Originally Posted by
Ironhorse1 
Thanks for all the replies.
Coffee is what gets me up in the AM! My original post was probably a bit unclear. I was thinking about it and was wondering if I was possibly harming my recovery by continuing to stimulate the addictive part of my brain with other substances (caffeine and nicotine)...and increasing the dose of those substances to help deal with withdrawal from alcohol.
I get kind of nerdy and scientific with almost anything I do which is why I posed the question. Heck...I even researched how to make the perfect hard boiled egg this morning!
I'm SUPER nerdy and scientific, and I research everything.
Terribly sorry for the length.
The mesolimbic pathway in your brain is known as the reward pathway or the "pleasure center." It gets activated whenever something rewarding happens, and that amounts to what we feel to be the sensation of pleasure. This is mediated by dopamine. In other words, when you feel something "pleasurable," whatever it may be, dopamine is released between the neurons in your mesolimbic pathway (other parts are involved too, but that's the primary one), and this signals more and more dopamine release, which triggers your brain to remember that a certain thing is "rewarding," leading again to what we refer to as "pleasure." The whole point is for you to remember a thing being good so that you'll go back to it in the future.
ALL drugs activate the mesolimbic pathway. This is what makes them (and sugar and sex and TV and even exercise) addictive. What was meant to make you remember that something was good ends up leading you back to something bad.
The difference is that particular drugs also stimulate other pathways, and release other neurotransmitters. Alcohol relieves anxiety and de-stresses and does all of these other relaxing things through its stimulation of the release of GABA (another neurotransmitter, like dopamine, but with different functions - mainly inhibitory). Caffeine, on the other hand, deals only with adenosine, which is about wakefulness. It stimulates you because it reduces the neurotransmitter (adenosine) that makes you sleepy. Both caffeine and alcohol (again, just as well as sex and sugar and TV and Netflix) release dopamine, and can, as a result, be addictive. But drinking coffee will not stimulate the release of GABA, so you needn't fear caffeine leading you directly back to alcohol in that sense.
If you have an addictive personality, you have an addictive personality. Maybe your (and my) dopamine levels are low? Who knows. If you drink large amounts of coffee just to feel good, then you aren't addressing your addictive tendencies, and that can be dangerous. But whatever keeps you sober is most important. So I think, especially in the first few days and weeks, don't worry about anything but not drinking. If that means you end up smoking a few more cigarettes and drinking a little (or a lot) more coffee, so be it. Just keep up with your recovery, and you'll be golden.
