Addiction poses a significant problem for people across cultural and geographic boundaries. In America, costs attributed to the disease and its downstream effects are estimated to be around 700 billion annually. While our accumulated knowledge of addiction continues to grow, much of its pathology remains a mystery – especially for those who have never experienced it firsthand.
Addiction can take a healthy life and slowly tangle it into a mess in a shockingly short time frame. It affects indiscriminately and can ruin the lives of very wealthy or poor families alike. Below, this article will aim to further understand the disease and the intricacies of its manifestation.
What Is Addiction?
Addiction is a recurring behavior from which the indulger derives pleasure or momentarily respite from internal discomfort. The mainstays of addiction include the inability to control the behavior despite negative consequences and attempts to stop. These effects are often gradual in their manifestation, sometimes resulting in the addicted person’s lack of conscious awareness regarding their state.
While commonly affiliated with the abuse of drugs, nicotine, or alcohol, addiction can take many shapes that involve no exogenous “substance” per se. Examples include gambling, pornography, sex, and internet use – all of which harness the same neural pathways as drugs of abuse.
At the root of all addiction is maladaptive connectivity between areas of the brain caused by neurotransmitters like dopamine. This chemical has important implications for the brain regarding motivation, reward, and excitement. In our evolutionary past, this neurotransmitter was responsible for finding food and procreating.
However, these dopaminergic pathways operate on a primordial level and thus can be led astray by temptations not part of our evolutionary past or otherwise run counter to our healthy survival. Novelty tends to light these areas of the brain up, which serves us well in some scenarios. However, our brains were not prepared for innovations like high-speed internet, which has addictive potential and can alter white matter.
Many things that deliver expedient pleasure at the cost of negative consequences can become loci for addiction. Always take a step back to evaluate your relationship with a substance or behavior periodically to see the situation with a level head.
Prevention
As with many diseases, prevention before a full-blown manifestation is the optimal way to go with addiction. To spot an addict, there are tell-tale behaviors that should not be ignored. While it can be painful to address blaring substance abuse to yourself or a loved one, it’s nowhere near the potential pain of the alternative.
People in the throes of an addiction will often live reclusively or suffer a slow and visible deterioration of their mental and physical health. This occurs as the brain rewires itself to deprioritize everything that isn’t the behavior or drug of abuse. In turn, maintaining all other aspects of their life collapses into disorder and often eventually becomes visible to others.
The negative effects of addiction can quickly compound due to an unfortunate convergence of factors. For example, since the brain’s neurochemistry is knocked off-balance, it becomes desensitized to the ordinary pleasures of everyday life, like conversation with a friend or walking in the park. Since the brain is used to supernormal excitement and indulgence, it becomes numb to the ordinary.
This can result in depression since nothing brings the addict a sense of satiation besides the vice they’ve become entangled with. If this occurs, the afflicted person may grow increasingly withdrawn. This is when an inpatient facility becomes an ideal option. A new environment will allow people struggling with addiction to reset themselves while their brain chemistry normalizes. At the same time, these facilities will have trained professionals on hand as well as patients who are experiencing the exact process as them, allowing them to share their own experiences, support and advice.
If ever you feel this treatment option would be beneficial for you or someone you know, you can do some research online for ‘facilities for addiction treatment Massachusetts‘ or in your location, to find help and support to guide you through a difficult situation.
Addiction Stigmas
A person who is addicted may have a great deal of shame associated with their problem, but they need to understand that this isn’t a time to place excessive blame or pressure on themselves. Life is complicated, and everyone goes through times of extreme difficulty or adversity that they did not anticipate. Beating yourself up over it isn’t going to help anyone.
Some things can entrap certain people within the clutches of addiction. In contrast, others may be less prone and better able to maintain a more casual relationship with the substance or behavior. However, it is important not to think this means you’re “weak” if you become addicted; factors like genes and environment have enormous implications in the development of addiction, yet neither of which is entirely under your control.
Instead of wasting time or energy blaming yourself for your addiction, learn from the struggle and emerge even stronger than you were before.
