The corridor narrowed

Where did the alternatives go? Not absent. Not removed. Below the noise floor.

Addiction is a corridor narrowed faster than alternatives could be widened. This is the chapter’s central claim. Here is how it happens.

A pathway used again and again raises a noise floor around the place it is used. The mind’s record at that place shows the repeated use. The molecules that register the use recalibrate. The part of the mind that predicts the reward updates its prediction. Even the people around the person adjust what they expect.

The noise floor is what every other path has to compete against to register as available.

As the floor rises, the alternatives drop below it. For now, they are out of reach. They cannot register as live paths your modelling can take up.

This is the corridor narrowed.

Before, the paths open to you included alternatives. After, they sit below the noise floor. Not absent. Not removed. Out of reach of your modelling, at the level it now runs at.

Your capacity to choose, used now, has the corridor that has actually narrowed. It is not what is left over of the raw pull. It is real. And it works inside the corridor the past use built.

This is the axiom running. The four conditions produce the noise floor through the mind’s record at that site. The corridor narrows because Record holds the changes the past use wrote, against what you model now.

Your capacity to choose is what tells you apart from the raw pull, at every moment. But it works inside the corridor that Record has produced.

The structure reads both. The capacity to choose is real. The corridor it works inside has narrowed.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal is the corridor’s catastrophic contraction, at a different timescale.

Take the substance away. The mind and body cannot recalibrate back fast enough to stay viable, not without substantial help from outside. The corridor’s width had been held at the level the past use required. It collapses.

The body has been holding itself in a shape the substance kept supplying. Taking the substance away does not return it to its shape before the use. Not in the time the body needs.

For some substances, the risk of death during acute withdrawal is not trivial. The chapter notes the fact and moves on.

Source. Ø Applications, Chapter 7 — Cognitive Sovereignty and Addiction. The book in full: the420code.org/Applications.pdf. The short edition: the420code.org/models/applications/07-cognitive-sovereignty-and-addiction/. The film, The noise floor: the420code.org/films/applications/. Its kill switches: APP-7.1 to APP-7.5.