I can just hear hundreds of people yelling, “I’m no addict,” but you are you know.
Loosely defined, you are addicted to anything that is pleasurable to you. Which you have had or done for a long enough time that you would go to great lengths to continue. Not only can many people not start their mornings without their coffee, but they even have it sitting on their desks while they work.
Then there are people who roll out of bed, and half asleep begin their jogging in all kinds of weather for several miles. Why? The payoff is a rush of endorphin , which make you feel good. If you missed a morning of jogging you would definitely miss that harvest of morning endorphins all day long. You would not likely receive any negative feedback for this, as most people are not aware that done consistently to the extent that you need the results to get you through the day is actually an addiction. You would receive kudos instead. However, as with many activities that society does not even recognize as an addiction, a lot of exercise has been connected with feeding and eating disorders.
Most of us love sweet things; and the more sugar we put on our cereal and raspberries, the more we love it; and will be on the lookout for more before we even clear off the table. Again, this is not good for your health, but not viewed negatively by society.
Then there are the many sex addicts; mostly men, but also women.
Then there are the addictions to various types of prescriptions. Sometimes doctors prescribe too many; and the patients do not notice it because either they don’t know better, or because the more they take the better they feel, since they cause an increase in dopamine, a neurological chemical that stimulates pleasure. Regardless of who may be to blame, each year there are a goodly number of prescription overdose deaths.
The downhill skiers are already lining up in the summer for their season downhill skiing pass, which most will use to their fullest extent. The hue and cry that occurs when a couple of warm days come along; and some ski runs are closed is heartbreaking, because the faithful skiers really miss their daily dopamine injection.
To top it all off, there are numerous health care professionals who believe that addiction is an illness just like cancer, for instance. Consequently, according to the particular problems, their treatment methods vary somewhat from those health care providers who do not agree that addiction is a disease. One thing that this type of thinking does, is to let addicts hold their heads up a little higher. Because their part in becoming addicted, whether to alcohol or drugs, is minimized because surely they cannot be more responsible for that than they would be if they got cancer.
Finally, a couple of the addictions that I mentioned earlier should not be difficult to cure by the individuals themselves. Such as foregoing unnecessarily infusing food with sugar. But sex addiction, well that’s another story!
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