 If you go back in recorded history, you will find that one of the first mentions of any society which learnt to write or you know put their records into stone was about getting you know stimulating their brains in some way or the other. 3500 years back, when people were reciting the first hymns of the Rig Veda, what are they about? About grinding somras out of some twig and getting high, staying awake at night, looking at the stars and writing poetry. If you go to South America, what were they doing? They were chewing a leaf called the coca leaf which is like chewing pan and getting slightly merry. Around 3000 years back, societies all across the world discovered that if they fermented grains and fruits etcetera, they could make a liquid which made them pretty high. And so the point I am trying to make is drugs and alcohol have been there for a very, very long time. Yet human beings also have had problems with drugs and alcohol, it is not been an easy ride. There are some people we know who can develop very severe problems using drugs and alcohol. Now the debate has always been of a very polarized nature, either North or South. When it comes to, for example, the cannabis debate, people say, shivji ka substance hai, you should have unrestricted access. On the other hand, people say it is a banned drug and you should put people into jail for it. So what we need to do is to actually separate fact from myth and myth. Dangerous from non-dangerous, we need to have facts because unless we have facts, we cannot decide. That is number one. Number two is also, I mean one needs to stop getting drawn into these polarized debates and that one can do only with facts. So it is good to look at some of these things and the first question that anybody has or anybody brings up when people start talking about drugs and alcohol is why does not the government ban it, as if it is that easy. The second question is why do people drink and smoke in the first place? If they wanted to, they could just stop, which brings us to the third argument where people say, look I have no sympathy with somebody who has developed an addiction. I mean if he just wants to, he can stop. The fact that he does not want to means that he must be a weak person or a morally not good person. We need to look at these arguments. So today, what I would like to focus on this morning is to talk about why do people use drugs in the first place? By drugs, I mean a variety of stuff. When one talks of drugs, one talks about substances which make changes in the brain as opposed to drugs like say antibiotics or things like that. When one talks about these drugs which make changes in the brain, we call them substances of abuse because human beings tend to abuse them etcetera. So basically, if you look at them, there are two great varieties. One are drugs which depress the functioning of the brain like alcohol, cannabis, opioids, things which come from opium like heroin, stuff which is in the coughs, syrups etcetera. And then there are drugs which increase the functioning of the brain and for example, drugs like cocaine or various other drugs which are far less found in India today. That is not the point. The point I would like to actually start with is why do people find drugs rewarding? Otherwise, people would not use it, is not it? The answer seems to be quite simple that the human brain in some way is actually hardwired for addiction. It is a very strange answer that there seems to be a circuit which places human beings at greater danger for addiction. Goats do not get addicted, cats and dogs do not get addicted. It is only with the higher primates that you get addicted. You know how difficult it is to get a fruit fly addicted? Very, very difficult. You have to put it in a chamber and pump it full of alcohol fumes and keep the fruit flies in there for some 48 hours which is many years in the life of a fruit fly and only then they start getting buzzed. Anyway, so why are human beings primed for addiction? It brings me to a subsidiary question. Can I ask you a question? What is the meaning of life? Why does life exist? Why do you think life exists? Any answers? No? What do you think? Take a guess. There is no purpose in life. There is no purpose in life. That is one very influential stream of philosophy that there is no purpose in life. I hope some of you other guys would think that there is a purpose to life. Why does life exist? What do you think? No purpose. That is an easy one. A set of will feel our needs and aspirations. What needs and aspirations? Like to evolve in a better human being and… And what about the people who do not evolve with better human beings? They just try. But why do you have to evolve with better human beings? It gives a kind of stability inside. So, what about the cats and dogs? They have to evolve to be better cats and dogs? So, it all depends on which section you are talking about, like for the lower… I am talking of all life. There has to be some meaning. Why is all this thing happening? Human life has been there for more than 1 billion years. Not human life. I mean life. What do you think? There is one very influential opinion, which says life actually exists to replicate itself. It is a self-replicating structure that the most important thing in life is to pass your genes on. And if you look at most of life, that is what it does beautifully. But it is very strange that in the small and the small, you know, more primitive forms of life, they replicate by themselves, they self-replicating. But as you get more complicated, as the organism gets more complicated, you have to have two organisms, which come together, share genetic material and create another, which basically is reproduction by having sex. So, one of the very important functions of life is to have sex. And sex has to be interesting, otherwise nobody is going to get involved. And animal life, human life is not going to go forward. So, to ensure that sex is interesting, I would not use the word interesting, but I will use the word rewarding. Very early on in animal existence, they developed as brains grew, as brains evolved. They developed a circuit, which made sure that sex was made interesting, rewarding. But it is not enough to have sex. You have to eat to live, so that you can have sex. So, food has to be rewarding. That is not enough. You have to live long enough to mature, to pass on your genes, which means that shelter has to be rewarding, which means that collaborating with other animals has to be rewarding, which means that various other things have to be rewarding and so on, so forth, down the line. You come to where poetry has to be rewarding, literature has to be rewarding, making money has to be rewarding, is not it. And evolution is a very stingy process. It keeps using the same, what shall I say, mechanisms over and over again. Unlike you engineers, who devise multiple mechanisms for multiple things, you know. And in today's age, there are 2000 apps for the same thing on your cell phone, right. But life is not like that, life is very stingy. Once it makes a pattern, it keeps using it over and over again. So, the same pattern, which is there for the amoeba, may be not the amoeba, but yes, also the amoeba is also there in human beings. The same genetic code is replicated over and over again. So, we have, let me just see whether I can get this up. This is what I was saying, that the brain actually did not evolve for drugs, it evolved for normal life, right. But brains are hardwired to keep the species alive. And as I was saying, that this normal circuit is for natural pleasures in life, which establishes habits which dominate our behavior. When these activities are performed, which is having sex, which is having food, which is looking after your shelter, the brain rewards the body through a very complex pleasure center. I would not really call it a pleasure center, it is a reward circuit. Let me see whether I have a… Now, this in red is basically the reward pathway of the brain. So, suppose I were to have a rasgulla, first time around. My brain says, wow, let us do it again, right, and it gets hard coded. Next time I see a rasgulla, can you bring that up again? Somebody shows me a rasgulla, even before I have eaten it, my brain says, wow, just go for it. So, it ensures that I will in perpetuity do behaviors, which are good for me, alright. Now, what happens, if you look at that curve, is that in normal, the normal rewards in life. The normal rewards are food, activity, you know, you are being told by your teacher that you have done well, or you are being given your reward of money at the end of whatever work you perform. What happens is, if you look at it, the activity in that, in this reward circuit goes up and comes down to baseline, right. But what happens, like I am showing that, if you eat food, the activity goes up, comes down to baseline. If again, similarly with sex, activity goes up, comes down to baseline. But what we do find, is that, when you give the brain drugs, you find, similarly in the same areas, there is increased activity. Whether it is for amphetamine like drugs, whether it is for cocaine, whether it is for nicotine that is in cigarettes, or whether it is for alcohol, okay. So, what human beings have relied from the beginning of time, when they started making sombras and having it, or you know, making alcohol and having it, is this peculiar thing, where certain substances act on the same areas of the brain, which give you reward to motivate you to live your life, and hijack the brain, you know. It is a very peculiar knowledge that human beings have possessed for the last, you know, God knows, 20,000 years. So, how do drugs increase this chemical called dopamine in this circuit? You have heard of these, you know, this word called dopamine, it is a neurotransmitter, which is one of the chemical substances, which increases the cross talk between nerves in the brain. There are multiple neurotransmitters. This is one, dopamine is one of these neurotransmitters. It is very, very important in motivation, it is very, very important in learning, in impulsivity, etcetera. So, drugs mimic the activity of the natural neurotransmitters. For example, opiates, drugs, which are made from opium, they inhibit certain substances. I am not going to go into the details, but basically, opiates work on opioid receptors, which are already there in the brain. Nicotine works on acetylcholine receptors, which are already there in the brain and are being used for natural purposes. Opium blocks these dopamine receptors, which are already there in the brain. So, human beings, very cleverly or by chance, have picked up substances, which work on areas, which are there in the brain and stimulate us. Now, so, what happens is that, all drugs of abuse work on this particular reward circuit and drugs, which do not work on this reward circuit are not drugs at all. So, substances, which do not work on this circuit by increasing dopamine, are not used by human beings to get high. So, this is the final common pathway for all drugs of abuse. Why am I telling you all this? I am telling you this, because all drugs work by in a way, direct or indirect stimulation of this particular circuit. So, what happens? I just want you to look at this particular slide. Can you see this one? This is the normal change in the reward circuit, goes up, comes down to baseline, but what drugs of abuse have a bad habit of doing is that, they give you a supra normal, a much more than normal high in the reward circuit and when that happens, the brain almost takes a snapshot of it, saying wow, my god that was brilliant, you know it is like you see the ads of the Kodak moment, Kodak is gone out of market, but then you know basically snap that moment. So the brain snaps that moment up and says wow, we need to get back to that, we need to recreate that moment, but also what does happen is when it goes up that high, you know you will understand by your physical principles and your understanding of chemistry that the low it comes down lower than baseline. So, incrementally what happens is that it goes high, comes down to lower than baseline. Can I, let me use this to illustrate, the brain normally is like any other natural system in homeostasis, that it is in balance. Now suppose I use the substance like alcohol, which depresses the brain, we cannot allow that to happen, so the brain has to fight back and increase the excitatory activity of the brain to keep the balance. So the next time around, when I want that buzz, the earlier amount of alcohol that I was using is not enough, so I need a larger amount of alcohol to give me the buzz to depress my brain and the brain has to work double to restore balance and this keeps happening, keeps happening until one day, the alcohol is not there and there is net net increased excitation, which is called withdrawal, you have heard of people having withdrawal from alcohol and drugs that they get, you know some people get fed, some people start shaking, hands start shaking, they are not able to sleep etcetera. So this process keeps happening and the brain basically decides after some time, that you know we cannot keep doing this, so this kind of daily adaptation cannot happen, so we need to get the brain to adapt on a more permanent basis, because this guy is going to keep on putting the substance. I will show you what happens, let us go to, these are a few PET scans, which show how, you know once you are using a particular drug and there is a net net low, because you have used the, for example what we were talking about was that you use a drug and there is increased outflow of the chemical called dopamine, but there is only that much, like in a bank there is only that much, your bank account is only that much, if you over draw then there is a negative balance. So in the brain, again there is a negative balance and when you do not have the chemical, which gives you a good feeling, you get feeling of deprivation. Now this is a normal brain, where the blue, red areas are the dopamine levels. Now this is a person who has been abusing a drug and you can find that the dopamine levels are much lower than in the normal brain, but what happens is, this is the person who was using methamphetamine a drug, after 24 months of abstinence, but even after 24 months of abstinence you find that it has come back to near normal, but it has not returned to normal. So the reason why I put up the slide is to show you that when one uses a drug for a long enough time, the adaptations that occur last for a very, very long time. So the normal response that people have about taking a person who has a drug abuse and putting that person in a rehab center saying you stay there for 6 months, you will forget about it. Obviously it is not a very good way of doing things, because the brain once adapted, stays adapted for a very long time and let me try and lead you to it. So basically what drugs do is, if this is the normal circuit of behavior that there is motivation for career, food, sex, etcetera and if you do that your brain gives you a circuit. What most drugs of abuse do is that they short circuit, so that the motivation for drugs and alcohol becomes, sorry for career, food, sex, etcetera become the motivation for the drug. So the other question about drugs is why cannot you stop? So you started great, you had a good time, you had a few highs. So why do not, why cannot you just wake up and say with effort I will stop? The issue is that it is very difficult to do so. As I have already said the drug use activates certain areas of the brain and initiates the reward pathway processes. This results in short term changes in the brain that produce immediate feelings of pleasure and reward and repeatedly doing this results in long term changes in the brain. Let me just show you some of these slides. What it does, like I was saying that the brain gets tired of doing this daily seesaw. So it puts into motion certain processes. We will not go into details, but basically let me just tell you that what it does is it flips off of flips on certain genes. You are aware what genes are. Genes are in every cell of our body, there are chromosomes and there are parts of the chromosomes which have the instructions for life, for the daily processes of life. So what the brain does is it switches off or switches on and we know for example that in the front part of the brain, there at least 2000 genes which are switched off or switched on in response to say regular alcohol use. Therefore, as a part of adapting to the drugs and alcohol, there are changes which are made and these changes are very long lasting. Now without going into the details let me just show you. For example, this list is some of the genes that we know which are expressed in the frontal part of the brain. As you can see there are already 230 genes that have been discovered which are changed in the course of say drinking alcohol for 6 months. And net net what it does is it changes the structure of the wiring in the brain, of the neurons or the cells. The brain is full of cells which talk to each other and you know there is hard wiring. It is like the wiring in your computer. Repeated use changes the wiring. If I can go back to the picture if you see you know this the cell connections especially the connections which are related to drug use and adjustment are made stronger. It is like this if you go walking on your lawns here and if you keep walking on one particular path. I am sure you guys must have one shortcut and you find that there is a path made in the grass. And if you want the grass to grow back you will have to stop walking on it for a very long time and you have to use another path. Similarly in the brain one path is strengthened another path is made weak. So if you have to go back to the path of not using the substance and going back to getting motivated by work by relationships by food by your normal habits. Then you will have to spend a very very very long time not using the substance understood. So basically what happens is there are acute effects immediate effects which is what we like about the substance because it gives you a high. And then there are chronic effects which are adaptations which occur at the molecular level at the genetic level which is why you get permanent adaptations that occur. Now because of these permanent adaptations what happens is that even people who want to stop using it and they get up one morning and say no I am not going to use it. Because in a way the addiction is hard coded in the brain they tend to relapse. So I know this is a complicated slide but what I am trying to get through to you is that finally when addiction does happen addiction is a recurrent and a relapsing illness that it keeps coming back. Because the memory of the addiction is hard coded in the human brain. And therefore what we now consider is that when addiction does happen it is a brain disorder. In the same way and it is a chronic brain disorder in the same way that say diabetes is a chronic disorder you know you treat the diabetes it remains okay. You stop treating it it comes back like high blood I am sure you would have seen people who have high blood pressure. You treat it it stays under control you stop treating it comes back. Similarly with addiction we now realize it is a brain disorder. So to come back to what I started with what we started with was asking why do people use substances. And the answer to that as we have already discussed is that human beings have found over time that there is a particular you know part of their brain which gets turned on by the use of these substances. But why do not people stop when they start developing problems. Because repeated use of these substances causes a change in this circuit a change in the structure and functioning of the brain which makes use of the substances a brain disorder. And this is something that we need to understand because repeated use of substances also changes motivation for day to day of working it changes makes changes in personality etcetera. The other question that we also need to ask is does it happen in equal measure to everybody. And that is something that I will talk about later is that perhaps it does not happen in equal measure to everybody. There are some people who are at greater risk some people who are at lesser risk. And it is important to know that because if some people are at much higher risk then you need to put in interventions. And these interventions will happen at different levels they will happen as engineering interventions they will happen as biological interventions they will happen as medical interventions. You know already people are talking about bringing in vaccines people are talking in terms of treating people at school age etcetera which we will talk about it later. So net net what I want to end this segment with is to say that addiction is a brain disorder. And it occurs because of this fortuitous circumstance of human beings having this reward circuit which is part of their motivational circuit which is also very very sensitive to certain substances which human beings like to abuse. Thank you. Any questions? Up centers might not be the best way to treat drug addiction then what are the other ways to treat addiction. See what we now realize is because it is a recurrent and a relapsing illness. And because what occurs are changes in the adaptation or rather adaptation of the brain to these drugs what we need to do is two things or three things actually. One is to use certain substances which are often medicines certain changes in behavior etcetera which change this adaptation. So we are increasingly starting to use a combination of medicines behavioral change training people in certain behaviors as well as training people to you cannot live without high you know can you. But there are safe highs and there are unsafe highs. So training people to use safer highs for example exercise is also increases activity in the reward circuit yoga we have seen increases activity in the reward circuit. For example you want to go mountaineering it you know increases activity there. So to use alternative highs. So these are some of the things that we do. However it is a good idea when people have an addiction to for a short time to take them out and keep them in a sheltered place. Because otherwise you know if you have access to substances you are not going to stop you know. So you need to be help to stay off. But then just keeping people locked and barred is not a very helpful strategy. Have I answered your question. Sir the peak that we reach on consuming alcohol and drugs does that keep on increasing with increased amount of drug and alcohol or this is the limit that is reached. Unfortunately the limit is the effect that you get on the first day. After that because of this adaptation that I was telling you about the peak keeps coming down and down and your brain tries to recreate that kodak moment and keeps saying no if I use more I will get that. But that never happens which is the tragedy that you never get your first high. Such as maybe a gaming addiction. Yeah we will talk about it. That you know there are substance addictions and there are so called behavioral addictions. And there are you know gaming addiction is a very important thing. I mean we do not really know too much about because gaming is a very recent phenomenon. But gambling we do know that gambling addiction occurs. We do know that there is addiction to things like you know sexual addiction or pornography addiction. And then you know we do not really know whether there is cell phone addiction. But you know whether there is face book addiction. But I am sure some of you guys who are on face book start getting withdrawals when you have to you know when you are cut off when you are traveling and you do not have access to face book do not you. From your face I think you get uncontrollable urges. How long are you on face book? Once a day. Thrice a day. So we will talk about it. I just wanted to ask you one thing. See there are several cultural constraints that are coming to picture when people have the first opportunity to have alcohol. Culture or certain type of faith and practices where these things are generously recommended by the immediate culture compared to some other type of faith and practices where it is completely prohibited. Is it that you know people who are practitioners of one type of faith are more susceptible to addiction compared to the other? This is a very good question. Now there are two things which I did not talk about it because this was specifically about addiction. But there is something called addiction which is a brain disorder. There is something called harmful use. Sometimes when we see it we do not see the difference. Harmful use is when I am using a substance and it is causing me harm or a likely to cause me harm which is called hazardous use. For example I drink and drive. I am likely to have an accident or I drink and then I get so violent I go beat up my wife and children. I am causing harm or I drink and I get all sorts of physical problems. I get services of the liver, gastritis, all that that is harmful use. But I have not developed addiction. Now that is very, very strongly mediated by culture. For example in cultures where it is permissive and there are rules to drink. People tend to have lesser this harmful use. The culture where which has the least of harmful use of harm from alcohol is the Jewish culture where people are allowed to drink and there are strict rules that you will not drink alone. You will not drink beyond a certain point. It is considered very, very bad to get intoxicated. Whereas in cultures which has the dry cultures, those are the wet cultures. In dry cultures like ours for that matter, we are actually not a dry culture. But say in Islamic cultures where alcohol is forbidden and to a certain extent in our culture where alcohol is considered bad. So, the way people react to it is when you are doing something bad you are expected to be bad. So, you go and hide in some dark corner and you you know get intoxicated fast because you have you do not have you have two minutes in which to drink it. And so you go buy one bottle finish it in two minutes and go off and because you have drunk alcohol you have to do something bad. So, you go and beat your wife and children. So, that is imbued in the cultural expectations. And that is very much part of a dry culture which is why we find that in dry cultures there is a lot of harm from alcohol. India is somewhat of we call a mixed drinking culture because while we have a dry culture at the same time 20 percent of our states economies come from selling alcohol. And there is a the television there is that you know are portraying the goodness of using alcohol in social circumstances etcetera. But we still believe that you know drinking spirits is better than drinking wines and beers because it gives you a better kick that it gives you a better bang for your buck. And that the aim of getting of drinking is to get intoxicated otherwise why waste money whereas the aim of drinking is just to have a good time with your friends is to have social intercourse. So, you are absolutely right that culture mediates this unfortunately culture does not mediated in the way that we think it does. We would think that in cultures where it is permissive people will drink more and cultures where it is not permissive permitted people will drink less it is the opposite. I mean they do drink less, but the harm is much more the harmful patterns are much more in the so called non drinking cultures. And in India they are having you know India has probably been dry a dry culture in that sense for the last 300 years not much because prior to that there were these rules for drinking there were I mean if you go to the Arthachastra you find that there are very strict rules as to how alcohol will be made, how it will be taxed, where you can sit and drink what you can do after drinking etcetera. You know the Shishruta Samhita has a list of 72 different kinds of alcohol which should be drunk in this fashion it should be made in this way should be used for this kind of illness should not be used by the people who have that kind of illness. Whereas the last 300 years ever since ever since actually the British started their first factory in Kanpur the things have changed that is a different story though they last more. So, so any activity which increases dopamine levels is can be to an addiction theoretically yes, but there are certain things which are normal rewards you know you asking me a question so I feel happy that you listen to me actually increased my reward function you know. And yeah in a sense I can get addicted to it so I go on a lecture circuit and you want to talk talk talk talk and talk, but in a way that is not too bad except for you guys who have to listen to me. You are doing some work and finding happiness and reward from it is actually good because it benefits you and your society, but there are certain things which do not help I mean certain as I showed that you know when you have things which give you a greater than normal reward then the chances of you are getting addicted are much higher. I mean as an example I am saying bungy jumping you might get addicted to bungy jumping you might get addicted to driving fast and these are not safe in that sense. Sir it is often people consider that people those who are living alone or some they have had some mishaps with them they are more prone to drinking and also while they do so and the high that they achieve what are they what is their mind actually trying to go to which level. Now what you talked about see I should have actually showed you the first slide which is about addiction what is addiction. Addiction is the most important thing is in addiction there is loss of control that I do not have control over my activities that I say I will drink 3 drinks and I end up by drinking 8 drinks or that I say that I will not do something at a particular time and I end up doing it. It is not that I am say using a particular substance in much larger measure than others that is harmful. For example what happens with people for example like you said you know who gets sad and then they start using alcohol as a way of decreasing the stress decreasing depression etcetera. Now that is harmful because you tend to use that as a crutch you do not find a way of solving your problem. So it prevents you from solving the problem but it is not necessarily addiction in that sense it is more what we call harmful drinking harmful use. But the point is that you made a very good point that if we use a particular thing whether it is an alcoholic drink when we are feeling tired or sad or angry or whether we are using a crutch when our leg has gotten better you are never able to use your natural coping responses. You are doing this course in adjustment is not it and we all have coping strategies there are good coping strategies for when you feel sad when you feel happy when you feel unhappy when you feel bored. But for people who do not have these coping strategies who do not learn these coping strategies they tend to use shortcuts to deal with you know stress. And then it becomes a problem because the first time around it works beautifully the shortcut works beautifully. But that is not the real answer and so that prevents you from actually finding out the proper strategies to deal with it. For example I am telling you every time you got bored you and your friends decide ki aray ar chal we will go have a drink. Then that you will find is a very easy way of dealing with your boredom and you will tend to next your brain will learn boredom alcohol alcohol no boredom you know that is how the brain learns. And then you will never ever develop the capacity of saying get three friends together sit and talk about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness you understand. So, that is where it is dangerous that people learn especially when people are younger that people learn that this will result in mind forgetting my sadness for three minutes. So, let me use this it will get done, but then I do not develop the capacity to actually work through my problem you know this whole thing of adjustments then I do not develop that. And this is something you know this is the subject of a different lecture, but it is a very important thing. And if when we find it more and more in people who come from I would not call it we in popular parlance you say techie, but it is not necessarily from a technological background. People who in our lives today more and more we are being forced to do small portions of big jobs, which is something that perhaps you guys will have to do as an engineer you will be given a particular task. And you will find that somebody has made the plan the big plan you do not know the full plan you are asked to do this particular thing it happens with people who write code you know they are asked to write one portion of code. Somebody has made the big thing and you are not aware of what is happening. So, you do not see the big picture and when you are sitting there looking only at this you tend to get worked up frustrated etcetera. And then if you do not have the coping strategies you tend to use these shortcuts, which is one of the things that we find when I sit in my clinic I find a lot of young people who come in who are very bright and brilliant people. But they are getting frustrated at a much younger age they are getting frustrated at lesser threshold partly because of the work that we are forced to do in our current social responsibilities. And I think it is very important for you guys because you guys will go out there and initially of first jobs would not be doing those large astronomical projects it would not be let us face it. And so there is a great chance if you have not learnt how to adjust how to deal with these stresses and strains of you are starting to look for shortcuts. So, it is very very important to actually see whether you do have the capacities to deal with what do I do when I am under stress most important what do I do when I am bored what do I do when I am angry because things will make you angry what do I do when I am sad things there will be things which will make you sad what you do when you are bored you play games great. So, that is one of the things that we you know at some level you need to talk about because often people have strategies which are lonely strategies loner strategies. And you come back your bored you come back you sit with a book excellent some people are able to do it some people are not able to do it which is where this whole reward thing comes one of the greatest rewards is actually social networks unfortunately what happens in the face book social networks is no there is been work on it which is why I am telling you and we probably talk about it later if you guys are also involved then is that the kind of interaction that happens when one human being sees another human being does not happen when I am sending a message saying you I like you know and then you hit like and that occurs because of a very strange thing in human brains you know I am looking at you and I am trying to think are you able to understand what I am saying no that is a very complicated example I am looking at you and I can see you flicking your pen now as soon as I am looking at you flicking your pen the parts of my brain which are used to flick a pen get lighted up it is happening right now and that is how I understand about your flicking the pen if for example you are angry with me and say get lost man do not you know why you talking nonsense here the same parts of my brain which get angry get lighted up and that is how human beings develop what is called empathy there is this whole word called theory of mind but it is a fascinating thing that from childhood we learn to understand the mind of others and the way we do it is by mirroring you know what you are doing in fact people have done fascinating experiments what they have done is they put electrodes into a monkey's brain and they have made the monkey see another monkey take a peanut they have given a peanut to another monkey the same parts of the brain which light up in this monkey to puts a peanut lights up when he is seeing the other monkey have a peanut you know monkey see monkey do have you seen babies what do babies do you do the baby will do so the baby is starting to learn how to mirror your emotion etc why am I saying this because human interactions are very important he said when he is bored he goes in place some of us when we are bored go and sit in a corner that is a bad strategy which is why Facebook by itself I am Facebook is a very good thing but Facebook by itself is a long term bad strategy because it does not allow you to see do you know monkey see monkey do you understand so the company of other human beings is very valuable to human beings and as people who will go into technological professions who will spend more time with your computers then you will do with other people most of you you need to remember that monkey see monkey do is very very important sorry I went very very far from your question but I thought it was important so well in which withdrawal does not happen like suppose for Facebook addiction no matter how much time on divorce for Facebooking like we do not get withdrawn from the natural our day to day normal stuffs so in this case I do not think that any type of withdrawal happens so how do you elaborate on a lot of people it does not happen like in a lot of people they can drink alcohol without getting addicted but in some people it happens you know I will be giving a talk I do not know whether this to the same group or not but there are people who have got so withdrawn that they have gone and shot people you know the biggest the maximum work done on Facebook addiction and all internet addiction has been done in South Korea they have been following up and South Koreans are very addicted as a nation to this I mean lots of cases where they followed up the people once their internet privileges were cut off etc. they get very very upset you know I have had several young people who have come who actually became violent after their internet privileges were cut off and the internet privileges were cut off because they were doing nothing they were not eating they were not even going to the toilet you know there was one guy who stopped bathing you would sit on the internet and he would not and play these what is it called those massive multiplayer games yeah like Counter Strike and all that and he would go on playing it and because he was playing with people from here same time zone he was playing in the day time he was playing with people from other time zones he was playing at night then I have another person who sits and does this what is it called there are coding games I do not know whether you are aware of that that there are contests which are for coders so this coding contest he would go to the office people had left he would continue playing he would not come back home when his daughter developed meningitis or something he would not he just refused to take his daughter to the hospital because he had to do that. Fact of society and culture on drug addiction we explained in the curve we just read in terms of the peak or normal baseline. In what sense? Sir for example in wet cultures the difference between peak and normal baseline would be less and in dry culture the difference would be more because in dry culture it affects more if someone get addicted to these drugs no you know what as far as addiction is concerned the brain illness called addiction which I was talking about in this morning the rates for addiction are the same in all human societies around 4 percent 4 to 5 percent in all human societies whether you go to say Russia whether they do a lot of drinking or whether you come to India and we have done this we have done do to do surveys in large proportion of the world World Health Organization has done it I have done it down in India and you look and you find addiction is around 5 to 10 percent but when you look at this harmful use you find that it differs from culture to culture has got to do with the cultural acceptance and non acceptance of having rules for substances. In fact it is very strange I do not know whether you guys know there used to be a war on drugs are you aware that there used to be a war on drugs in the 1960 the United States got together all the nations of the world and said drugs are very bad and we should ban them they conveniently banned all the drugs they were not selling themselves that is always happened in the late 1700s the Brits banned all the drugs they were not using so because they were selling drugs to China opium to China they said opium in China is ok opium in India is bad you know and so that is that is a historical process. So what happened was they said that all drugs need to be banned except tobacco for alcohol because we are selling them. So in countries in like in South Asia where people have been using cannabis for centuries people said no no no this is not on you know this is part of our religious process this is part of our this thing so we were given 15 years extra to ban it and after that what has happened is that people have it is gone underground but the actual harm from drugs has increased much more the underground economy of you know selling these drugs you heard of the Colombian drug mafia you have heard of the you know all the problems that occur because of people in Afghanistan and in you know various parts of the world producing opium and selling it for arms and all that so that has also worsened. So some of the convenient myths that we had that if you get people to ban things get better really does not you know happen that way.