What Is Addiction? What Causes Addiction?
By: Andres Carvajal
Edited By: Stephanie Dawson
The new approaches to addiction do not differentiate between addictions, all show activity in the reward centers of the brain. Addiction to activities, rituals, or to substances in tests show almost the same activity. The tendency is to speak of an addictive personality and not addictive behavior.
A good definition of addiction is “a dependency towards a substance, activity, or relationship that drags the person into the situation, isolating everything that surrounds him. This is represented by the desires, thoughts and behaviors directed to do the action or to get the substance.” Contrary to simple habits or influences from others, an addiction is dependency with acute and chronic consequences, it has the ability to destroy relationships and causes physical and mental dissolution. Addiction is impotence of normal function. Its a painful and difficult experience, depending on the level of awareness of the situation and the intensity of the addiction.
An addict is a person who is dependent on something, this controls their thoughts and desires and can shape their lifestyle and friendships in order to justify the addiction. The addict becomes cynical, errant, and forgetful concentrating only on immediate pleasure.
How people become addicts:
There are several models that try to understand and explain the mechanism of how a person becomes addicted using a wide range of techniques and models. Some use laboratory rats to explain genetic, biochemical, and medical models for understanding personality, clinical profile, and sociological factors with social sciences approaches.
Some factors identified in developing addictions: a) genetic factors, high incidence between relatives, exposure to the addictive action or substance, some argue that chemical imbalances due to genetic factors are the cause of this predisposition. An addictive personality is a common issue where someone since childhood easily develops dependence on something that might be innocent.
Indicators of addiction:
• Object of desire
• Obsession with the object of desire
• Addiction used to lower anxiety
• Loss of control
• Dependency
• Negative consequences
