Addiction

Sweet, Sweet Dopamine…. That’s the line from a book I once read, I believe is fair to say “Dopamine is the root of all addictions”. Before we go ahead, we should do justice to what Dopamine is. Dopamine is a hormone (neurotransmitter) secreted by the brain that serves as a pleasure/reward stimulant. Dopamine has been discovered to serve as a regulatory for movement and emotional responses, and it enables us not to just get rewards (emotional/psychological), but to indulge in a conscious action to move toward getting these rewards. For instance, people indulge in sexual activities with the reward of climaxing (release of Dopamine).  We need to understand the importance of Dopamine to us as it is what the brain uses to tell the body; “you've had enough”. But then, what happens when the body wants more? The body just engages more in the act and voila! More Dopamine which then eventually leads to an addiction depending on the frequency of the act.

Having established that the want for dopamine is the cause of most addictions, I believe it’s also good to note that one other major factor that determines addiction is the frequency of the indulgence in the act. Then the question is where do you draw the line? Do we say that an individual that takes coffee every morning to get his/her day going is addicted to coffee? Do we say that someone that watches porn once a week is addicted to porn? Do we agree that an individual that can smoke 2 packs of cigarette in a day is addicted to nicotine? We need to understand the frequency which an act gets to before we consider it an addiction. The best answer to these questions would be; “there is no one-size-fits-all”. To consider the frequency of an act to be an actual addiction, the type of addiction being addressed really matters.

Pleasure! Epicureanism school of thought believed that pleasure is the ultimate drive/goal of all humans. They believed that whatever we do as human, it trickles down to the fact that we get pleasure from doing it. When we help others, it’s because we get that satisfying sense of purpose which gives us pleasure; eating chocolate – ‘wooo!’, pleasure!; serial killers do what they do because they get pleasure from it. Long story short, whatever we do can be related directly or indirectly to pleasure.  Aristippus, the father of this school of thought, said “The highest good is pleasure, the greatest evil is pain.” and Epicurus further explained that “pleasurable results of an action must always be weighed against its possible side effects”.  This implies that the want/urge for pleasure comes with some side effects and one of them is addiction. I believe one other human nature is greed and I’m going to be ridiculous by saying addiction is; “pleasure meets greed”. No! Wait! That's not actually being ridiculous since Google itself defines greed as “intense and selfish desire for something”. Intense and selfish desire for pleasure is definitely tantamount to ‘Addiction’. So, then if it’s human nature to be greedy and pleasure is the ultimate goal of every human then I guess it’s safe to say all humans have the tendency to be addicted to one thing or the other. The presence of pleasure also explains why it is almost impossible to get out of an addiction.

** Digressing a little from the topic, a phrase, “it gives us pleasure to bring others pleasure”, I read about Epicurus’ beliefs explains one of the questions I have always asked myself; “Why would anyone enjoy giving head(Cunnilingus/Fellatio)?” The answer is simple; because giving pleasure can also be pleasure itself**

Another question that however comes to mind is that; “Morally or religiously, is addiction wrong?” I’ll let you answer that.

I’ll just take this section as a question section as I ask this last question. “Do people that are addicted to one thing or the other often feel inferior to those individuals who aren’t addicted?” in my opinion, Yes! And this is from personal opinion and not a research study. Hmmm…I probably should conduct a research on that or look for a previous study.

The succeeding point would be to address how one can overcome one’s addictions and live free of it. The first valid point and that I am sure everyone will agree with is: Discipline. There’s a famous quote by Mortimer J. Adler; “True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.” I believe that statement by Mortimer J. Adler sums it up; if you seek to be free of an addiction, you have to exercise your discipline, you have to make your no a “NO” and your yes a “YES”. You have to make a conscious effort towards standing by what you stand for. Discipline is known to be synonymous to self-control and this basically means to have absolute dominance over one’s desires. Addiction comes with an urge to fulfill a desire and the first step towards a turnaround is discipline.

“Know thyself”.

The third point would be to avoid those situations that provokes your addiction into manifestation. For every addiction, there is always a stimulant to the action and this should be avoided at all cost (“I know right, easier said than done”). If you are addicted to masturbation, avoid being alone, staying too long in the shower, shower with cold water instead of hot water, avoid watching pornographic contents and so on. If your addiction is alcohol, avoid those crazy friends that get you all wasted, drink plenty water :P, after the first bottle, call it a day, whenever you are heading to the pub, only take enough cash for right number of bottles and tip for the bartender. If you are a “gambling lord”, the best way is to make sure you don’t have direct access to your own funds, avoid casinos, and avoid conversions that involves competition. The point here is to avoid those enabling factors of our addiction(s). Talking from experience, I know this part of working on getting over an addiction is very difficult because I know that if I do a certain task, I won’t be able to satisfy my addiction, I then intentionally avoid performing that task. Why? Because I’m addicted :( .

We should all be a work in progress and our aim should be to have self-control over every aspects of our live so as to reduce our weaknesses and elevate our strengths.

Random thought; “Is there really a difference between addiction and obsession?”

PS: I found this YouTube video on addiction and I thought it was a good idea to post it here.

References:

http://www.spectacle.org/0603/budde.html

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/discipline

http://www.helpguide.org/harvard/how-addiction-hijacks-the-brain.htm

http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Dopamine.aspx