What Is a Craving? Dopamine, Urges and What Actually Weakens Them

Cravings aren’t weakness. They’re chemistry.

In this episode, I explain what a craving actually is, how urges form through the brain’s reward system, and what genuinely weakens them over time. Not through force. Not through guilt. But through nervous system learning and awareness.

This podcast explores emotional eating, stress addiction, unhealthy relationship patterns, and nervous system regulation.

If you listened to my recent episode on addiction and willpower, this builds on that conversation. Understanding cravings changes how you respond to unhealthy compulsions or addiction.

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Transcript

Today I’m Exploring Cravings

Today I’m exploring cravings. Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast. If you’re a regular listener, I’m re-sharing this updated earlier episode on cravings because it connects closely with the addiction and nervous system work that I’ve been talking about more recently.

If you’ve been exploring stress, anxiety, emotional eating, attachment patterns, or any other kind of compulsion with me, this episode explains what’s happening underneath the surface.

The science and psychology here still hold up, and it’s a helpful foundation for understanding how habit loops form and how they can change.

You could also think of today’s episode as an introduction to how addiction actually works in the body and the brain.

A Listener Question About Comfort Eating

But first, a comment and a question.

She says, “I am a lifelong comfort eater and I want to stop, but I don’t know how. How can I replace food with healthy things? I’m desperate to overcome this problem.”

This question will be partially answered today in my podcast, as in all of my podcasts, particularly the ones about what it’ll take to give up comfort eating. But I also have a couple of specific things to add.

Sometimes people suggest replacing a craved substance with another substance that satisfies you. We all hear of alcohol addicts who become sugar addicts after giving up alcohol.

But what that does is reinforce a craving. Anything similar to the original cue can trigger a similar craving.

This is why recovery isn’t about denying pleasure. It’s about not denying reality.

I’m going to be talking today about what a craving actually is. But in general, awareness and intermittent reinforcement are where the stronger learning is.

As I talked about in my habits podcast, one way to change a habit is by giving yourself a reward that’s different to the food.

So, to answer your question, you can only replace the food you crave with healthy food if healthy food feels like a reward that’s big enough for you.

Personally, I found this to be something that’s grown on me. There’s absolutely no way I would have imagined replacing chocolate or coffee with fruit or coconut at first. But through mindful attention of what I like, need, and feel, both of these things now feel like a treat to me because they feel so good for my body.

So, let’s start answering some questions about what a craving actually is.

What Is a Craving?

The Encyclopedia Titanica tells us that a craving is a passionate impulsive desire for something, person, or food. It goes on to say the craving arises from the formation of mental images of objects or a person or food that the human being knew in the past.

The craving can come to mind through the association of the senses such as the smell of an aroma, a sound, among others, that can lead the person to remember, form a visual image, and from that moment on have a craving for something.

Raymond F. Anton MD, in talking of alcohol addiction, says the neuroadaptive model suggests that the prolonged presence of alcohol induces changes in brain cell function. In the absence of alcohol, those changes cause an imbalance in brain activity that results in craving.

Neurobiological and brain imaging studies have identified numerous brain chemicals and brain regions that may be involved in craving.

In other words, craving is not a lack of willpower. It’s a learned biological response.

Dopamine, Reward and Anticipation

But how is that process set up?

A craving is set up by feeling that you will get a reward. A reward is pleasure of some kind.

You get a dopamine hit each time you get a reward from something or someone. So your body remembers that, seeks it out, or sets up a craving when you’re reminded of that pleasure.

Dopamine is not happiness.

It’s the anticipation of a reward.

This is a normal process that all of us have. We all get cravings. It’s part of life, especially in the world that we live in where we’re reminded of the pleasure that we could buy or have by every single business all the time, all day.

The problem comes when the reward is harmful or detrimental in some way.

Addiction and Loss of Control

Addiction may be defined as continued use of something despite its adverse effects.

The definition of addiction according to the NHS is addiction is defined as not having control over doing, taking, or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you.

Here we start to see how we can forget ourselves for the sake of that dopamine hit and reward.

I can’t count the number of times that people have told me that they have to give in to an urge to eat or to drink or to smoke or to check their phone or to text a new love interest because if they didn’t, the craving would just get worse until it was satisfied and they’d end up doing it anyway.

This belief is one of the strongest drivers of addiction.

The idea that a craving must be obeyed.

This is also what can make you irritable when you have a craving.

Addictions can be stubbornly held on to with reasons, excuses, and denial like, “I’ve got to finish this. I’ll start the diet tomorrow.” Or a refusal to see the adverse effects.

According to Judson Brewer, the sea slug moves away from toxicity and towards what feels good. And so do we. We move towards and away from what feels good and what feels bad.

We love scrolling on Instagram, food, alcohol, and attention from people because they all feel instantly good. We get that dopamine hit every time we get a compliment, that red heart fills out, and that chemical hits our system.

The quicker a substance is delivered into your bloodstream, the more of a craving you’re likely to get for it. So the addiction builds fast.

Habit Loops and Bias

As normal human beings, we have a lot of knee-jerk responses.

These are fast automatic survival responses, not thoughtful decisions.

A reflex response takes only three cells to perform.

That’s exactly what’s happening when we respond to a craving. It doesn’t take much intelligence, just a quick unconscious pathway of reward.

The trigger-reward system means that we’re reminded of the substance or person that we got a reward from, we associate feeling good with it, so we want it.

Just like all the experiments that have been done with dogs, rats, monkeys where we observe that the animal goes towards the place of reward habitually and avoids areas of punishment.

We are exactly the same. Craving really is that simple.

The more we see it, the more we have a bias towards it. And this is how habit develops.

For example, if you eat chocolate and it tastes delicious, in the future you’re going to choose this against other substances that don’t taste as good given the choice.

That’s why sometimes if I’ve got chocolate in the cupboard, my body will want that more than breakfast.

We may have a chocolate bias and we see the world with chocolate glasses, especially if we found that reward when we were feeling upset about something.

Just like dieting, this also sets up a dissatisfaction in life where we constantly wonder what we could be doing to be happier.

Craving a dopamine hit is part of this human daily experience.

But addiction is when a drug is abused and it hijacks the dopamine reward system in the brain.

And this happens far more easily than we think.

What You Can Do When Cravings Take Over

So, what can you do if this has gone too far for you?

One thing you can do is check your subjective bias and get to know your habit loops.

You’ve got to work out what reward you’re getting to know what it is that you need to give up. So draw this process for yourself.

For example, it starts pretty soon after I wake up for me. I will start looking for rewards to get me out of bed. As if I need something to look forward to to raise me from the pain of having to leave my comfortable, cosy bed.

Something to transition comfortably from the soft, perhaps vulnerable, but safe space that I sleep in to the social, action-oriented world of responsibility.

This kind of loop is so useful for me to observe because it gives me back choices because I’m no longer fighting the craving.

I’m understanding it.

Really, if I think about it, there’s nothing negative about getting up for me. It just might be the way that I do it.

When we feed the wound with a substance, we don’t allow the wound to heal, but we can if we don’t scratch that itch.

Succumbing to a craving is so common. It’s just like scratching an itch. We all do it.

But as I’ve been saying, this reward means immediate reinforcement of the craving. It’s just going to keep on coming.

This is why one drink, one bite of something tasty, or even just one cat video leads to just another one.

Cravings Are Urgent But Temporary

A second thing you can do is to think about times when you were unable to satisfy your craving.

Maybe you were on a journey and you couldn’t get hold of the thing that you really wanted. What actually happened?

Did it eventually go away?

Eventually, it does go away.

The craving gets triggered. It rides higher, but then it stops and goes away on its own.

They feel urgent, but they are temporary.

Brewer quotes research into this, where cravings continue for those who continue to feed them and where they drop after a while for those who don’t.

Over time, that dopamine hit or the need for it gets less.

Each time you eat, drink, scroll, or text that hottie, you reinforce cravings or addiction. It feels like a relief for a split second, but then you want more.

But it does go away if you don’t feed it.

Especially if you use that feeling of craving.

If you join it, if you stay with it and breathe through it, join it rather than try to get away from it. Be interested in it and use it as a navigation tool.

Give up trying to get anywhere other than being present.

Learn not to be so caught up in your mind patterns.

This is not willpower. This is nervous system learning.

Mindfulness and Nervous System Learning

What I’m describing here is mindfulness.

Brewer shows us that the most effective strategy he used with people when he conducted his research was Tara Brach’s RAIN process.

This is a process where you recognise, allow, investigate, and nurture whatever comes up for you in the moment.

It sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? But it is the number one tool and it has been for me in being able to feed myself well and to sustain this habit of not eating sugar.

As you know, I’ve weaned myself off coffee and sugar by becoming acutely aware of what I was actually getting from it.

Sugar gives me an uncomfortable rush and sometimes makes me feel sick and coffee keeps me awake for far too long. Both of them make me feel physically unwell with heart palpitations, dehydration, and tension.

But I also stay aware of it being just a craving, which I don’t want to be duped by again.

Cross Addiction and Staying With the Craving

So target your craving by turning towards it.

One of the most intense times I remember doing this was when I was hooked on an unavailable man years ago.

I had both a craving for contact from him, but also to ease my anxiety with junk food. That’s cross addiction.

In that instance, I repeated over and over again this cycle of noticing my craving, knowing it was just my history and my biology craving a dopamine hit, staying with the sensation of it, and letting it pass, feeling the relief of not having given in to this harmful behaviour again.

Sometimes you’ll have to run through this cycle many times in succession, but like a wave, it does come and go and fade in its intensity.

Your body learns that it’s not going to be satisfied in this way.

So it stops seeking this reward, which helps you to see more clearly what’s good for you and what you really want.

Bringing It All Together

Today, I talked about what a craving actually is.

I talked about how cravings are linked to the reward system, learning, and dopamine, just like habits.

How habits form through cue, reward, repetition.

I talked about the difference between anticipation and real satisfaction and why replacing one substance with another can reinforce that loop.

I described the definition of addiction and how it develops.

Why cravings feel urgent but are temporary.

I talked about how every time we give in, we strengthen that pathway.

And how staying with a craving weakens it over time.

I mentioned the role of mindfulness and observing sensation and how cross addiction can occur.

And finally, I talked about how understanding your habit loop gives you back choice.

If this episode made sense to you, go back or listen to the episodes on breaking habits, on addiction, or nervous system regulation.

These all connect directly with what we’ve been talking about today.

And make sure that you’re following the show so that you stay with this series.

It’s going to deepen in ways that will help you.

Thank you so much for listening. This has been the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast with Shelley Treacher. I’ll see you again soon.