When a person hears the word “addiction”, thoughts often go directly to the agonies of withdrawal. A person without their addiction trying, perhaps desperately, to get back to their addiction. But that is really only an aspect of addiction and it is the attempted (voluntary or involuntary) elimination of addiction. How about the other direction — becoming addicted, staying addicted, becoming addicted anew after having “kicked” the addiction?
Just what is addiction?
Addiction is rooted in dependence. You cannot, or do not want to, do something without something. Almost everyone in the US is addicted to refined sugar but it is so common and so omnipresent that it just isn’t looked at in that manner. A European eating a meal in the US will quickly notice just how much we rely upon table salt to flavor, and enhance, our foods. Salt is an excellent flavor enhancer. Salt is so much less expensive than herbs and spices that it gets put into almost all processed foods in the US. And, if given the choice between something that is salted the way we are used to and something with only a modicum of salt, almost all of us will choose the saltier version. Many different parts of life can become addictive. These include food, social aspects, and drugs (legal or illegal).
Most people don’t consider food additives in the realm of addiction. There are others less common. In the book “The Space Merchants” by Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, the advertising/marketing division of companies deliberately cause severe addiction. Except for the extent of the addiction, it is similar in the US. US people have been trained to prefer the unhealthy versions.
Beyond the region of food (of which much more can be said), we have what are sometimes called “social addictions”. Many are considered mild, even positive. And given that we all have twenty-four hours in each day, perhaps it is not important.
The point at which social addictions become bad is when they endanger that ability to continue making it to the next day or which diminish our ability to enjoy our lives beyond the addiction. Gambling can risk capital, or items, that are needed for continued prosperity. Sexual addiction can put health at risk as well as familial and social connections. A potentially healthy activity, such as playing videogames, can be overdone such that people lose jobs, have unhealthy living environments, become ill, and so forth.
For many, an addiction immediately brings the idea of drugs to mind. Primarily, drugs that are considered to be illegal or tightly controlled are considered. But legal prescription drugs can be addictive as can be legal recreational drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis.
Why is addiction alluring?
There is no single answer to this question. Alcohol, for much of human history, has been part of human culture filling a vital role of providing “safe” liquid to drink before filtering and pasteurization existed. Although drinking non-distilled alcohol can certainly have deleterious effects, limits are enforced between stomach and bladder. Distilled alcohols, increasing the percentage of alcohol, increases the “social” use. Relaxation and reduction of social barriers made distilled alcohol a cheap way to facilitate social events. Alas. some are vulnerable to distilled alcohol and start wanting more and more.
Other “social” drugs such as tobacco (nicotine) and cannabis (THC, CBD) chemically help to de-stress, focus, create euphoria, reduce pain, reduce nausea, and so forth. What can be done chemically usually has alternative methods of achieving and what is acceptable within society at one time may become disapproved of, or illegal, at other times.
Depression, curiosity, peer pressure, and misleading advertising (usually by those selling it) are often a first step in making use of more potent drugs. Still, there is often something “lacking” that the user is trying to overcome. Loneliness, depression, boredom, anger. Wherever negative emotions lurk, there is something to entice whether it is a bowl of ice cream or a snort of cocaine.
Why go back?
Some physical withdrawals are horrendous, even occasionally fatal. But emotional dependency is almost always closely connected to the physical addiction. A person can be “clean” and yet have a strong yearning for the effects that they had experienced while using drugs, or gambling, or cutting themselves, or …
The yearning can be a matter of liking the way it feels when doing the addiction, liking the sensory aspects, liking the effects, liking the satiation. Once satiated, one may say “well, this isn’t good for me, I don’t think I’ll do it again”. But they do. When the yearning is connected to bodily physical addiction, there is both a push and a pull to continue with the addiction.
There are many places to eliminate the direct physical dependency on various substances. “One day at a time” is a mantra of those who know they want something, recognize it, and also recognize that their life is much better without it. The concept of NEVER having that yearned-for item is a much larger mountain to cross than taking it “one day at a time”.
A matter of measure
Most people would laugh off the idea of food addictions, even though it can be shown they are likely to shorten life, cause higher likelihood of diseases, or decrease the ability to enjoy life. Various other types of drug addictions are harder to laugh off but easier to ignore depending on cost and social encouragement or discouragement. You may be confronted daily with commercials advertising your favorite legal drug of choice. The illegal ones are not publicly advertised but may be a “normal” thing within your peer circles. Gambling, for instance, may be detrimental to your general life but still acceptable as long as that limit is maintained beyond which your life gets quickly worse.
One thing that can backfire in public challenges against addictions is poor media coverage or overstatements. The 1938 film “Reefer Madness” probably made more people curious about marijuana than those whom it discouraged because it is so “over-the-top” that one is tempted to discount ALL the information. It leads to “but he does it and is okay” or “they have been doing it for years and they are fine”. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t but a realistic assessment and description of the downside of various substances and addictions is of greater use, allowing realistic comparisons and evaluations.
Conclusion
Physical addictions do not have to keep a hook into a person forever. Associated emotional addictions can be stronger than superglue and many situations can only be addressed “one day at a time”.
No comments:
Post a Comment