What Is An Addiction?

The definition of an addiction

A center for healing in Santa Fe says that a person can be addicted to:

Alcohol and other drugs

Prescriptions and non prescription drugs

Nicotine

Food

Sex

Work

Love Relationships

Computer Use

Exercise

Religion

Then, the recovery first center says that a person can be addicted to a behavior or substance if withdrawal symptoms occur if the activity is stopped.

What is an addiction?

In the 1950's doctor Kevin Harvey from Yale did a study on patients that were addicted to a mind altering drug or alcohol substance. He found and believed that addiction was similar/closest to a physical disease, like diabetes. Now it's diagnosed as a neurological disease, like Tourettes Syndrome. The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) says that addiction is a state of driven, compulsive use. There is also a genetic susceptibility to addiction related to a type of dopamine receptor, or a penchant for risk taking, is inherited, learned, or can be both.

Recent surveys sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and by Faces and Voices of Recovery(a recovery advocacy group) found that half of the public thinks of addiction as a personal weakness. Among those people who did see addiction as a disease, most put it in a special category of diseases that people get by making poor choices. When the public was surveyed by the NIDA, more than 80% of people believed addicts should have been able to rise above their personal weaknesses, and chosen otherwise at the time addiction took hold.

According to a recent ad campaign that was published in the New York Times designed to build support for treatment, addiction is a disease process that corrupts the brain. So addicts shouldn't be viewed as having a character flaw or moral deficiency. The campaign shows a man saying, "It's be better if I had cancer; and then you wouldn't tell me what I'm going through is just a phase. You wouldn't see my condition as a lack or willpower, but the disease that it truly is."

On a Sad Jane website (which is a blog website where addicts can tell their stories and get responses from other addicts and doctors), some addicts believe that addiction can only be self diagnosed. One anonymous man said "Until you are ready to rid your body of the addiction, a doctor is not going to convince you otherwise, to stop what you're doing. The mind is very powerful. And if you like the state you get in when you take the mind altering drugs, what you need is something else living for, to distract you." Addicts tell themselves things like "I'm young" or "it's no big deal" "everyone else is doing it", but this is because they surround themselves with other addicts.

There is a large difference between a person who uses drugs, abuses drugs, and is an addict. The NIDA website says that a user is someone who can stop whenever they want but use the biological drug infrequently. An abuser is someone who suffers negative consequences from using, but can and does stop when consequences become too severe. This would be like drinking too much, throwing up, and needing to get your stomach pumped. But, they would stop drinking after these events. An addict is unable to stop, even after massive negative consequences, without medical and/ or behavioral help.

SHOW MOVIE CLIP from Requiem for a Dream

The director of the National Institute of Mental Health gives the example that an alcoholic taking a drink looks like anyone else engaged in that behavior, but what's happening in their head is different from someone who can have a beer here and there and still not have cravings, or want to drink to the point of severe intoxication.

Statistics I found on the AA (Alcoholics Aonymous) website said that untreated addiction is more expensive than heart disease, diabetes and cancer treatments combined. This money is from the accidents and slips that come from the effects of the substance or behavior. Every American adult pays approximately $1000 per year from the damages