Cravings and the Brain: Beyond Food and Substance
Psychology Today–style article. I’ll build it out with more depth: extra science on cravings, connection to emotional avoidance, a few applied exercises, and clear tie-ins to your offerings + curriculum. This version will feel authoritative, educational, and practical, while staying accessible.
Why is it that sometimes a cookie feels as irresistible as a cocktail, or scrolling social media feels as compulsive as a cigarette? The truth is, whether we’re talking about food, alcohol, shopping, or substances, cravings all share the same neurological roots.
Neuroscience shows us that cravings aren’t just random urges — they’re the brain’s way of anticipating reward. And when we zoom out, we often find that cravings aren’t really about the thing itself. They’re about what lies beneath: stress, loneliness, boredom, or unresolved emotion.
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Cravings aren’t just about willpower—they’re messages from your brain and body. The Clean Body Reboot helps you calm inflammation, balance blood sugar, and restore your nervous system so you can finally break free from compulsive habits and feel good in your body again.
The Neuroscience of Craving
Cravings originate in the brain’s mesolimbic dopamine system, sometimes called the “reward pathway.” When a cue appears — a smell, a stressful moment, or even a certain time of day — the brain lights up in anticipation of relief or pleasure.
Importantly, dopamine isn’t just released when we get the reward. It surges in anticipation of the reward. This is why just thinking about a piece of chocolate or imagining that glass of wine can make your body respond as if it’s already halfway there (Volkow & Morales, 2015).
In fact, research shows that this anticipatory dopamine spike is often stronger than the actual reward itself (Berridge & Robinson, 2016). That explains why, after indulging, people often feel let down. The craving promised more than it delivered.
Cravings as Emotional Avoidance
If cravings were only about pleasure, they would be easy to manage. But more often, cravings serve as a way to avoid discomfort. We reach for food not because we’re hungry, but because we’re stressed or lonely. We pour a drink not because we’re thirsty, but because we don’t want to sit with grief or anxiety.
Psychologists call this experiential avoidance — the tendency to push away difficult emotions instead of processing them (Hayes et al., 1996). The craving becomes a distraction, a cover-up. But over time, avoidance deepens disconnection and keeps us stuck in cycles we don’t want.
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A Practical Exercise: Listening Beneath the Craving
The next time a craving arises, try this reflective listening practice, drawn from Motivational Interviewing:
Pause and ask yourself,
👉 “What need might this craving be pointing to?”
If the craving is for food — is your body actually asking for comfort?
If it’s for alcohol — is your heart longing for connection or stress relief?
If it’s for scrolling — is your mind overwhelmed, needing rest?
By listening beneath the craving, you create space to respond differently. This shift from resistance to curiosity is where transformation begins.
For Practitioners and Helping Professionals
For counselors, recovery coaches, and treatment providers, this reframe is essential. Clients often view cravings as signs of failure. But when we teach that cravings are signals of unmet needs rather than moral shortcomings, shame decreases and hope increases.
The Empowered Recovery Curriculum, now being used in treatment centers and outpatient programs, integrates this exact approach. Practitioners are equipped with group scripts, worksheets, and teaching modules to help clients decode cravings and respond with empowerment rather than guilt.
This method works not only for substance use recovery but also for food, relationships, and other maladaptive coping patterns — helping clients see cravings as opportunities for alignment.
From Awareness to Empowerment
If you’re walking this journey yourself, here are three progressive ways to practice what you’ve learned:
🌱 21-Day Breaking Free Challenge — Experiment with awareness. Practice noticing your cravings and trying out new responses.
🌱 28-Day Clean Body Reboot — Reset your body by removing physical triggers like sugar, alcohol, and processed foods, which often intensify cravings.
🌱 Empowered Recovery Course — Go deeper into mastering cravings, emotional regulation, and identity-based change for long-term transformation.
The Takeaway
Cravings aren’t weakness. They’re information. They’re the brain’s anticipation of reward, and often, they’re the body and heart’s way of saying, “Please pay attention.”
When you pause to ask, “What is this craving really telling me?”, you stop fighting against yourself and start listening to yourself. That shift is the beginning of freedom.
So the next time a craving shows up, don’t see it as the enemy. See it as a doorway. A doorway to self-awareness, to new pathways in the brain, and to the empowered life you are meant to live.
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🔗 References
Volkow, N.D., & Morales, M. (2015). The Brain on Drugs: From Reward to Addiction. Cell, 162(4), 712–725.
Berridge, K.C., & Robinson, T.E. (2016). Liking, wanting, and the incentive-sensitization theory of addiction. American Psychologist, 71(8), 670–679.
Doidge, N. (2007). The Brain That Changes Itself. Viking.
Hayes, S. C., Wilson, K. G., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(6), 1152–1168.