Originally Posted by
Algorithm 
If a car is coming at you at high speed, for example, the mid-brain will probably save your life by urging you to jump out of the way quickly. The Beast is only that new, rogue survival drive pointing south towards death, instead of north towards life.
I was thinking about this, this morning, when I was watching a programme on the telly about a man, who had been stabbed and left in a burning house. His only way out was through a wall of flames. And he did it, he jumped through them, to escape, to live. A legitamite survival drive doing it's job, urging him through the flames, to live, instead of the normal avoidence of flames or die.
So, the midbrain commands the survival drives. The drive to drink/drug is a "rogue" drive that, in that the brain has produced this drive towards drink/drugs because they have hi-jacked the reward centres that are usually only triggered by legitamite survival drives.
When I was thinking about it this morning, once I had started drinking, I really think I would have chanced jumping through a wall of fire, if that was the only way I could get to a bottle of vodka, if it was the only bottle of vodka left I could get to, and I thought there was a chance of getting through without injury!