Addiction: A lack of control over pleasurable behaviours

By Sande E Oundo

Addiction is a mental disorder defined as a pervasive and intense urge to engage in harmful behaviours providing immediate pleasure, despite their harmful consequences. Dependence is when addiction is coupled with the body’s presentation of symptoms like withdrawal after stopping the harmful pleasure-seeking behaviour and substance.

Addiction can be due to substances or behaviours. Substances or drugs that can lead to addiction are alcohol, most famous, tobacco (nicotine), marijuana, miraa, amphetamine, cocaine, painkillers, and even food. Behaviours that can lead to addiction are gambling, video games, social media, shopping, pornography, sex, and masturbation. The difference between substance and behavioural addictions is that substances lead to changes in brain structures over time.

Addiction mainly due to substance use causes physical illnesses, mental illnesses, poverty, aggression, isolation, divorce, road traffic accidents, sexual abuse, prostitution, criminal activity, childhood trauma, and death due to overdose on drugs by taking too much of it. 

Causes

The brain has a reward system that evolved to serve biologically essential normal rewarding behaviours such as feeding, drinking, sexual behaviour, maternal and paternal behaviours, and social interactions i.e. the more you do those activities, the more pleasure you receive. The reinforcement engendered by such normal reward is believed to underlie the consolidation of biologically essential memories (e.g., food and water location within an animal’s foraging or hunting range).

Addictive drugs or behaviours hijack the brain’s reward circuits – activating them more strongly than natural rewards, and diverting the drug addict’s life to the pursuit of drug-induced pleasure at the expense of getting high on life’s normal pleasures and rewards. The body always lives in a state of balance called homeostasis so the more pleasure a person receives, the more pain they also feel which is why you feel bad or sad after pleasurable activity like social media scrolling, if you wait for a while you recover but if you rush back to look for more pleasure, that means pain is building up and as soon as dopamine is finished, you would end up depressed.

The substance that operates the reward system is called dopamine.

The more someone repeats a behaviour, the more reinforced that behaviour becomes, creating a feedback loop. After a certain amount of time, physical changes occur in the brain, altering the reward pathway permanently. The amount of time it takes for such changes to occur depends on the type of substance being used. This could be after one use or over months. Changes in the brain due to reinforced behaviour are highly influential when a person transitions from casual use of a substance to addictive substance use.

The persistent release of dopamine during chronic drug use gradually rewires specific brain structures, embedding drug cues, which leads to obsessive cravings for the substance. These changes are what make a withdrawal so difficult due to the depletion of dopamine, hence the person feels a lot of pain at the same time and will need more amount of the substance or behaviour to have the same feeling than before leading to tolerance, that is why someone jumps from minor stimulant like Marijuana to major stimulant like Methamphetamine or painkillers to become high. 

There is a personality type that makes a person susceptible to addiction. According to the most credible personality test, the Big 5 personality test, people who are high in extroversion, openness, and neuroticism are more susceptible to addiction while those who are high in conscientiousness and agreeableness are least susceptible to addiction.

By the way, you can take a free Big 5 personality test by visiting our website https://vigilantliving.org/ 

There are other risk factors for addiction like family history of substance addiction which could be genetic or exposure to the substance as a child. Childhood trauma can also increase the risk for addiction possibly as a consequence of parental abuse of drugs as well stress can easily predispose/ force a person recovering from addiction to relapse back to the substance or behaviour because it inhibits the new nerve cells built to stop the addiction. Also, happiness can do the same thing to a recovering addict.

Therapy

Addiction is a complex disease with a combination of psychological, social, and physical changes in the person, hence it requires a holistic treatment. The person who is an addict has to have an insight into his/her situation and be willing to put an effort into fixing the addiction because the withdrawal period in the first 2 weeks is the worst with symptoms like pain, vomiting, diarrhea, hallucinations, anxiety, and insomnia depending on the substance they were addicted to which is why some addict are given medication to lessen withdrawal symptoms. 

The most effective therapeutic methods for addiction are a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy for disabling harmful behaviours, motivational interviewing for empowering the person dealing with addiction, and group therapy to provide support e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous. It takes years, possibly forever to recover from addiction and not to relapse. 

There are a couple of things you can do to prevent a behaviour from becoming addictive:

1. Enjoying boredom by accepting reality for what it is. 
2. Finding pleasure in small activities like spending time with family and friends as well as reading books.
3. Avoiding lying, because it predisposes you to harmful behaviour, the truth shall set you free. 
4. Choosing your friends wisely, sometimes even relatives may either expose you to substances or make you sponsor their addiction financially and emotionally. 
5. Seeking natural activities like exercise, not just digital ones like social media.
6. Finding healthier ways to manage stress like sports or hobbies even cleaning. 
7. Having goals to align your life with and being accountable to those goals with the help of someone you trust. 
8. Not falling for your ego and delusion, that you have control over your addiction and seeking help. 
9. Prayers and gratitude keep you reminded even in the worst times.
10. Having principles and values, which you don’t comprise whatsoever. 

In conclusion, Addiction creates two people, the one before addiction and the one after, without an effort the one before addiction dies and all that is left is the addict while to resurrect the before one takes almost impossible effort. With much effort coupled with psychological support, one can get rid of any addictive behaviours and live a long productive and meaningful life.

Sande Elison Oundo is the President of Vigilant Living, an online wellness, counselling and coaching firm.