The Science behind Addiction

 Different Addictions



Some people are even unfortunately addicted to coloring

When I talk about addiction in this blog post I am not just limiting addiction to drugs because you can be addicted to other stuff besides drugs. So lets just get this clear; you can be addicted to anything. Some people become addicted to gambling, reading, eating, exercise, love, looking in the mirror, anything! I myself had Arithomania (an addiction to counting) a couple years ago where I would associate people with numbers for instance; I would associate my English teacher with the number 1.618 (if you are aware of the divine proportion you will realise the significance of this number and know its actually quite an endearing number) and I would count all the cars on the road. I would also recite the Fibonacci sequence whilst I went asleep aloud which drove my siblings crazy!
So now the point that you can be addicted to anything, even counting numbers, has been made

What make's us addicted to these things?

 

The little red mark is the Nucleas Accumbens

Well, you see it's not actually your fault that you get addicted to something (unless you stupidly inject yourself with heroin then that is your fucking fault), its to do with the brain chemistry. Every living thing on this earth has a reward system implemented into the brain through years of evolution and it is this reward system that has kept you alive for as long as you have been. Without a reward system we wouldn't eat, sleep or drink water. Which is the vital things that keep you alive, unless your a woman, then you need to eat, sleep, drink water and hear compliments. And what produces this 'reward system' is the part of the brain called the Nucleas Accumbens. It is located underneath the Cerebral hemisphere and once a creature performs an action that fulfils something like eating to stop hunger, dopamine is released to the cluster of nerves to encourage this behaviour and you feel good. So next time your hungry you'll know to eat something so you don't feel the pain of hunger and you also get a little rush of dopamine to continue encouraging this behaviour. This is what can make you addicted to the craziest things! Such as coloring ;)

I'm not saying everyone is addicted to sleeping,eating and drinking water. As addiction is when you become very OCD about what your addiction is and it's when it gets out of 'control'. I mean most people don't have a compulsive desire to sleep 24/7 do they? (Unless of course they suffer from a medical disorder or are just fucking lazy.) Whereas someone can have a compulsive desire to looking in the mirror 24/7.

Are some people more at risk of having an addiction than others?

Yes. Just like some people are more likely of getting the flu than other people. But in this case it has nothing to do with the immune system it has to do with the amount of dopamine receptors in the brain. Research conducted by Cambridge university shows that people who had fewer dopamine receptors in a certain region of the brain are more at risk of having an addiction.

I theorise its because of the low amount of receptors in the brain of whatever particular animal or person that makes them want to seek out how to amplify that amount of dopamine that is being released by having an addiction. Of course they are not doing it consciously (unless they are making the ridiculous conscious choice of whether to have that snort of cocaine), many addictions are accidental as I'm sure no one really want to get addicted to eating plaster off the wall, as I saw on an advert for the TV show 'my weird addictions'.

Whats the cure for addiction?