What happens to the brain with a stressful experience?
Stressful experiences keep the frontal lobes from developing. And among stressful experiences I include alcohol and drug abuse, growing up in a broken home, living in fear of violence and crime, even a bad diet. And when a person’s frontal lobes don’t develop, he lives a primitive life. He can’t—and doesn’t—plan ahead. His world is simplistic, and he can only deal with what’s happening to him right now. That’s where the rigid thinking comes in: “You’re either with me or against me,” or “Me and my gang are good, and everyone else is up against us.” Take the example of alcohol. Drinking destroys brain cells overall and cuts the connections to the frontal lobes. Connections between the frontal lobes and other brain areas start to develop when you’re 12 or 13 and continue into your late 20s and early 30s. So if you’re drinking in school, you’re doing the worst possible thing you can do for your brain—and your life. “For the first 20 years of life, the connections between the brain cells ar
