Addiction Discussion

Discussion in 'Psychedelics' started by Tsubasa, Apr 11, 2006.

  1. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    I see a lot of posts on here saying "this is so addicting" or "this is not addictive at all" or "addiction ruins lives". Lots and lots of different things. I was kinda hoping to start a thread where we just talk about the intricacies of addiction. Some questions/topics to potentially start the discussion:

    Do you believe that previous addiction affects susceptability when trying a new substance, or do you feel you are more prepared for the risks?

    What substances in particular do you feel are most addictive and why?

    Is addiction a mental weakness one can overcome?

    If you have ever been addicted, and are comfortable with sharing, perhaps share your story. (or parts of it)

    If once addicted, can you safely return to the substance after "kicking the habit" and safely use it again?

    If anyone else has other questions or general ideas please post them :)
     
  2. wonderboy

    wonderboy the secret of your power!

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    Well, the most common addictions seem to be mental addictions, although the physical ones are much more intense and also very widespread... but the average person seems to be affected by mental addictions pretty easily.

    personally (and i know to a lot of people this will sound fucking retarded and invalid as an addiction), i exhibited all the signs of addiction when I got really into WoW (world of warcraft - lol, i bet you all know a friend that does nothing but play it)... cut off appointments with friends, played 10+ hours a day, grades dropped, i rationalized everything, and i was always thinking about it when i wasn't playing it. a lot of people brush off addictions like this by saying "well, it's not physically addictive, so stfu about it and suck it up", but, well, gambling is exactly the same way, and that's an accepted addiction.

    i know WoW isn't exactly a psychadelic substance lol, but i thought it might bring some perspective into the mental addiction problems... that even the most unlikely things can be addictive (even this forum!)

    my personal idea is that most addictions (if they aren't physically strengthened) seem to grow when people percieve that their life is boring, and that they have lots of free time to fill (thus filling it with their addiction), and that eventually the addiction takes over more than free time.

    next?
     
  3. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    My little bit to start: I read a very interesting book recently, Cracked. While not particularly scholarly, it presents a doctor's view of a rehab clinic in LA. It provides some very general overviews of the theory of addiction which runs this particular clinic.

    The doctor tells how when people fail to learn to cope with overwhelming emotion, they learn to run from it instead. Physiologically, their "fight or flight" response is activated. The instinct that activates the the sympathetic nervous system.

    However, once users start using drugs to escape their emotions and worlds (notice how the drugs are used as an escape and not recreationally, or both, in this theory) the drugs become recognized by the body as a normal part of the sympathetic nervous system response to "danger" (in the form of intense emotion).

    And so, the body becomes convinced that overwhelming emotion is a life or death situation and if the drug is not present after the body has become accustomed to it, it demands it from the user. So long story short, it leads to the body seeing drugs as a life or death situation.

    Poorly explained, I'm sure, but I will revise later if anyone has questions. Sorry, I'm in a bit of a rush right now :)
     
  4. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    I think that your WoW story kind of fits with the sympathetic nervous response theory. It's very easy to use computer games, particularly RPGs, to escape reality. You can hide from your emotions in another world, just as you would with drugs. I believe that this would carry all the psychological signs of addiction if not the physical aspect of having a drug your body believes it needs. By no means, do I believe that you require a physical substance to be addicted.
     
  5. wonderboy

    wonderboy the secret of your power!

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    the thing i found most interesting about the whole "escape reality" idea was that my normal, everyday-sort-of-boring reality became absolutely abhorred. i just started being really dissatisfied with the world outside of a fucking video game, and i realize that that's a sign of my own personal addiction - if i ever stop using a substance and my view of the world turns negative, i know there's a problem.
     
  6. PurpleGel

    PurpleGel Senior Member

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    unfortunately, the neurochemistry of addiction is disheartening. the changes that occur in the brain only increase one's susceptibility to future addiction (delta Fos B and CREB are the key players in this). it really is a vicious cycle that cannot be truly escaped. the cycle isn't mental either--it's biological, imbedded within the neural networks permanently.
     
  7. A-Shwa-Child

    A-Shwa-Child Member

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    Then couldnt it be said that music can have the potential of creating addiction. Then shouldnt we ban music beucase it can be used to escape our problems. :p
     
  8. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    Yes, physical addiction is "burned" into your neural pathways, but psychological addiction is up for debate I think. The computer game is one example. But people get addicted to things like television, and yes, music. I think that you could argue that music can be addictive.

    However, we don't ban everything that's addictive, that's clear enough. Nor do I think that every addiction in every person is at a level we could consider "dangerous". The activity we're addicted to varies in level of worry. Drugs, for example, take you very far away from reality in some cases and do physical harm to your body. Computer games can take hours of time, I'm sure Wonderboy will back me up on that. Television is the same way. Music doesn't have as big of an impact on society as an addiction, because it is an activity that can accompany actually being present in life. We listen to music while we read, work, drive, party...it's rare to see anyone who withdraws into music so fully it becomes a problem.
     
  9. wonderboy

    wonderboy the secret of your power!

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    Yeah, if you banned everything that was potentially addictive, there'd be nothing to do, haha! I mean, my dad is completely addicted to work, and it has positive and negative effects on his life.

    That's interesting that having an addiction makes you more susceptible to future ones. I would have thought it was the other way around, that on a cognitive level you would notice your own symptoms and be able to stop it easier.
     
  10. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    I think that perhaps, physiologically, you are more susceptible to addiction once the neural pathways have been formed. But I wonder if psychologically you would be less susceptible for having experienced it before.
     
  11. white ginger

    white ginger Senior Member

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    God I could talk about this for a long time... and I really, really don't feel like it right now. I feel so much resistance to even writing about this... it's kind of intriguing.
    There are a couple things I want to add to the list of questions to ponder, and that is, is addiction intimately related to one's self-esteem? and, what qualifies as an addiction? How do you identify an addiction? (Wonderboy, in post #5, talked about this a bit, and in #3, with Tsubasa's synopsis of how an addiction comes into play could be the start of a definition).

    Also, I strongly suspect that addictions have both physical and psychical basis (basises? basis' What's the plural?), often with an emphasis on one or the other.
     
  12. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    I think that one's mental stability (not specifically self-esteem, but that certainly plays a part) is definitely an indication of addiction susceptibility.

    I believe in the theory I briefly outlined about physical addiction. Basically, the body responds to emotional "threats" by activating survival instincts, which tell the mind it is a life/death situation, and the substance becomes linked with that, so eventually the drug is a life/death situation.
    Mental addiction is a much larger area of gray. I think that when you're psychologically addicted to someone, you won't know until that one day you wake up and realize it. (I suppose this might just be me.)

    I also think that the key to breaking addiction is psychological in origin. As has been said, physical addiction will always be with you. But if you can break the psychological addiction, you can keep away from the physical issues.

    On this note, anyone else with experience in breaking an addiction...how did it happen for you? For me, it was just one day..it all clicked. I looked in the mirror, and realized...holy shit. Y'know...this isn't who I want to be. This isn't how I want to be, and I'm fucking up everything around me. I don't know if there was any catalyst or cause for it. I just realized it one day, and I'm not saying that made it all better, but it put me on the road to get better. I heard a million times from my friends, but only when I realized it did anything happen. Anybody else find this happen to them as well?
     
  13. StonerBill

    StonerBill Learn

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    lets look at psychological addictions (because physical ones are a little more straight forward - and are a mix)

    the psychological addiction is mediated by dopaminergic pathways. these are our motivation and our feeling of acheivement. dopaminergic pathways function with two elements - the expectation and the acheivement of the expectation.

    the purpose of this system is to establish expectations and then reward acheived expectations, and the act of rewarding makes whatever process which acheived the reward become a dominant function. however, sometimes rewards can be given for thing that werent expected. when this occurs, artificial expectations are developed. if we compare two extreme drugs, heroin, and cocaine, we can see this dual-element process in action.

    opiates have a function in the body - they tell the brain not to expect things. they lower the brain's expectations, thus making the mere act of sitting around become a blissful activity - because by removing the expectations, it means that pretty much all the expectation that IS there, is being acheived.

    cocaine on the other hand makes the reward for expecations extreme. everything you do seems to be like the right thing to do, like youve done it right, that everything you do seems to be acheiving your desire, and thus have power over your domain, and the belief that you can do anything, because everything seems to reward expectations - expectations which might not even mean much at all to you.

    the result of these? well when you lower expectations, the brain reacts as if it is rewarding too much, and increases the number of things it feels shouls be acheived. without the drug, along with the various cascading effects of teh physiology of opiates, the mind is plagued by expectations that arent being met. people can feel depressed, worthless, because the stimuli around them introduces expectation but this doesnt result in reward. everything becomes shit-inspiring, along with the pain of withdrawal.

    when you take a lot of cocaine, the brain is being rewarded way to much so it stop rewarding as much, but also, it starts to assume that the rewards it is getting are normal and therefor the magnitude of expectation increases whereby it expects NORMALLY to be rewarded a tonne. without the drug, all a person can think about is getting more, because the all the expectations that arent being met seem to be met by getting cocaine. people forget about everything else in their life because all the solutions come down to one thing - cocaine. the cocaine solves the reason that the car doesnt start (expectation - to start), or why the kettle is taking so long to boil (expectation - kettle to finnish), or why the old lady on the street is taking so long (expectation - old woman to no longer be on the road). why even drive? or drink coffee? the result would be acheiving a set of expectations, and these expectations are delivered by that one thing - cocaine. thus cocaine starts being the answer to things that have nothing to do with cocaine.

    contrast this with a heroin withdrawal. the coffee must be boiled, the car must be started, the woman must get off the road. everything becomes an issue, and the only way to escape all those issues is to take heroin. heroin doesnt solve the problems, it just gets rid of them. you dont need to boil the kettle. who cares if the car wont start? why not just sit in the car?


    with this dual relationship, we can now look at addictions that dont involve drugs.

    these become more complex to look at because it isnt physical stimuli that is the centre of the addiction (cocaine and heroin can be summarised in the brain as a single symbol or entity even), but thoughts. and thoughts are complexly all linked to eachother.

    videogames. before you can look at a videogame addiction, you need to ask what do videogames actually do?

    well theyre really quite simple. games SET UP novel expectations - the aim of the game. acheiving these expectations is very simple - it requires thought of process, and some actions of the hands.

    when you first play a videogame it can be confusing because you have to come to grips with the exact expectations of the game. these expecations tend to be simple, and the means for rewarding them is simple. the way they end up being approached to be rewarded is not so.

    take case A. this game is easy to play and easy to win. think, noughts and crosses. there are only a few things you can do, and a straight forward reward - win or lose. by the time you are a teenager, many of you probably would have figured out that there is a set of moves that is impossible to be beaten at, you can simply result in a win or a draw if the other person is aware. you could keep winning over and over all day long. but all that youre doing is a simple activation of a thought on a 9-square plane. this becomes boring because you arent able to make new solutions, youre not able to acheive more than two major expectations (winning the game and beating the opponent are seperate, though can acheive mutually) and a number of micro-expectations within the game. notice the times when we play these sorts of games. its when we have no other way of acheiving anything (passing time) and need to occupy ourselves. as soon as somethign else comes along, people tend to stop playing noughts and crosses.

    case B. this game on the otherhand has many ways of winning - for you never end the game. problems arise everywhere and can also be fabricated by the player. there are battles in the game, and can be fought by a number of different units, each resulting in expectations each time there is any sort of interaction with them or of them with other factors in the game. the number of expectations you can have is limited the the number of people playing, the number of manipulations each player makes, the number of manipulations you the player can make. these interact exponentially. the number of ways each expectation can be met is almost the same as the number of expectations there can be.
    so its clearly not something youre gonna ger bored of easily, unless you dont have the ability to acheive any of these expectations - which could be caused be a number of reasons which i wont go into.
    but this game goes further than that. this game features communication and interaction with many other people. the game allows social structures to form. however, interaction in these structures is not as it is in real life. there is no personal confrontation, and communication is encoded into words and actions. yet there are more social systems in this case than most people have in real life.
    this is very important, because this means that not only sre social expectations being met, they are being met much more easily than in real life. players have friendships, but not the same emotions as real life friendships. these friendships are based on communing emotions through words and symbols.

    now lets step aside for a moment. confidence occurs when people experience the rewards of their expectations. confidence breeds itself.

    confidence is countered by insecurities - fears. fears are mostly caused by worries about how one's output is going to be recieved. in this game, and on computers in general, a player, firstly, knows exactly what their output is going to look and be sensed like. as for the way their output will be interpreted, in games, the basis for interpretation is much more shared than in reality, where everyone is playing a very seperate game. by having multiple players playing the same game, players can be confident about the way their output will be recieved. thus they are confident, THUS they breed more rewardful expectations.

    so in this game, social communication is more rewarding in almost every objective sense than in real. the word 'reward' must be of course looked at in an objective way, because in the subjective/figurative sense, relationships without feeling and personal communication are not that 'rewarding'.

    this might be getting really longwinded, i am not sure, but i hope it makes sense.

    so by playing this game, physically the person has to move very little, pretty much just the hands. socially, there are many many more expectations, and it is much more easy to be rewarded through these expectations than in personal communication. logically, while playing a game, the mind is constantly having to make decisions that effect the whole game. in real life, rarely do decisions effect everything int he game, but merely parts, very indirectly. in the game, expectations are being made and their reward or nonreward is imminent. the number of places that expectations are being made is spread out and almost as diverse as real life. however the means to acheiving these goals is infinitely simpler in computer games, as this case implies. there are a few buttons and movements you can make really. so teh means to acheiving goals is more efficient than in real life, and the expectations being met are linked together, effectively fueling eachother, and all working toward the game that is being played.

    real life is a game. things are related abstractly, and the number of possible outcomes for any action is near-infinite (reaching infinity much faster than case B).

    so more expectations are met when playing. when not playing there are more expectations than cant be met (particularly if a person is habitually used to assessing situations in the way they would in the game - unsucessful in real life), and more importantly, the most powerful expectations (the ones acheived the most - which are those of the game since it is much easier to, and there are more options to, acheive these) are not being rewarded. whatever expectations can be rewarded (such as needing to solve a conceptual/schemes/complex problems of logical planning, and what theyll do next in the game in general) come to the forefront - thus people think about the game a lot instead of other things that are happening.

    expectations are met when on coke. when not on coke, there are more expectations that cant be met (particularly if a person is used to meeting them while on coke), and more importantly the most powerful expectations (the act of ingesting more cocaine) are not being met. whatever expectations can be rewarded (such as planning how to get the next gram and what theyll do when they get it) come to the forefront - thus people think about coke a lot.

    case B is WoW or any other MMORPG or even hipforums, & i hope this has all wrapped up appropriately.
     
  14. wonderboy

    wonderboy the secret of your power!

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    definitely one your best posts bill. i learned a lot about addiction that i didn't know before, and it's not like I haven't researched it. The expectation-fulfillment model is very interesting, I'd never thought about it in those terms - people tend to make addiction very complicated when discussing it, and that puts it all in perspective.

    well done, don't have anything to say in reply

    *claps*
     
  15. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    Very good post Bill. I think that its one weakness might be in the excessive detail over a rather narrow point of view. I think you're absolutely dead on with most of your assumptions and statements, but overrall its viewing psychological addiction in much too small a light.

    It's hard, when discussing psychological addiction, to come anywhere near the whole. That much is readily apparent. Your expectation/reward model is a bit too linear to really describe mental barriers and accomplishments. (for those who are familiar with the film, I'm reminded of the fear and love exercise in Donnie Darko) This isn't to say that the model is without use. It's an excellent base to work from.

    There are other factors to be considered such as self-control (or lack of), self-worth, and emotional health, to name just a few. These all weigh in on the presense or nonpresence of an addiction. Also they would prove to affect susceptibility greatly as well.

    Perhaps the most difficult aspect to explain is that which, as far as I know, no one truly comprehends. Spiritual facets (I use the term loosely, as it appears to fit best) of the addiction phenomenon are most certainly something we should find a place for. I know I've talked about that moment of epiphany, that moment when clarity cuts through the substance haze. This is suprisingly common in addicts. Modern medicine has no concrete explanation for it. It is occasionally regaled to just "getting it". And if an addict doesn't "get it", they don't usually get better. But when they "get it", they can go on to lead amazingly successful lives.

    So, Bill. I do think you've got excellent points, but that they're a bit rooted in the black/white, concreteness that confines modern addiction concepts.
     
  16. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    Physical addiction finds its roots from external sources, psychological addictions from internal sources?

    Psychologically susceptible people will find themselves afflicted with any number of addictions not due to the habits themselves, but rather, because of the state of mind the subject has. The "addiction" is just a pre-existing mental disorder (which is not necessarily specific).

    That the idea Cooloner?
     
  17. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    Interesting. What do you mean by that?
     
  18. StonerBill

    StonerBill Learn

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    theyre not rooted in anything ive directly come across in literature. of course its more complex and variable than what i explained, but that is because i was intentionally simplifying the idea into the same terms to give a basis. if there are any specifics you disagree with i would be glad to elabourate.
     
  19. BannedInDC

    BannedInDC Member

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    Dude, you gotta help me out. Three of my friends are addicted to that, they wont go out anymore and all they do is sit at home and sulk!
     
  20. Tsubasa

    Tsubasa Member

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    Oh, no. I didn't disagree, and I assumed you were well aware of the complexities involved. You were quite excellent in your detail and as I said it lays the groundwork for further elaboration on all of our parts. But I was neither disagreeing, nor assuming you thought that was the end all of the discussion. Props to your work man.
     

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