The Seba library treats Adrenaline in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Dayton, Tian, Maté, Gabor, Levine, Peter A.).
Adrenaline is probably the single most addictive substance known to humanity. Chemically, it is a near equivalent to the c
Dayton advances the provocative thesis that adrenaline functions as the prototypical addictive substance, chemically and neurologically underpinning cycles of rage, violence, and compulsive emotional re-enactment.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007thesis
we engage in certain behaviors in a way that makes them self-medicating, achieving a strong enough adrenaline rush that
Dayton argues that behavioral self-medication—including compulsive activity—is pursued precisely for the adrenaline surge it produces, framing the hormone as a psychobiological painkiller sought to suppress unprocessed emotional pain.
, Emotional Sobriety: From Relationship Trauma to Resilience and Lasting Fulfillment, 2007thesis
it’s the adrenaline I’m after, along with the precious reward chemicals that will flood my brain when I hold the new CD in hand, providing an all too temporary reprieve from the stress of my driven state.
Maté identifies adrenaline as the primary reward sought in addictive seeking behavior, describing how the hormone provides temporary relief from a chronically stressed internal state only to re-ignite the craving cycle.
, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, 2008thesis
I feel a heightened alertness, as though I’m supercharged with adrenaline. Though intense, this feeling does not overwhelm me.
Levine’s first-person account demonstrates how conscious, mindful attention to adrenaline-charged alertness can serve as a doorway into somatic self-regulation rather than a trigger for traumatic overwhelm.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010supporting
in pain and deep emotion, the glands do, in fact, pour out an excess of adrenin as he then called it into the circulating blood. Adrenin is capable of inducing by itself, or of augmenting the nervous influences which do induce the very changes in the viscera which accompany suffering and the major emotions.
Woodman draws on Cannon’s experimental findings to establish that the adrenal release of epinephrine in pain and major emotion produces the visceral body pathology she links to chronic complexes of fear and repressed anger in her analytic-psychological patients.
, The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa and the Repressed Feminine: a Psychological Study, 1980supporting
the orbitofrontal area of the cerebral cortex may therefore be intimately involved in the activation of adrenal noradrenaline in response to emotional stress.
Schore situates the activation of adrenal noradrenaline within an orbitofrontal regulatory circuit, proposing this sympathetic-adrenomedullary pathway as the neurobiological substrate of interest-excitement affect and its dysregulation in developmental trauma.
, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
it is tempting to speculate that epinephrine may have been the first catecholamine to have a major neural function since it is situated in the lowermost, primitive parts of the brain
Panksepp frames epinephrine as evolutionarily primary among the catecholamines, located in archaic brain structures, providing an evolutionary-neurobiological grounding for its centrality in primitive survival and stress responses.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting
adrenaline and noradrenaline secreted into the blood never get to the pineal. The pineal security system, made up of ‘vacuuming’ nerve cells, simply cleans up the blood-borne adrenaline and noradrenaline in an incredibly efficient manner.
Strassman notes in passing that blood-borne adrenaline and noradrenaline are actively excluded from the pineal gland by specialized cellular mechanisms, relevant to his argument about the pineal’s biochemical insularity.
, DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, 2001aside
A racing heart is part of body and mind readying for the survival actions of fight-or-flight mediated by the sympathetic-adrenal nervous system.
Levine identifies the sympathetic-adrenal system as the anatomical pathway through which the fight-or-flight preparation—indexed by heart rate—is mediated, contextualizing the somatic sequelae of undischarged survival energy in trauma.
, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010aside