Characteristics of Addiction
Addiction is characterized by compulsive engagement in a behavior despite negative consequences. It involves a loss of control, continued use despite adverse effects, and withdrawal symptoms when the behavior is stopped. Additionally, individuals with addiction often experience an intense craving for the substance or behavior, leading to a cycle of dependence and difficulty in quitting.
7 Key excerpts on "Characteristics of Addiction"
eBook - ePub- Gordon Claridge, Caroline Davis(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Therefore, and in our discussions about addiction in the remainder of this chapter, we will adopt the perspective that addiction is not just about drug-taking, but rather that it comprises any behaviour that has the potential to become excessive, and that satisfies the set of commonly agreed criteria for addiction. Nevertheless, by adopting this broader viewpoint, we risk another difficulty – that of knowing where to draw the line between those behaviours that often cause addiction, and those that seldom do. For example, some have argued that it is possible to become addicted to work and to television – even to various forms of exercise, such as rock climbing (McIlwraith, 1998; Burke, 2000)! Although that may be true at one level, it is also clear that these activities do not share the same qualities as the core addictions, such as drug-taking, alcohol consumption, smoking, and gambling, both in terms of their reinforcing properties and in the strength of their addictive potential (see Orford, 2001). Clinical Features Although the experts have not reached complete consensus on the defining Characteristics of Addiction – nor on how they should be ordered by importance – at least most agree there are certain factors that should be included. Foremost is their progressively compulsive nature, even in the face of adverse consequences to health, safety, and social relations (Berridge & Robinson, 1995). In other words, to the serious detriment of conventional daily pursuits, such as looking after the needs of one’s family, functioning well at one’s job, and attending to normal social obligations, the addict spends more and more time carrying out the behaviour or seeking opportunities to do so. Nor is the addict deterred by the knowledge that the behaviour can cause serious medical problems, for example in the case of smoking. Tolerance is also a defining characteristic of addiction and describes the experiential changes that occur as a result of chronic overindulgence...
eBook - ePubDrugs without the hot air
Making sense of legal and illegal drugs
- David Nutt(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- UIT Cambridge(Publisher)
...Chapter 9. What is addiction? Is there an “addictive personality”? Using substances from outside the body to change our brain chemistry is something humans have always done, and the psychoactive effects created are similar to the changes we experience when we eat nice food or take exercise. For the majority of people the majority of the time, this doesn’t lead to compulsive behaviour – we remain in control, and pretty soon our brains return to their prior state. For a minority, however, drug use leads to drug abuse and addiction, just as a minority of people become addicted to food, gambling or sex. For these people, satisfying their cravings for whatever it is they’re addicted to becomes the most powerful source of motivation in their lives, overpowering every other need and often leading them to harm themselves and others. There are three elements that affect whether a person becomes addicted to a particular drug (Figure 9.1): Figure 9.1: The three elements that affect whether a person becomes addicted to a particular drug. 1. Drug-related factors include how the drug reaches the brain, and what it does when it gets there. Tolerance and withdrawal also affect its addictiveness. 2. Social factors include the availability and acceptability of using the drug, the prevalence of advertising, how the drug makes groups behave, and the economic and social costs. 3. Personal and biological factors are those such as age, gender and genetics. In this chapter we look at the mechanisms of addiction, tolerance and withdrawal, and why certain people seem to have “addictive personalities”. (Chapter 4 has already examined some of the drug-related factors, which we explore in more detail in chapter 11, and we cover the social factors in chapter 12.) Addiction in history Our understanding of addiction has increased as more drugs have become available, and as their role in society has changed...
eBook - ePub- Mary McMurran(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...These will be described in Chapter 5 which looks at change in addictive behaviours. Psychological Theories Are Not Specific to Addictive Behaviours Finally, psychological theories are not specific to addictive behaviours. The theories presented in this chapter are theories which apply to all kinds of behaviour, not just addictive behaviours. In the study of substance use, the emphasis on biological factors has been reduced; that is, biological factors have been cut down to size, but not completely disregarded. Consequently, mainstream psychological theories have been used to explain drinking and drug use, as they have other behaviours. If all behaviours are explained according to the same principles, then this allows for the inclusion of non-substance-based behaviours as addictions. Gambling and sex have already been mentioned in passing. This actually presents us with a problem in defining what an addiction is, and in deciding to which behaviours the concept can be applied. Can we, as common parlance these days suggests, become addicted to almost anything? Can one become a workaholic, a chocoholic, addicted to love, and so on? So, What Is Addiction? Non-substance-based addictions, such as gambling, have often been brought into line with the addiction to substances by reference to the brain’s ability to produce its own internal addictive substances (Davies, 1992). Endorphins are opiates produced naturally by the brain in response to high arousal states. J.B.Davies (1992) points out that, The idea that people can generate their own internal addictive pharmacology can be applied to all sorts of behaviours other than gambling and drug-taking, including such valued activities as playing the violin, walking to the North Pole, or becoming a Member of Parliament; things which in themselves are not regarded as pathological...
eBook - ePubAddiction
A biopsychosocial perspective
- Chris Chandler, Anita Andrews(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...addiction should be able to account for the key features of addiction including: individual susceptibility; its development and maintenance; how it is experienced physically and psychologically (features such as tolerance, craving, impulsive and compulsive use); and be able to suggest possibilities for treatment. Ideally a good theory should generate testable hypotheses. This is extremely challenging because it is very difficult to design studies in this field which accurately represent experiences in the real world (ecologically valid experiments). This is because in addition to societal and cultural impacts, addiction is experienced on an individual level, as a personal conflict, in individually triggering and personal environments. As a result of this complexity, most theories of addiction help us to understand one part of the picture more clearly without necessarily adequately addressing the other parts. Although the different theories in this chapter are organised under different subheadings for clarity, it will become evident that there is substantial overlap between theories and between attempts to explain observations. Different theories may incorporate widely applicable observations and offer distinct but mutually supportive explanations. It is difficult to experimentally evaluate all levels of analysis simultaneously. The first section will provide a broad overview of the disease or biomedical model of addiction, briefly tracing its history through alcohol and opioids to the current conceptualisation of the ‘disease’. The inclusion of the disease model in a chapter on psychological theories of addiction serves to illustrate the interrelationships between psychological processes and their biological underpinnings (see Chapter 3 for the neural systems involved). The next section will focus on theories which emphasise the role of choice and the influence of cognitive processes such as attention, perception and memory in driving addictive behaviour...
eBook - ePubOn Human Nature
Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Religion
- Michel Tibayrenc, Francisco J. Ayala(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
...Indeed, addictive behavior in most cases is characterized as compulsive, and there is a progressive loss in the ability to refrain from drug-related behaviors (Spanagel and Heilig, 2005). In laboratory animals, this loss of control can be assessed by measuring the impulsive choice trait, defined as high preference for small and immediate rewards over larger and delayed rewards. The procedure used to measure this aspect is the temporal discount paradigm, where the animal is presented with those two behavioral alternatives, and the choice of a small and immediate reward is considered impulsive. This procedure resembles the higher rate of discount displayed by drug addicts in similar tasks and therefore has face and constructs validity (Kirby and Petry, 2004). In addition, loss of control over behavior might also result from neurocognitive deficits, well documented in drug addicts (reviewed in Franken and van de Wetering, 2015) and might include among others, attention, memory, or decision-making processes. In the past years, a growing body of animal studies has addressed this particular relationship (Vanderschuren and Ahmed, 2013). Thus, several studies have reported deficits in diverse cognitive functions, including attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, object recognition memory, and impulsive behavior in rats or primates self-administrating cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), or heroin (ie, Briand et al., 2008 ; Dalley et al., 2005a, b ; 2007, 2008 ; Parsegian et al., 2011 ; Porter et al., 2011 ; Schenk et al., 2011 ; Schippers et al., 2012). However, it still remains to be elucidated whether those neurocognitive and impulse control disorders are in some cases present before the drug experience, therefore predisposing the addictive behavior in vulnerable individuals (see next section). The last key feature of addictive behavior presented here is drug intake despite the knowledge of negative, adverse consequences...
eBook - ePub- Robert West, Jamie Brown(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...If one wants to know what kind of a person will become addicted to an activity, look at his or her physiological or psychological response to the activity to see how rewarding it is and look also at how little the person cares about the harm that the behaviour is likely to cause. If one wants to know what kinds of situations are conducive to addiction, look at those that make it easy and cheap to engage in the activity. Costs and benefits of different modes of drug delivery Remember, when considering addiction to drugs, that the way that a drug is used dramatically affects the cost–benefit equation: injecting heroin is potentially more harmful but also, for some, there are greater benefits than smoking it (Pates et al. 2005). Remember also the social dimension to addiction; for example, the pharmacological actions of a drug have a different value depending on the social circumstances in which a drug is taken. What is more, social costs and benefits of an addictive behaviour play an important part in its development, maintenance and termination. What the Rational Choice Theory explains and encompasses This theory can explain why an addiction appears to take time to develop. What is observed is that the behaviour becomes more frequent or its intensity (or dose) increases or both; and the reason is that in the individuals concerned, the cost–benefit equation favours this transition. This can occur for a number of reasons. One is that the fledgling addict gets less of a reward from each instance of the activity and so chooses to increase the dose. Tolerance, dose escalation and withdrawal symptoms In the case of drug addictions, this can result from ‘pharmacological tolerance’: the body adapts to the repeated ingestion of the drug with changes that work to restore normal functioning. However, tolerance can occur to non-drug stimuli as well...
eBook - ePubMyth of Addiction
Second Edition
- John Booth Davies(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...If, as seems to be the case, there is variability in severity of withdrawals as a function of time, place, expectation or whatever, then it becomes increasingly difficult to conceptualise withdrawals as the basic powerhouse or engine-room for ‘addictive’ behaviour. Furthermore, since we have argued that ‘craving’ lacks its essential property of compulsion, so ‘addiction’ becomes less monolithic and more amenable to explanation in human terms. Cures for Taking Drugs Returning to our main theme, it is suggested that the concept of ‘addiction’ might conceivably have some value if it gave emphasis to the normal and nonpathological decisions people make about drugs; but in fact it is usually employed to encapsulate certain assumptions about what drugs do to people, thereby implying a process from which the powers, wishes and intentions of the drug user are specifically excluded. The idea that the pharmacology of drugs makes people into addicts against their ‘will’ has to be contrasted with the idea that people make addicts of themselves because they choose to do so. The latter is a challenging suggestion which deserves serious consideration, and it certainly makes sense of the fact that treatment for addictions frequently seems to have more in common with procedures for attitude change, than with medical intervention. From such a standpoint, the term ‘addiction’ appears to refer not so much to some medical condition as to certain disapproved-of ways of thinking and deciding, certain acts of choice which are not qualitatively or quantitatively different from thinking, deciding and choosing in any other area of human life, but which happen to involve drugs. Because of the pharmacological action of drugs, the consequences can be disastrous to health, family and all aspects of living, but such consequences do not in themselves warrant the postulation of a special state which compels their use...
