Craving

Craving

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? This conversation on All In The Mind zooms in on craving itself – that edgy, urgent "do this now" feeling – and how it shapes everything from smoking and drinking to overeating and compulsive scrolling on your phone.

Host Lynn Malcolm chats with psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr Judson Brewer, author of *The Craving Mind*, who argues that "cravings are in all of our genetic makeup" and that the problem starts when behaviour continues "despite adverse consequences". He breaks down the brain’s reward system into a simple loop: trigger, behaviour, and dopamine-fuelled reward. That same loop that once helped humans remember where food was now gets hijacked by cigarettes, alcohol, cupcakes and social media likes.

You’ll hear how Brewer uses mindfulness training to help people pay close attention to what their cravings and habits *actually* feel like. When smokers tune into the taste and body sensations of a cigarette, many say, "Oh, wow, I can't believe that I didn't notice this before." By getting curious about cravings rather than running from them, people can "ride out these cravings rather than getting washed along by them".

The episode also looks at how tech platforms use intermittent rewards – delayed feeds, bunched likes, unpredictable alerts – to keep you checking and hoping for the next dopamine burst. Brewer explains how this constant pull keeps us in a contracted, tense state, and contrasts it with more open, joyful states such as curiosity and flow.

For anyone wrestling with alcohol, smoking, food or their phone, this discussion offers practical tools and a fresh way of seeing cravings as patterns that can be observed, understood and gently changed. Could paying attention, rather than fighting urge after urge, be the key to loosening their grip?