Do you suffer from insomnia? I do sometimes. Sometimes, it involves trouble falling asleep. More often, it involves staying asleep. For a lot of us, when we wake up in the middle of the night, we begin to worry about a lot of things. Some of those things include falling back asleep and getting enough sleep.

Sometimes, people turn to an over-the counter or prescription sleeping pill to cope. I’ve done this, but luckily, I didn’t have to use them for long and I didn’t become addicted to them. Other people aren’t so lucky, especially when it comes to prescription sleeping pills.

So much of addiction is psychological, isn’t it? People rely on things not just physically, but mentally, to help them with their conditions. Since addiction rewires the circuits of the brain, it tells the brain to do something. But the brain also controls the physical aspects of the body. These physical symptoms (restlessness and pain) could then in turn inform the brain that the body needs something, so addiction creates a vicious cycle between the brain and the body.

It’s not surprising, then, that it’s so hard to treat addictions to sleeping pills and other drugs, the abuse of alcohol, or compulsive behaviors. If a person breaks his or her arm, a doctor can put the arm in a cast, or maybe perform surgery if the situation’s particularly serious. Usually, this is enough to cure the situation. But how do we fix our brains? How do we understand and treat an organ so complex, so unknown, an organ that controls practically every aspect of our being?

There are no easy answers to these questions. Doctors, therapists, researchers, and other professionals work tirelessly every day to answer them. They have answered some of these questions. Given their efforts, it’s likely they’ll answer more in the future. Even if it’s impossible to ever answer these questions completely, that won’t stop these professionals from trying.