Physical dependence

Ken Hensley once said “It is hard to understand addiction unless you have experienced it.” This statement is true and many different aspects. This quote takes on two forms of meaning; first addict understand addiction and second people affected by the addict understand addiction. I just so happen to be both, which is what lead me to this career choice. We will explore how being on both sides of addiction can lead to transference and countertransference and how their patterns can lead to murky…

euphoria, increased energy/alertness, and suppression of hunger. Examples of negative reinforcement, which often is a result of chronic use, which factors may be depression, paranoid psychosis, confusion, exhaustion, and a strong psychological dependence. There are many undesired acute affects that may result in the consumption of cocaine, this includes increased heart rate/blood pressure/breathing, increased body temperature resulting in excessive sweating, vasoconstriction, insomnia, panic,…

Behavioral addiction is a psychological disorder in which an individual fails to resist an impulse, drive, or temptation to perform an act that can cause harm to the person or others. It is characterized by a repeated pattern of behavior (Grant, 2011). These behaviors may include compulsive buying, pathologic skin picking, sexual addiction (non-paraphilic hyper sexuality), excessive tanning, computer/video game playing, and internet addiction, among many others (Grant, 2011). Feelings of…

The stimulant gave the young boys the critical advantages of being able to sleep and eat less, and transforming into ruthless killing machines. Although cocaine was terrible for the children’s physical and mental health, it ultimately kept them alive during battle. After the soldiers endured the brutal withdrawal symptoms and were released from the rehabilitation center, it would be their decision to reclaim their stolen childhood, or relapse into…

According to Johann Hari on his talk in TEDx, addiction is caused by isolation. To come up with his conclusion, he met with different people from different parts of the world and shared an experiment done by Professor Bruce Alexander. In his experiment, he put a rat in a cage with two water bottles, one of which had drugs. The rat chose the one with drugs, but Professor Alexander realized that the cage was empty and this could have affected the results. When he included other aspects in the cage…

minors. Diet pills typically contain large quantities of addictive substances, such as ephedrine, caffeine, or herbal stimulants, which can have severe side effects, especially if an individual develops a diet pill addiction. In addition to the physical…

Breaking Free Sadly, our world has been overcome with people suffering with drug and/or alcohol addiction. It has become a literal pandemic. It doesn’t seem to be getting better, only worse. The reasons people use drugs or alcohol are different from person to person; therefore, there is not a cure-all for everyone. It takes a lot of time and compassion from others to help these people learn to lead healthy lives again, free from the demon of addiction. I feel that our only hope is not to send…

There are some behavioral addictions that are positive in the way that they can improve a person’s quality of life. Examples would be participating in an exercise routine habitually or brushing teeth every day. Although, majority of behavioral addictions are negative. As stated in the textbook, behavior addictions are often harmful and self-defeating. Individuals who have a behavioral addiction become consumed for many reasons. These behaviors could stem from trouble at home, not feeling…

Addiction is not just a social or criminal problem; it is a chronic disease of the brain that many individuals are struggling with. Addiction can be defined as dependency on something such as alcohol and drugs. Drugs and alcohol are harmful because they affect people’s behavior resulting in antisocial habits, lowering self- esteem and ruining one’s motivation towards achieving life goals. People suffering from alcohol and drug addiction can have an appropriate response if only they go through…

Drug addiction is one of the oldest problems in the world that has yet to be resolved. Since the development of drugs, dating back thousands of years, there has been addiction to those drugs. Still today, there are an alarming amount of deaths of all ages related to drug dependency. If drug addiction has been around for so long, why has there not been a solution presented to end the drug overdoses and deaths? Unfortunately, it seems as this significant problem has been overlooked and ignored for…