microscopic cell, on every single organ, there are vast arrays of open sockets, constantly vibrating at unique frequencies, in unique shapes, waiting for orders to be plugged in. These orders come in a variety of ways, known as ligands. Get ready to dig in to some heavy hitting vocabulary, and make sure to take your time.
Ligand: The chemical key that binds to receptors. This term is used for any natural or manmade substance that binds selectively to its own specific receptor on the surface of a cell. The ligand bumps onto the receptor and slips off, bumps back on, slips back off again. The ligand bumping on is what we call the binding, and in the process, the ligand transfers a message via its molecular properties to the receptor.
Ligand – Receptor Binding: The receptor on the cell, having received a message, transmits it from the surface of the cell deep into the cell’s interior, where the message can change the state of the cell dramatically. A chain reaction of biochemical events is initiated as tiny machines roar into action and directed by the message of the ligand begin any number of activities – manufacturing new proteins, making decisions about cell division, opening or closing on channels, adding or subtracting energetic chemical groups like the phosphates. In short, the life of the cell, what it is up to at any moment, is determined by which receptors are on its surface, and whether those receptors are occupied by ligands or not. On a more global scale, these minute physiological phenomena at the cellular level can translate to large changes in behavior, physical activity, and mood.
Receptors: Made up of proteins, tiny amino acids strung together in crumpled chains, looking like beaded necklaces that have folded in on themselves. If you were to assign a different color to each of the receptors that scientists have identified, the average cell surface would appear as a multicolored mosaic of at least seventy different hues – 50,000 of one type of receptor, 10,000 of another, 100,000 of a third and so forth. A typical neuron (nerve cell) may have millions of receptors on its surface. Molecular biologists can isolate these receptors, determine their molecular weight, and eventually crack their chemical structure, which means identifying the exact sequence of amino acids that makes up the receptor molecule. Receptors function as sensing molecules- scanners. Just as the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers and skin act as sense organs, so, too, do the receptors, only on a cellular level.
Neuropeptides: part of a complex internal information system. The presence of receptors for so many peptides throughout the body and not just the brain illustrates that the body’s various systems communicate at a much deeper level than many understand.
Receptor specificity – The process of binding is very selective. The receptor ignores all but the particular ligand that’s made to fit it. The opiate receptor, for instance can “receive” only those ligands that are members of the opiate group, like endorphins, morphine or heroin. The Valium receptor can attach only to Valium and Valium-like peptides. It is this specificity of the receptors that allows for a complex system of organization and insures that everything gets to where it’s supposed to be going.
Ligand types
Neurotransmitters – The smallest, simplest of molecules, generally made in the brain to carry information across the gap, or synapse between one neuron and the next. Many start out as simple amino acids, the building blocks of protein, and then get a few atoms added here and there. A few neurotransmitters are unmodified amino acids. [Examples of neurotransmitters: acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, glycine, GABA, and serotonin.]
Steroids – All steroids begin as cholesterol, which gets transformed by a series of biochemical steps into a specific kind of hormone. For example, enzymes in the gonads – the testes for males, the ovaries for females – change the cholesterol into the sex hormones [testosterone, progesterone and estrogen], which other enzymes convert cholesterol into other kinds of steroid hormones, such as cortisol, which are secreted by the outer layer of the adrenal glands under stress.
Peptides – The largest category of ligand, possibly consisting of up to 95 percent of ligands. Peptides play a wide role in regulating practically all life processes.
There is a serious question to be asked about receptor specificity. When someone consumes a drug such as alcohol, THC or heroin those peptides must be acting on receptors we already have. If we do not already have the relevant set of receptors, a ligand will have not have much effect. This is where the idea of endogenous and exogenous ligands come into play. In order for these receptors to generally have any value to your biological system, you must already be capable of producing these peptides (therefore feelings) yourself, without a need for an external substance. Let’s use a painkiller, morphine, for example. The bodily response of consuming morphine is a dulling of pain. Morphine is considered an exogenous ligand, meaning external, that acts on receptors directly related to how we perceive pain. It stands to reason that we already have a natural painkiller our own bodies produce endogenously, known as endorphins or endogenous morphine. What happens when we consume too much exogenous painkiller? Our ability to handle pain without it becomes more and more limited. Literally speaking, the more we depend on opiates for pain relief, the less capable we are of dealing with pain without them. Many suffering from withdrawals of opiate addiction will tell you of the immense pain they’re in, throughout their body. Whereas, pregnant women that practice Lamaze breathing can tap into their natural painkillers during childbirth. If we depend on a blast of external ligands for our anxiety, or happiness, we eventually dull our ability to feel and handle those emotions without them.
To utilize an addiction I’m familiar with, let’s discuss alcohol. When one consumes alcohol, it binds to what is known as the GABA receptor set, thus evoking an anti-anxiety effect. Drugs like Valium or Librium also bind to the GABA receptor set. The issue of being alcohol dependent arises from these receptors’ decreased sensitivity to reacting to GABA binding. Thus, our body’s own anti-anxiety peptides become less effective the more we depend on exogenous chemicals. The vicious cycle of an alcoholic is a known one. One drinking bender would lead to severe anxiety about the events of the lost night, yet being unable to handle the anxiety, I would depend again on drowning it away with more alcohol. The never ending cycle, never allowing my own body to deal with anxiety the natural, endogenous way. I became less capable of naturally handling anxiety the more I depended on alcohol to alleviate it. The man who casually has a drink to relax after work suffers the same problem, in a more subtle way, “I need a drink” he says when stressed out. Perhaps understanding this concept will enable one to perceive some alcoholics for what they really are: people suffering from extreme anxiety, unable to cope naturally due to what they’ve done to themselves with drinking.
Candance Pert goes on to explain: from the evolutionary perspective, the flow of neuropeptides are a vital part of learning and memory. Strong emotions carve strong memories. It has been shown that the hippocampus of the brain, without which we cannot learn anything new, is a nodal point for neuropeptide receptors, containing virtually all of them. Emotional states or moods are produced by respective neuropeptide ligands. And what we experience as an emotion or a feel is also a mechanism for activating a particular neuronal circuit -simultaneously throughout the brain and body- which generates a behavior involving the whole creature, with all the necessary physiological changes that behavior would require. It is important to remember that receptors are present throughout the body and not just the brain. Therefore, when you consume a mind altering drug, or become consumed by a mood altering memory, your entire body’s state shifts to match the information coming from their respective ligands, based on the receptors activated.
Not only do we become dependent on exogenous chemicals for feelings we are naturally capable of, but both our bodies and minds learn to depend on them because of growing insensitivity, or tolerance. What of boredom? What if happens when we depend on orgasm, media or video games to alleviate boredom, loneliness or sadness? When we become biochemically dependent on external stimulating activities to bolster up our “feel good” chemicals, a general state of depression can kick in because of the growing insensitivity and tolerance to our body’s own natural “feel good” chemicals. A gambler becomes addicted to the excitement or rush of taking risks, a social media addict never wants to feel lonely so they open up the right websites, a cannabis dependent desperately feels the need to self-medicate from a growing inability to relax, or the person with low self-esteem that becomes addicted to sex and orgasm uses other people and discards them away without meaning. The caffeine addict has a difficult time waking up without their external boost, the video gamer demands more and more detail in virtual worlds, but cannot appreciate the vast beauty and complexity of the real world they actually live in. I’ve known far too many addicts that put up walls around their dependencies and allow themselves to be defined by them with no understanding of how self-defeating their addictions are. We will more fully investigate the idea of the “feel good” chemicals from stimulating activities and their power over your mind in a later lesson.
The common phrase is “I can’t” when considering dropping their poisonous chemical or activity of choice. The fact of the matter is, you can. There is hope. These receptors can repair themselves if you just give them a break. It would understandably be painful to go without your crutches for an extended period of time, however one must really comprehend how much damage these dependencies cause. You lose your ability to be a whole person without compulsive behaviors, and that is nothing short of a crime against your own humanity. It really is as simple as stopping. Your penance of temporary suffering will lead to healing, and you will repair. Too many people perceive withdrawals as all negative and no positive, yet you have everything to gain from the repair of your own receptors, the balancing of your own internal chemistry, to silence the manic internal language of needing extreme bursts to feel “normal.”
With a basic comprehension of how ligands and receptors work, we can begin to understand the enigma of our thoughts and behaviors. The following lessons will delve more into the differences in sensitivities between persons, the specific internal changes that occur from our behaviors, as well as controlling our primitive drives away from unproductive actions or substances. If you suffer from a dependence, you may have felt a pang of fear from learning that you must stop in order to heal your receptor sensitivity. This is the dependence controlling you. Taking control of your life is not an easy task, and no one or nothing will make it easier for you. When I begin to feel doubt, I have a certain thought process I use to stabilize myself: What was I born with? What do I need?
Your turn to ask yourself: Is there something you can’t do without on a daily basis, yet you know of many people that don’t have that same dependence? Do you believe their lives are less full than yours, or more?
Our next lesson will be a continuation of the concepts found here. It will be partially auto-biographical, in order to paint a more detailed picture with examples of being dependent on certain activities and substances. The tentative publishing date will be October 1st, 2021.
The next full lesson’s tentative publishing date will be October 8th, 2021.
Thanks for all of your support. I believe in you all!