What is addiction? That’s a good question and one with many view points. If nothing else, addiction is a label which is used to identify someone with a obsessive / compulsive need to do something. It is a subjective term, which has a danger of people placing themselves in or out of with their own rationale. Some common rationale around addiction can include:
There has been extensive research into addiction, studies have focussed on genetic dispositions, neurotransmitter dispositions, neuro imaging, social and behavioural functioning etc…
As you can see from our headline text, the dictionary definition states “that it is a physiological or psychological behaviour that creates a habit”. The reality is, in many cases it’s both. In fact, the most reliable model of addiction is called the Biopsychosocial model and goes a step further to include social learning in its equation.
The different types of drug addiction are listed on the left hand side of this page. Follow the links to find out more.
The three considerations of drug addiction:
Addicted to Drugs - Physiological Aspects
From a psychological point of view, you only need to look at behavioural psychology to see how repeated behaviour creates addicted behaviour. Pavlov’s behavioural model ‘Operant Conditioning’ discusses for main points of learned behaviour.
The most popular way of creating habitual behaviour is to give something good. In terms of addiction this can be: I have had a hard day at work today so I am going to have an alcoholic drink to reward myself.
When examining the sociological aspects of drug addiction the Leise and Franz development of substance abuse model explains some typical drug development processes. They are listed below in chronological order:
At this point the client then engages in the repetitive maintenance of use, or they exit and cease to engage in drug seeking behaviour.
Are you addicted to drugs? Ask yourself three questions;
