The Dimensions of Addiction

Gasoline is highly flammable. But without oxygen and heat, it will not combust. Fentanyl, Fortnite, and Facebook, are potentially addictive, but they don’t become addictions without other factors present. Thus, it is not accurate to say addictive products are the cause of addiction. Nor is it true that people’s personal tendencies necessarily define their destiny.

Addiction only occurs at the unfortunate collision of three factors:

1. a product that relieves discomfort ,
2. a person otherwise unable to cope, and
3. a source of pain they are ill-equipped to handle.

Addiction is not mind-control. It is a confluence of factors. Take out any of the elements at the root of addiction and the product can be used in moderation. However, when all three conditions are present, the addiction can rage like lit gasoline.

It’s important to use the term “addiction” when we really mean it. Addiction is a pathology. Today, however, many people use the term to slough off blame for their overuse of one thing or another. All sorts of things are called “addictive.”

For instance, many people say they or their children are “addicted” to their digital devices. But blaming our smartphones for “addicting” us, without taking steps to change our behavior, only justifies and perpetuates unhealthy use. Believing that a product is “hijacking” our minds teaches learned helplessness instead of inspiring action.

However, when the addiction is real and causes harm despite our best efforts, we must take it seriously. What is an addiction, really? Following are some useful insights about addiction : -

1. No One Is Addicting You (i.e., the Product)
2. The Product Isn’t the Cause of the Problem
3. Anything That Stops Discomfort Is Potentially Addictive
4. How the Inability to Cope with Discomfort Drives Addiction (i.e., the Person)
5. Who Gets Addicted
6. The Flywheel of Infatuation
7. Addiction Isn’t About Feeling Good, It’s About Not Feeling Bad (i.e., the Pain)
8. Escaping Pain
9. The Opposite of Addiction Isn’t Always Abstinence
10. Who’s to Blame and What Do We Do?

• From evil spirits to zombie stories, people have always feared mind-controlling forces. Today, many people blame technology companies for making their products “addictive.”
• To some people, addiction is caused by a substance or behaviour that takes over the users’ brain.
• However, this model of addiction does not stand up to observational and scientific evidence. It is a simplistic view of how addiction works.
• Substances and behaviours don’t affect people in the same way.
• Millions of people receive opioids when they go to the hospital and never become addicted. Many people drink alcohol but never suffer from alcoholism. We have sex or gamble from time-to-time but aren’t all sex addicts or problem gamblers. Meanwhile, some people become addicted to the abusing mundane household items.
• Clearly, there is more going on than an addictive product controlling peoples’ minds.
• Anything that stops discomfort is potentially addictive. Addiction is not just about the product that is being abused.
• Addiction requires three factors: the product, the person, and the pain.
• In contradiction to the belief that the opioid epidemic was a result of people prescribed the drugs, studies have found the overwhelming number of people suffering from opioid addiction had previously tried other illicit substances, like cocaine.
• The opioid addict archetype isn’t grandma getting addicted to fentanyl after she breaks her hip. It is her nephew who raided grandma’s medicine cabinet.
• People susceptible to addiction have a high “distress intolerance.” They have above average “fear and anxiety at the prospect of physical or emotional distress.”
• The fear of pain can itself be extremely painful for some people. Addiction may be a disorder of how the brains of some people process the discomfort of an unfulfilled urge. Ironically, the pain they seek to escape may be the discomfort of having to resist the urge itself.
• Yet, people recover from addictions all the time. How some people slip in and out of addiction during certain periods of their lives is the next question we’ll tackle.
• Addiction is not about the pleasure of getting high, it’s about escaping the pain of feeling low.
• As was the case with soldiers returning from the Vietnam War, when people’s circumstances change, their addictions often do too.
• Just as many alcoholics recover while drinking moderately as do from abstaining completely. This is further evidence that the product itself isn’t the root cause of addiction.
• When painful life circumstances change and people no longer seek to escape reality, or they learn better ways to cope with pain, many people moderate harmful behaviours and lose their addictions.

Who’s to Blame and What Do We Do?

Like trepanning, Svengalis, and zombies, mind control at the hands of some invasive mind virus isn’t real; it’s fiction. Similarly, blaming so-called “addictive” products as the cause of addiction is shortsighted. A more rational perspective reveals that no product, on its own, is the source of addiction. Blaming pushers or big business for causing addiction is a story we like to tell. It deflects responsibility from the individual, who may lack the ability to cope with their pain. It also shields society from its responsibility to help people escape seemingly hopeless circumstances.

However, just because a product isn’t the root cause of addiction, does not mean companies do not bear a moral responsibility to intervene. If a company knows people want to stop using their product, they have an ethical responsibility to not impede them from quitting. Moreover, companies who know how much people use their products should proactively reach out to those who may be abusing it and offer resources to help. A “use and abuse policy” could be implemented by social media and gaming companies to help those whose usage patterns indicate they may be struggling with an addiction. Companies should institute such policies immediately and failing to do so, it should be mandated by law.

But if we hold our breath waiting for companies to change their business practices and politicians to fix things, we’re going to suffocate. In the meantime, we too can change our ways.

First, let’s start using the term “addiction” correctly. Addiction is not liking something a lot, nor is it overusing something from time to time. Addiction is “a persistent, compulsive dependence on a behaviour or substance” that harms the user.33 Addiction is a pathology and it’s time we talk about it like one. Just as it is important for people who are truly struggling with addiction to come to terms with their disorder, it is equally important that those not actually suffering from it to stop labelling themselves, and everything like to indulge in, as addictive.

The words we use matter. If we toss around the word in relation to anything we find appealing, we water down the term and risk not giving it the weight it deserves. Furthermore, it pathologizes a normal part of being human, namely, struggling with temptations.

Why do we say we’re “addicted” to something, like a television show, an app, or chocolate, when we’re really not? Because it’s so much easier than having to resist. Blaming things for being “addictive” hands over control to a powerful force “hijacking” our brain. That’s self-defeating silliness.

Feeling in control is critical to changing our behaviour and a sense of powerlessness makes us less likely to fix the problem. In fact, several studies have found beliefs of powerlessness determined whether someone would relapse after treatment as much as the level of physical dependency itself did. Consider that for a minute — mindset mattered as much as the physical dependency!

For many people, when the pain in their lives dissipates, so does their addiction.

Addiction is widely misunderstood. It is hard to get one’s head around the fact that something can addict someone, and yet not addict everyone. That’s why we should study and provide extra care to vulnerable groups. This includes teens, the elderly, the economically disadvantaged, and the socially isolated. We must understand the pain they seek to escape. If we don’t tackle the underlying sources of the problem, banning one analgesic or another won’t get us anywhere. Vulnerable people will always find something to complete the addiction triangle.

And finally, we should understand ourselves. Instead of blaming something on the outside for making us give in to temptation, we can try and understand our own sources of discomfort that pushes us to seek relief in unhealthy ways. We can try tactics to control overuse, without labelling ourselves as powerless or saying a substance or behaviour is addicting us, when it isn’t.

Today’s panic over technology addiction is the latest example of fear and misconceptions leading us astray. Let’s stop feeding into the moral panic around technology companies “hijacking” our brains. We need to understand what addiction really is. As the decades-old “war on drugs” has demonstrated, you can’t win a war when you don’t understand the enemy.

You can't win a war when you don't understand the enemy.