addiction, food addiction

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/3/5/17080470/addiction-opioids-moral-blame-choices-medication-crutches-philosophy

So food addiction is blind, deaf and driven. So some foods digest into opioid peptides and that is what drives food addiction. Back to beef and cabbage I guess.

There are a few good lines in this one:

“wanting system,” which regulates our cravings for things like food, sex, and drugs using signals based in the neurotransmitter dopamine. The wanting system has powerful control over behavior, and its cravings are insensitive to long-term consequences.  

His behavior is being controlled by a part of his mind that is not his true self.

addictive behavior is often initiated and maintained by the purposes it serves in someone’s life, often as self-medication for physical or psychological trauma. Nor am I saying that addictive behavior is compulsive, irresistible,

it lies somewhere in between choice and compulsion.

She is just faced with cravings that are far harder to resist.

but that she is unable to use this understanding to control her behavior

If the source of addiction is overly strong automatic cravings

The charioteer, Reason, tries his best to guide the chariot along the road of virtue. But his horse, Appetite, is stubborn, “deaf as a post” and may gallop off the road at any moment. “Chariot-driving in our case,” Plato concludes, “is inevitably a painfully difficult business.” If we take that to heart, maybe we will start giving the addicted what they need to get their lives back under control.

So there is no solution offered.... other than just do it and suffer the rest of your life.