Addiction is a chronic disease that alters the way a person’s brain and body functions on a daily basis. According to The American Society of Addiction Medicine, the condition is a disease of brain reward, motivation, memory, and related circuitry—which means dysfunction leads to a person’s pathological pursuance of the reward or substance they cannot abstain.
Characterized by the inability to resist a given trigger, impaired ability to control behavior, cravings, and ignorance to problem behaviors or relationships, addiction affects at least 1 in 5 Canadians in any given year. Though addiction can be treated and even prevented, it typically occurs in a cyclic fashion, affecting a person similarly to the way a medical relapse would.
What Causes Addiction?
Several factors contribute to a person developing an addiction, although the main factors are genetics and environment. Similar to many other mental health disorders, addiction is fueled by your beliefs, peers, and inherited traits. As it’s related to drugs, addiction occurs when repeated use of a substance alters the way your brain perceives pleasure or satisfaction by physically changing neurons.
Though anyone can develop an addiction, men are more likely than women to develop drug addictions. Peer pressure and the presence of other mental health disorders, such as depression; also affect a person’s likelihood of becoming an addict.
Not All Addictions Are Drug-Related
People can become addicted to a plethora of things—from alcohol and drugs to food or shopping—that cause harmful physical and behavioral effects. Though most of us tend to associate the word with drugs or alcohol, there are numerous other forms addiction that can become just as dangerous.
Seven common forms of behavioural addiction include
- 1.Gambling
- 2.Sex
- 3.Shopping
- 4.Video Games
- 5.Plastic Surgery
- 6.Food
- 7.Risky Behavior
However, alcohol is the most commonly used substance amongst Canadians, with 78.4% of the population older than 15 years drinking in 2012. Cannabis and other drugs follow far behind with each reportedly used by less than 10.5% of the general population.
What’s The Difference Between Addiction and Abuse?
According to CASAColumbia, a non-profit research and policy organization focused on substance use and addiction, symptoms of addiction fit into a spectrum: from mild to moderate to severe. Abuse is considered a mild substance problem wherein a person only suffers from two or three symptoms of addiction. People who experience abuse are generally able to stop or control their habits, though they are still susceptible to many serious consequences.
Severe addiction is a chronic, physical disease that usually commands intensive treatment over a long period of time. A person’s symptoms may progress like any other intense disease and they may acquire other illnesses as a result.
Treatment Success
In 2012, the Canadian Community Health Survey reported 4.4% of citizens over the age of 15 met criteria for a substance abuse disorder. Luckily, addiction is not a life sentence.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, combining behavioral therapy with medications (where necessary) is a successful way to manage and treat addiction. However, a permanent cure is not always a possibility. Successful treatment enables people to control their lives, habits, and feelings so they are able to disrupt their addiction in favor of a more fulfilled and healthy lifestyle.