Dependence: First Steps — Seeing the Movie Your Brain Makes

When it comes to drug and substance dependence, the first and most important step is not action but understanding. To grasp what is actually happening to you, how it works, and where it comes from. Dr. Saulitis emphasizes: "the most important thing is to catch what this is, how this is — and only then we'll rest and discuss." First see the mechanism, then decide what to do with it.

Step one: realize you are watching a movie

Every time you see, do, or recall something, the brain makes a movie. You are not looking at "reality" as such, but at the picture your brain paints. The very same microphone makes a person laugh in mania and cry in depression: the object is identical, the movie differs. The first step is to recognize that craving, urge, and the habitual reaction are also a movie your brain runs — not an inescapable truth.

Step two: find out which "cinema" you are sitting in

The doctor compares the brain to a filter and to a hall of sixteen cinemas: one shows a horror film, another shows something else. "Whichever wolf you feed will prevail." Dependence is a familiar screening that keeps playing because you keep walking back into it. The second step is to notice honestly: which movie do I watch most often, which wolf am I feeding?

Step three: see how this pattern grew

The picture you see is shaped not by abstract "psychological things" but by a pattern of connections in the brain. When an association repeats often, the link between neurons grows into a permanent one — like Pavlov's conditioned reflex in the dog. This is how we are conditioned from childhood: family, school, the information environment, even food. Understanding this strips away the illusion that it all just "happens by itself" and reveals the grown pathway along which the impulse travels.

Step four: reclaim your ability to resist

The doctor's core message: people are often not allowed to understand that they can resist on their own, make decisions on their own, feel themselves on their own. The capacity not to give in to influence, not to be "induced," is itself the resource that moves a person forward. In the context of dependence this means: I am not obliged to automatically attend the usual screening. I have a choice about which wolf to feed.

Practice: first steps

1. Name the movie. When a craving arises, tell yourself: "This is a movie my brain is making right now" — not an unconditional reality.
2. Identify the cinema. Ask: which screening am I turning on, and how often do I walk in?
3. Find the pattern. Recall which repeated signals, environment, and information "wore in" this pathway.
4. Feed the other wolf. Deliberately steer attention and action toward the "movie" that brings strength and energy.
5. Don't stay in it alone. Understanding the mechanism is the start; beyond that you need support and a specialist's guidance.