in trash cans, incapable of caring for them and afraid of putting them up for adoption lest the authorities cast a disapproving glance their way, of fathers murdering their children in a drug-fuelled rage. Such actions seem to us unconscionable, nefarious, and downright evil. How could a parent treat an innocent child that way? We resist the very thought of it, as if the idea itself was a rotten, repugnant, physical thing capable of dripping its slime onto the floors of our subconscious.
Mercifully, these are extreme examples, but addiction inarguably takes its toll on a person’s ability to be a successful parent. Mothers addicted to cocaine are more hostile, are less emotionally engaged in maternal activities (e.g., feeding, bathing, and playing with their babies), and exhibit little to no pleasure in interacting with their children. It’s as if their mothering gene had been switched off. Of course, we’ve learned enough about genes by now to realize that there is no mothering gene, just as there’s no gene for depression or gene for addiction. Yet certain neural switches are being thrown, and certain connections rerouted, causing a dramatic shift in the way addict mothers view, interact with, and respond to their offspring.
Remember Marcy and Melissa, the twins we discussed in chapter 6?[37] Let’s pay them another visit. Marcy, you’ll recall, was ushered into a life of wealth and privilege while Melissa wallowed in emotional neglect. Now in adulthood, the two sisters have both become mothers.
Marcy’s labour wasn’t easy, but when she first laid eyes on her baby girl the pain and frustration and fear of the past 12 hours washed away. Her heart seemed to swell, infused with a love more primal and pure than anything she’d experienced before. It was like a drug, Marcy thought — though having never tried any substance stronger than a glass of wine, she could only guess that this was true. She named the girl Chloe.
The first few months were a challenge, and the sleepless nights and 3:00 a.m. feedings took their toll. Marcy was a driven woman, married to her career as much as her husband, and the endless days spent at home sometimes felt more like a prison sentence than a well-paid six-month maternity leave. She missed the bustle of the hospital, the patients and the dizzy chaos and the rush of adrenaline she felt whenever she stepped into an operating room and snapped latex gloves onto her steady, talented hands. Those hands felt wasted changing diapers and scrubbing baby spit-up off of bibs. Sometimes she sat on her bed and cried. But as the months passed Chloe became less of a helpless, mewling thing. She began to smile, to babble joyful gibberish, to trace the movement of Marcy’s fingers with wonder. The tiniest giggle set Marcy’s heart ablaze with maternal warmth. She watched her daughter grow with an unceasing sense of amazement and gratitude. Her body surged with affection for the little girl. She’d spent three months pining for her office and her operating theatre, but as her maternity leave drew to a close the thought of leaving Chloe made her miserable. The child was an endless fountain of comfort and joy.
While Marcy was delivering her first child, Melissa had just come home from the hospital with her third. The delivery had been a non-issue, a few hours, a few squirts of Demerol, and there you have it, another screaming mouth to feed, another pair of chubby little hands clawing greedily at her starving, threadbare chequebook. Melissa brought her baby — a girl she named Britney — home and went through the motions of motherhood. She fed her, changed her, bathed her on occasion, but the whole thing was joyless and dull. Drugs were what kept her going, and she popped, sniffed, or smoked them any chance she got. The exact substance didn’t much matter; Melissa did whatever she could get her hands on.
The moments that followed these indulgences were sacred, her mounting bills and crappy job and wailing kids held at bay by a wall of inebriation. Then the high would fizzle and Melissa would trudge back to her duties, regarding her children with poorly disguised contempt.
The smiles and giggles and wide-eyed glances that bought Marcy such joy meant little to Melissa. Often she would just as soon have Britney sulk as smile. At least sulking was quiet. Laughter was better than her wretched wailing, but it still got on Melissa’s nerves.
Each night after putting Britney to bed, Melissa got high, be it on pot, prescription pills, or simply cigarette after cigarette. Money was tight and drugs hard to come by, but she tried not to worry too much about it. She’d get more somehow. She always did. It was the only thing that mattered.
It’s easy to cast Marcy as the benevolent, selfless mother and Melissa as the self-absorbed, self-destructive addict, but the distinction between the two women runs deeper than that. Marcy isn’t entirely selfless — after all, caring for Chloe gives her joy, comfort, and a not unjustified sense of maternal pride. Without that burst of emotions, she would probably still do her duty as a primary caregiver, but would she be as good at it, or as dedicated to her daughter’s happiness? Probably not. She might not be as neglectful to her children as Melissa — her greater financial means and more driven personality give her an additional leg up, to be sure — but if Marcy was deprived of her daily oxytocin-dopamine cocktail, or if Melissa was provided with one, the gulf separating the two mothers would likely shrink considerably.
The brain is a complex network of electrochemical impulses, a synaptic switchboard on a truly galactic scale. Billions of neurons forge trillions of connections with one another, allowing for more combinations of neural signals than there are stars in the Milky Way, and substantially more processing power than the fastest computer on earth. Imagine that each of these connections, when activated, gives off a flicker of light. These tiny lights fizzle and flash and coalesce, providing a bioluminescent map of brain activity. The more vigorously a neural region is being used, the brighter it shines, while underused regions remain dark.
Can you see it? Good. Let’s take this concept and examine the phosphorescent cartography of Marcy and Melissa’s brains. When Marcy sees Chloe smile or hears the sound of her laughter, Marcy’s nucleus accumbens — the region of her brain associated with pleasure — lights up. Her dopamine receptors dazzle like flashbulbs, elevating her mood and forging a positive association between her and Chloe. Bolstered by her brain’s neurochemical response, Marcy becomes more affectionate, attentive, and nurturing. This in turn makes Chloe a more interactive and curious baby, which sets Marcy’s dopamine receptors glowing even brighter. Their synapses flash and sparkle in a glorious and highly synchronized display of neural fireworks. When mother and child interact, their nuclei accumbens display nearly identical patterns of activity — they light up in sync. They signal to one another, their brains and bodies engaged in what child development experts call a serve and return relationship. Chloe serves up a giggle or a smile and Marcy returns it, tickling Chloe’s neurons and encouraging her cognitive development. Together the two of them play a kind of cerebral tennis, except the muscles being exercised are not calves and quads, but the nucleus accumbens and the cerebral cortex. And the more they play, the stronger the bond between them grows.
Meanwhile, Melissa’s brain is a dim and listless thing. As far as her neurons are concerned, a smile from Britney is worth less than a candle in the wind. Her dopamine receptors fizzle. Try as she might, Britney can’t trigger a single one. The fault is not with her; her mother’s brain has been cruelly rewired. Cocaine has the reins now, and it is a savage and relentless master. The bursts of dopamine that should seal Melissa’s relationship with her daughter come instead through outside substances. Her ability to feel happiness without chemical stimulation grows muted and weak. Melissa’s brain only glows when she’s taking a fresh hit, and with each snort, her light shines dimmer and dimmer.
Drug use erodes a mother’s ability to derive pleasure from the very act of mothering. On a chemical level, parenting becomes a pursuit of diminishing returns. It’s easy to call these mothers selfish — and perhaps selfishness does come into it, to a certain extent — but there is much more to the problem than that. The little things that compensate for the seemingly unending trials of motherhood — the warm maternal glow, the tiny joys imbued in a toddler’s laughter — these pleasures no longer register. Drugs dissolve the bond between mother and child, and once that effortless, unconscious connection is gone, holding on becomes a deliberate and exhausting effort.
