17 Dec 2025 · 3 min
Brian Johnson explains how addiction permanently rewires the brain using a cucumber-to-pickle metaphor: once changed, you can't go back. He warns that feeling cured is when relapse hits hardest, and recommends strict 100% rules to avoid reopening what he calls the pickle jar.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Arete plus one degree. Another micro chapter from Arete. Activate your heroic potential. Thousand pages, 451 ideas organized around those seven objectives that form the basis of everything we do. Here's one of my favorite ideas. Cucumbers and pickles. Your brain on addiction. Adam Alter wrote a great book called Irresistible in which he walks us through how we become addicted to technology. Tells us about the businesses built on hacking our brains to capture our attention and create those addictions. It's a powerful read and goes nicely with the must see 60 minute special on brain hacking and the documentary on Netflix called the Social Dilemma. Now, one of my favorite ideas from the book was about cucumbers and pickles. Specifically, it was a line from an addiction recovery therapist. She told her patients, and I quote, remember, once your brain has been pickled, it can never go back to being a cucumber. That's a really powerful line. Once you've become addicted to something, and we all have our own little and big addictions, your brain has fundamentally changed. It's as if our brain went from being a cucumber in that domain to being pickle. And you know what? You can't unpickle a pickle. Once your cucumber brain is pickled, it's pickled. What's that mean? Practically speaking, we'll take a moment to think of one of your addictions. And as you do, remember our three part lesson on the science of self compassion, starting with common humanity. Again, nothing's wrong with you. We all have issues. Welcome to humanity. So you got it? Good. Now get this. You may think that you can completely move past your addiction in that area, but confronting fact, you can't. Your brain has been pickled. And you and I and everyone need to have a deep respect for that fact. It's a slippery slope right back into that toxic addiction pond. Note 100% commitments are super helpful here. Adam also tells us that the most dangerous time for someone recovering from addiction is the moment they feel that they've beaten it. Then they forget the pickle and dip their toe back into their addictive behavior and bam. Oops. Slipped into the toxic pond. So know where your pickle jars are and don't open them up.
