Rethinking Addiction

[Thumpalumpacus]

This forum makes me laugh sometimes. A thread like this gets barely any attention, but a thread literally about shit, people jump on like flies on... well.. shit.

Not a criticism, just an observation.

Anyway, I also wanted to say that I think his point about 'bonding' and connections goes for more things other than just addiction. I think it's doubly the case for depression, for instance. Hell, depression is almost always (in my experience) linked very closely to addiction. Find me an addict who isn't depressed. So his talk, his actual point, is far deeper and covers a lot more than just addiction. It touches on the real reason why people get addicted IMO.

I think the chemicals hooks referred to, are actually a symptom, not a cause. I've always thought this. I'm not a scientist so my discounting of such might be completely baseless, I don't know the ins and outs and I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about, I'm sure I'm probably completely wrong. But personally I don't look at addiction and just think it's either something you have the capacity for or you don't. Like, a lot of people I know say addiction is something that 'just happens' in the brain, like a switch being turned on for 'chemical' reasons.

That just doesn't make sense to me. For instance, one example I can think of is smoking. A lot of people are addicted to cigarettes right? Some people just can't stop (so they say). But I can pick up a fag, chain smoke like a motherfucker, and never touch one again. I've never felt any inclination to smoke, even after having several cigarettes. Now, I literally had this discussion the other day with someone who works in a doctors practice and likes to think they know it all medically, their response was "oh well your brain is wired differently". However on a night out, when I'm in a different sort of mindspace (when I'm pissed, basically), that's the only time I ever really have a want for it, a craving if you like. I've always found it difficult to comprehend why someone, or rather how someone, could be in some way predisposed to addiction, and others would be seemingly immune? Is it just a 'chemical imbalance'? That seems way too simplistic to me.

I see smoking addiction for many people as habitual, rather than deeply rooted in depression or such like. A lot of people say they smoke due to 'stress', the funny thing is, smoking regularly actually makes you more stressed. Hence I can see how the vicious cycle of addiction begins. But I think smoking addicts are so for different reasons to alcoholics, for example. Smokers in general don't seem as unhappy people as what alcoholics do, for instance. I don't think it's just about 'chemicals in our brain'. I really think the reasons for addiction are more to do with social factors than to do with chemical or neurological ones.

Just my take anyway.

I think his point about ratpark is to the point. Not so much for cigarettes, as you're talking about here, but for the more mind-altering dependencies, a sort of sensory deprivation might well encourage drug-use that is more psychologically "entertaining", if you'll pardon the term. I think he's saying, at that point, that boredom helps to breed addiction, to those drugs which are more psychoactive. For instance, marijuana doesn't induce the "classic" symptoms of addiction, such as tolerance and withdrawal, but there's a body of thought that regards it as "psychologically" addictive. Perhaps at that point the addiction isn't to the drug itself, but to a different brainspace?