Addiction There Are Numerous Definitions

Addiction

There are numerous definitions of addiction and just what constitutes addictive behavior.

Social observers have applied the notion of addiction to many and varied human activities, including substance abuse, shopping, running, game-playing, working, eating, drinking water to intoxication, sex, and excessive computer use (Shaffer pp). Generally, addiction has most often been applied to substance-using behavior patterns, however, social observers have recently begun to apply the concept to other activities that do not include drugs or alcohol use (Shaffer pp). However, in both circumstances, when addiction is present, then the consequences of the activity are adverse (Shaffer pp). Ironically, addiction may provide positive effects for the sufferer, especially early in the process (Shaffer pp). For example, "an addiction can distract someone from more painful emotional problems or provide an identity that organizes everyday experiences" (Shaffer pp). This combination of positive and negative consequences is one reason why addictive behaviors are very difficult to change (Shaffer pp).

The negative consequences of addiction usually include social, psychological, and biological harms (Shaffer pp). The biological consequences often include the emergence of neuroadaptation, which is the technical term for the "tendency to increase the dose level of a drug to experience the same subjective effects as with a lower dose before and also to experience a stereotypical pattern of discomfort upon stopping the drug use" (Shaffer pp). Heroin users, for example, tend to increase their dose to get the same level of intoxication that they had previously experienced at a lower dose, or they get sick when they stop using the drug (Shaffer pp).

Earlier application of the term "addiction" were less onerous than today's current views, for when scientists began to consider the matter of behavioral addictions that did not require drug use, the construct of addiction became more plastic and complex (Shaffer pp). For example, clinicians have noticed that, 'in the absence of psychoactive substance use, excessive behavior patterns such as pathological gambling stimulate the development of tolerance and withdrawal typical of drug dependence, giving rise to important questions concerning the nature and meaning of addiction (Shaffer pp).

Addiction is actually a lay term, though it is often used by scientists, while "dependence" is a more scientific construct, that is occasionally used by lay people (Shaffer pp). There are many working definitions of addictions, however, the essence of the construct has remained elusive, thus, addiction remains an imprecise lay concept, and has not yet been welcome in the contemporary diagnostic manuals that organize and define psychiatric and other diseases (Shaffer pp). One researcher suggested that instead of seeking a strict operational definition, one should think of alcoholism as they do mountains and seasons: "you know these things when you see them" (Shaffer pp).

The most common conceptual error made by clinicians, researchers, and social-policy makers is to think that addiction resides as a latent property of an object, such as a drug or game of chance (Shaffer pp). For example, conventional wisdom refers to "addictive drugs" or "addictive gambling," however, addiction is not the product of a substance, game, or technology, though each of these things has the capacity to influence human experience (Shaffer pp). Experience is the currency of addiction, thus when a particular pattern of behavior can reliably and robustly change emotional experience, the potential for addiction emerges (Shaffer pp). Addiction is the description of a relationship between organisms and objects within their environment, it is not simply the result of an object's attribute, thus the causes of addiction are multifactorial (Shaffer pp).