Behavioural Addictions

I am going to play Lava Button again. I am not allowed to press delete (though I undoubtedly will once or twice by reflex) and must simply write this blog without over-thinking it. I don’t want to always use this game for my writing because there are definite advantages to being considered and editing a piece of writing, but today I feel like I really want to write a new blog entry, yet I hate everything I write. Not having the option to delete it artificially alleviates me of responsibility and calms me a bit, even if I don’t like what I’ve just written.

It has been three weeks since I last wrote a blog entry. I am committing now to increase my blog-frequency to at least once per week.

I want to write this week about behavioural addiction. It is a really serious problem but I don’t think many people think about it or understand it. Whether it is an addiction to gambling, food, pornography, computers, cutting oneself, video games, the internet, shopping, sex or work- the effects, as I understand them, are twofold.

The first effect is that the individual finds it difficult to stop these behaviours even when there are clear negative side effects to this behaviour. The addicted mind fabricates all sorts reasons and justifications as to why the behaviour should continue and these become just convincing enough when the added incentive of a dopamine spike make indulging once again in the behaviour so alluring.

This looks like a sweet alien valley in space through which one might pilot a heavily-armed fluro spaceship. Pew pew.

The negative side effects can be devastating and wide-ranging. The addictive behaviour can take up huge amounts of time and energy, leaving the addicted individual unable to fulfil many of their other commitments; or finding it increasingly difficult and stressful to do so. This continued inability to do the things important to them can cause guilt, shame, further binges in the addictive behaviour and in other vices on top of this.

Shame *hurts*.

The second (arguably even more insidious) effect is that, in the rewiring of the brain to reinforce this addictive behaviour, other behaviours become less intrinsically fulfilling. Someone who is addicted to gambling, for example, gets a dopamine spike in their brains when they are gambling. They start to get a tolerance to this, meaning they need to gamble more and more often with higher and higher stakes to feel the same rush and excitement. Then, activities that could have been really fun in the past, like playing cards with friends with no kind of gambling attached, become dull and uninteresting in comparison.

The addicted person will *want* to enjoy just hanging out with their friends, but will be saddened to find that doing this is now really unfulfilling and they may not understand why.

Exactly.

I am finding this all kind of arduous to write because I’m avoiding speaking about my own addiction. Addiction is often mixed deeply with guilt and shame and this is the case for me. For this reason, I won’t go into the specifics here, but I have become aware, recently, that I had been indulging in certain behaviours compulsively and that I continue to do so despite the negative side effects on my productivity and my enjoyment of life.

I have identified the addiction after reading about it and reading about others’ experiences with behavioural addiction and I have cut out the behaviour. It has been one week so far.

I feel like perhaps this is part of the reason that I often write a big list of things I want to do and then never get around to doing them. I am legitimately interested in them and I really want to enjoy doing them, but when I have had the spare time to do so I haven’t been able to get into that state of ‘Flow’ (which I blogged about in my last post) because my enjoyment of low-adrenaline activities had been somewhat dampened or numbed by my over-indulgence of the addictive behaviours.

Yeah, well, that was an easy one.

But! Yes! As I continue to abstain from these addictive behaviours my brain will re-rewire itself. The effect the addiction has had on my free time will disappear. Without the addictive behaviours taking up my time and energy I will have more time for the things I am passionate about (composition, singing, writing). Also, the work I need to do to excel in these areas will actually excite me! Previously, I have had to force myself to learn what little I know so far about music theory. I would put off studying theory for longer and longer until the shame and guilt I felt about this would make me willing endure the boredom of reading a theory book. I was always just choosing the lesser of two evils. Reading a theory book will, if I understand what I have read about behavioural addiction correctly, become more exciting and interesting the longer I abstain from stimulating artificial excitement by indulging my addictions.

If the addiction was something like food, I imagine things would become a little trickier. How well would a recovering heroin addict do if they had to have just a little bit of heroin each day in order to survive? With food addiction, one can (obviously) not just cut out food completely, so there needs to be some other kind of management system in place. The website I have been reading suggest Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and I’m sure there are other methods that you will surely find if you have the need for help and the willingness to change.

There are better goddamn options than this.

OK. Thanks for reading this. I wasn’t in a very good mood today and had to force myself to write this, so it may come across as quite joyless, but I hope this gets people thinking about whether they have any addictions. If you do, I can just recommend reading about it and reading what others have experienced and how they have got over their addictions and how they have benefited from their abstinence.

It helps to keep a journal about it and talk to close friends about it to get their support.

You can find some information about behavioural addiction here: http://addictions.about.com/od/howaddictionhappens/f/behavioraladd.htm

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist. This is all just what makes sense to me. A lot of it is backed up by scientific articles I’ve read, but within that even a lot of those are controversial. There is controversy of whether or not over-eating can ever be legitimately called an addiction. I think that it can, you may think otherwise. That is fine, I only hope that the way you see things empowers you, builds you up and has you enjoy life, loving yourself and others.

Also Disclaimer: Not all my blog entries will be so dry. Peace out dudes.