A friend shared this article and I wonder if some of us who escalated to needing high doses of levodopa early on are not at some level experiencing something like this? In other words our physiological need triggers an addiction response to levodopa. If we take into consideration that our brain's reward center has most of its dopa intact, so when we take ldopa we have just enough to keep us moving in the substantia nigra, but the other midbrain area gets flooded with too much dopa and D2 receptors possibly too stimulated...could this be what happens with levodopa? See the two articles both on junk food addiction but you can easily replace that with heroine, cocaine, or I am wondering...levodopa?!? Seems to make sense to me. Notice how in article they use "crash" to describe not having the drug? This is exactly how Paula described going "off". I would agree and if we consider that it may addictive our harsh "offs" are actually more withdrawal and less to do with disease progression like we are told?

from M. Bittman:

A 2009 study by the Scripps Research Institute indicates that overconsumption of fast food “triggers addiction-like neuroaddictive responses” in the brain, making it harder to trigger the release of dopamine. In other words the more fast food we eat, the more we need to give us pleasure; thus the report suggests that the same mechanisms underlie drug addiction and obesity.


http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/20100329.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/op...l?pagewanted=2