Addiction: what it is and why it occurs

Addiction from a medical point of view

Numerous medical organizations define addiction as a chronic disease that affects the reward system, motivation, memory, and other structures of the brain.

Addiction deprives you of the ability to make choices and control your actions and replaces it with a constant desire to take a particular substance (alcohol, drugs, drugs).

Addicts' behavior is driven by illness, not weakness, selfishness, or lack of willpower. The anger and dislike that addicts often face disappear when others understand that such a person simply cannot do anything with himself.

Addiction is not a disease, but a habit

However, scientists are now convinced that the approach to addiction solely as a disease is not justified.

A well-known neuroscientist and author of the book "The Biology of Desire" Marc Lewis is a supporter of the new view of addiction. He believes that changes in the structure of the brain alone are not proof of his disease.

The brain changes constantly: during the period of growing up of the body, in the process of learning and developing new skills, during natural aging. Also, the structure of the brain changes during recovery from a stroke, and most importantly, when people stop taking drugs. In addition, it is believed that drugs themselves are not addictive.

People become addicted to gambling, pornography, sex, social media, computer games, shopping and food. Many of these addictions are classified as mental disorders.

The changes in the brain seen in drug addiction are no different from those seen in behavioral addictions.

According to the new version, addiction develops and is learned as a habit. This brings addiction closer to other harmful behaviors: racism, religious extremism, sports obsession, and unhealthy relationships.

But if addiction is learned, why is it so much more difficult to get rid of it than other types of learned behavior?

When it comes to memorization, we imagine new skills: foreign languages, cycling, playing a musical instrument. But we also acquire habits: we have learned to bite our nails and sit for hours in front of the TV.

Habits are acquired without special intention, and skills are acquired consciously. Addiction is inherently closer to habits.

Habits are formed when we do things over and over

From a neuroscience perspective, habits are repetitive patterns of synaptic arousal (a synapse is the point of contact between two neurons).

When we think about something over and over again or do the same thing, synapses are activated in the same way and form familiar patterns. This is how any action is learned and rooted. This principle is applicable to all natural complex systems, from organism to society.

Habits take root. They are independent of genes and are not determined by the environment.

The formation of habits in self-organizing systems is based on such a concept as an "attractor". An attractor is a stable state in a complex (dynamic) system, towards which it aspires.

Attractors are often depicted as recesses or dimples on a smooth surface. The surface itself symbolizes the many states that the system can assume.

The system (of a person) can be thought of as a ball rolling on a surface. In the end, the ball hits the attractor's hole. But getting out of it is no longer so easy.

Physicists would say that this requires additional energy. In a human analogy, it is the effort that must be made to abandon a particular behavior or way of thinking.

Addiction is a rut, from which it gets harder and harder to get out of it

Personality development can also be described using attractors. In this case, an attractor is a quality that characterizes a person in a certain way, which persists for a long time.

Addiction is such an attractor. Then the relationship between the person and the drug is a feedback loop that has reached a degree of self-reinforcement and is linked to other loops. This is what makes it addictive.

Such feedback loops drive the system (the person and his brain) into an attractor, which continually deepens over time.

Addiction is characterized by an irresistible desire for some substance. This substance provides temporary relief. As soon as it ends, the person is overwhelmed with a sense of loss, frustration and anxiety. To calm down, the person takes the substance again. Everything is repeated over and over again.

Addiction rooted in a need that it had to satisfy.

After multiple repetitions, it becomes natural for the addict to increase the dose, which further strengthens the habit and its underlying synaptic arousal patterns.

Other communicating feedback loops also influence dependency anchorage. For example, social isolation, only exacerbated by the fact of dependence. As a result, the dependent person has fewer and fewer opportunities to restore relationships with people and return to a healthy lifestyle.

Self-development helps to overcome addiction

Addiction has nothing to do with deliberate choice, bad temper, and dysfunctional childhood (although the latter is still considered a risk factor). It is a habit formed by repeating self-reinforcing feedback loops.

Although addiction does not completely deprive a person of choice, getting rid of it is much more difficult, because it takes root very deeply.

It is impossible to formulate one specific rule that would help to cope with addiction. It takes a combination of perseverance, personality, luck and circumstances.

However, experts agree that growing up and self-development is very conducive to recovery. Over the years, a person's views and his idea of his own future change, the addiction becomes less attractive and no longer seems so irresistible.

Repeating the same thing is ultimately boring and frustrating. Oddly enough, these negative emotions encourage us to continue to act, even if we have already tried to do something a hundred times before, but we have not succeeded.

The very obsession of addiction and the absurdity of pursuing the same goal day after day contradicts everything creative and optimistic in human nature.