Addiction is an obsessive desire to perform an activity or an urgent need to perform it. Recently, the opinion about such disorders has changed dramatically, and drug dependence is considered on a par with behavioral abnormalities.
Addiction is a disease that can be conditionally divided into 2 main categories. Let's consider them further. Types of addictions:
- Chemical (substantial or physical).
- Behavioral (non-substantial, or psychological).
Chemical addiction options
Chemical addiction is a disorder associated with the use of various substances that change the physical state of the person taking them. Many of them are poisonous (or toxic), which leads to organic lesions. Chemical addictions cause significant harm to he alth from the very beginning of their development.
Alcohol addiction
Among the chemical varieties, alcohol addiction is the best studied. It leads to multiple disorders in the body. Everything suffers from it: internal organs, psyche, nervous system. After some time of drinking and after the first two stages, where memory lapses and a slight hangover are the main problem, the third stage begins. Here, a person can no longer fight with a strong, unbridled desire to hangover, with internal discomfort, sharp negative feelings in the worldview, since irreversible changes have already occurred in the body at the physical level.
Drug addiction
Patients with drug addiction have cravings for various psychotropic and toxic substances. That is, substance abuse also applies to this species. A similar dependence occurs almost immediately after the first use of these substances. Drug addiction is worse than alcoholism. Since two types of dependence are combined here: psychological and physical. With such an addiction, the patient each time needs an increasing amount of the drug, which slowly kills the body. Irreversible processes take place in it, and then most often the result is death.
Non-chemical addictions. Behavioral addiction: options
Behavioral addiction is characterized by attachment to a certain activity. And also the inability to get rid of it on their own. Addictive behavior most often arises from the desire to break away fromreality and get into the world created by consciousness. Currently, there are forms of such addiction that are acceptable and safe for a person: falling in love, meditation, creativity, spiritual practices, workaholism, and extreme sports.
Behavioral addiction is a non-chemical variety. That is, it represents the influence of some action pattern. Almost any hobby of a person, which has an overvalued value for him or in which activity becomes the main guide of his behavior, is a similar variant of addiction.
Gaming addiction
Non-chemical addictions also include gambling addiction, when a person cannot imagine his life without gambling. These can be casinos, slot machines, roulette, etc. Many psychologists argue that any gambling is a very serious social problem that poses a real threat to the population. Addiction is exacerbated by the relaxation resulting from the game, the decline in emotional stress.
The main signs of gambling addiction can be called:
- Continuous commitment to the process.
- Increased game time.
- Change in social circle and interests.
- Loss of control.
- Gradual increase in irritation.
- Raising rates.
- Lack of ability to resist play.
When at least a few of these signs appear in a person, it is necessary to immediatelySeek professional help from a therapist or psychologist.
Relationship addiction
The following relationship addictions can be distinguished: avoidance, love and sexual. The cause of such disorders is most often inadequate self-esteem, as well as the inability to love yourself.
Love addiction - manic attachment to another person, fixation on him. Often such relationships arise in two co-dependent people, in co-addictive ones. Such a relationship can appear between parent and child, husband and wife, friends.
Love addiction has the following features:
- A lot of time and attention is given to the object to which the addiction is directed.
- The appearance of an obsession from which it is impossible to get rid of.
- Experiencing imaginary relationships.
- Loss of interest in personal hobbies.
Signs of addiction avoidance:
- avoiding an intense relationship with a previously significant person.
- Intentionally spending time with other people, even if they are not at all interesting.
- Attempts to avoid intimate contact.
- Maintaining psychological distance.
At the subconscious level, patients with avoidance addiction have a fear of abandonment. He is the main reason for this behavior.
A love addict and an avoidant addict are usually always drawn to each other. This attraction arises from the presence of familiar psychological traits that, although unpleasant, causeemotional pain, but familiar.
Sexual addiction has the following main features:
- Lack of control over sexual behavior.
- The impossibility of dealing with such actions, despite all the negative and dangerous consequences.
In the appearance of such a disorder as sexual addiction in a person, sexual trauma in childhood is of great importance.
Workaholism
Workaholism, like any other addiction, is an escape from reality through a change in mental state, which is achieved by fixing on work. A person with such an addiction does not seek to work only for money or a goal. It replaces various types of activity with work: affection, entertainment, love, friendship, etc.
One of the noticeable and obvious features of workaholism is the compulsive desire for approval and success. The addict has a great fear of failing, of being a little worse than others, or of being seen as incompetent and lazy. Such people behave quite aloofly with friends and family. The workaholic lives only in the system of his own experiences with direct fixation at work.
A person suffering from this disorder convinces not only himself, but also those around him that he is trying solely for the sake of money or promotion. In fact, this is a certain protection that is accepted by society, and the person himself does not understand that such a path is a dead end and will not help realize his potential. If aa workaholic gets fired, he can't handle that kind of stress. Timely contacting a specialist will help to avoid problems in the future. Since such people subsequently develop chemical addictions more often than others. At the same time, it is workaholism that is one of the methods of rehabilitation of drug addicts or alcoholics.
Internet addiction
In the modern world, this problem has almost caught up with chemical addictions in terms of scale. There are several types of such a disease as Internet addiction:
- Obsessive addiction (gaming or programming).
- Compulsive site navigation.
- Internet gambling addiction.
- Addicted to social networks.
- Internet pornography addiction.
Computer addiction has the following main psychological symptoms:
- Excellent state bordering on euphoria.
- Unable to stop.
- Continuous increase in computer time.
- Complete neglect of loved ones.
Internet addiction has these physical symptoms:
- Persistent pain in the wrist due to tunnel damage to the nerve trunks of the hand caused by overexertion.
- Dry eyes and headaches.
- Lack of personal hygiene.
- Sleep disturbance.
Computer addiction can lead to sad consequences, especially in adolescence. A person as a result of such an addiction can lose loved ones, friends and return toreal life will be able only with the help of a psychologist.
Sports addiction
Modern science distinguishes between sports necessary for he alth and professional sports. In addition, there are its extreme types, which are now gaining more and more popularity.
Sports addiction is a disease that is on the border of socially acceptable behavioral responses and physical dependence. It should be remembered that an excessive passion for sports can easily change direction and form, as a result of which it will go into another type, even into a chemical one. Therefore, there is a fairly high percentage of drug addiction, alcoholism and drug addiction among former athletes.
Shopaholism
Shopaholism refers to the dependence on making purchases and their lack of control. They only bring satisfaction for a short period of time, which leads to serious consequences in the future, such as huge debts and problems with the law.
Main signs of shopaholism:
- Frequent shopping concerns.
- Sudden, overpowering desire to acquire something.
- Shopping beyond your means.
- Purchasing unnecessary things.
- More time spent shopping.
- Having sudden impulses to buy something.
- Inadequate waste of time.
All of the above is gradually becoming a fairly serious hindrance in normal everyday life. Also inflictsgreat harm to the professional sphere and entails material problems.
The addiction to the constant desire to spend money and acquire unnecessary things manifests itself in the form of repetitive, irresistible urges to buy in huge quantities. In the intervals between them, tension usually builds up, which can be eased only by making the next purchase. After that, guilt usually sets in. Such addicts are characterized by a fairly wide range of existing negative emotions, while positive ones arise only in the process of making purchases. Dependent people of this type have growing debts, loans, problems in relationships with relatives and friends. You might even get in trouble with the law. In the modern world of technology, shopaholism is increasingly being implemented through online shopping in virtual stores.
Food addiction
Food addiction includes overeating and fasting. They are also called intermediate types. In the literature, one can often find a more extended interpretation of food addictions. These include anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Now there is a separate addiction to chocolate. There is an opinion that chocolate made from cocoa beans has the ability to form an addiction. This is caused by the presence in beans of compounds that are close to endogenous cannabinoids in their chemical composition.
Next, consider the types of addictions associated with food.
Overeating
Food addiction is both a psychological addiction andsome kind of physical. Because it helps you feel full. As ordinary food acquires greater addictive potential, it is precisely the artificial stimulation of hunger that occurs. Any person who is prone to overeating can create a zone of overestimated exchange balance in a similar way. As a result, when the concentration of glucose in the blood decreases after the next meal, the feeling of hunger appears immediately, and the person cannot bear it calmly. Physiological mechanisms very quickly mismatch. The addict begins to eat a lot, often and indiscriminately, everything. At some point, a constant sense of shame is added to such behavior, which grows after eating. As a result, a person intensively hides his addiction, begins to eat secretly, after any load, his hunger intensifies. All this eventually leads to very dangerous consequences for he alth: metabolic disorders, weight gain, malfunction of internal organs and the digestive system. A person ceases to control himself and begins to consume a volume of food that can be life-threatening.
Fasting
Currently, there are two main mechanisms of fasting addiction: medical and non-medical. The medical option involves the use of unloading diet therapy. The initial phase of entering hunger has certain difficulties associated with the ever-emerging need to suppress appetite. The next phase is characterized by a state change. As a result, appetite decreases or disappears, appearstrength, as if a second wind opens, mood rises, a desire for physical activity appears. Many patients like this state very much, and they want to stay in it longer, to prolong it.
Repeated fasting is carried out independently. As a result, at a certain level of euphoria resulting from fasting, there is a loss of control. The addict continues to starve even when it becomes unsafe for he alth and life, there is a loss of a critical attitude to the state.
Any addiction, dependence, whether physical or mental, does not go away on its own. Inaction and unwillingness to fight it can lead to sad consequences, sometimes irreversible. Often a person suffering from addiction is not able to critically assess his condition and ask for help. Patients with gambling addiction, shopaholism, food addictions cannot really realize the scale of their illness.
Prevention of addictions
Prevention of addiction should begin at school, where children are told in detail about its existing types, their causes and consequences. If a child learns about destructive consequences, such as chemical addictions, most likely he will not even want to try alcohol, drugs or cigarettes.
The example of parents also plays an important role in the prevention of addiction in children. Help and support from loved ones in difficult situations, talking about problems - all this will help to avoid a person’s desire to leave for a fictional world.
Timely appeal to a psychologist and hisdirect participation in the elimination of the causes of the emerging addiction will certainly help to overcome it.
