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A reconsideration of an old drug experiment suggests that popular ideas of how drug addiction begins, and that one dose is always the makings of an addict are not true. The beginnings of addiction are more complex than popular knowledge allows.
It starts with the first taste of whatever drug/alcohol one takes. If you don't try it, you won't get addicted. Simple as that. I've never seen a crack head who never tried crack.
It depends a lot on the person and why they take that first dose. Really, a monkey or a rat doesn't in any way know what the future holds if they keep taking the drugs so we have to give them more credit than the humans that do it because they do know. Although I have heard that "addictive" personalities don't exist, I don't believe that. If you looking for a crutch, any substance or activity can become a problem and ending one can send you into the search for another. I knew someone that took cocaine once and told me about it and she didn't do it again but then, she just wanted to know what it was like because the father of her children could not stop. She cared more about the children than the drug while the father cared more about the drug and obviously himself.
Certain groups of people are more prone to addiction than others. Just look at the family tree of most addicts, they have addictions too. But since they came from a different time most families 50 years ago just swept it under the carpet.
Often addictions come about from bad coping mechanisms that are a response to excessive stress.
easy
if I like it I am addicted
thank God I finally got sober
to me it is not so much why
but what to do if you are
I got sober in AA
but I also got clean too
by the grace of God
"...the research does demonstrate that the standard “exposure model†of addiction is woefully incomplete. It takes far more than the simple experience of a drug – even drugs as powerful as cocaine and heroin – to make you an addict."
I'll say. That model has been outdated for years. Obviously there's a huge genetic component to addiction, a fact the article does not even mention.
I have a theory about addiction from my personal experiences and from observation.
Anybody can be an addict to certain things... like cigarettes, coffee, etc. Also, anybody can be a non-addict.
I believe alcoholism is different, as it seems to be selectively addictive and genetics play a part.
Take 30 people and put them in a hotel for a month, and after 30 days, you got 30 addicts. Let them withdraw, and hit them with heroin, their craving goes away.
Do that with booze and after a month, 27 of those folks will go running and three of them will sign a one year lease. Let them withdraw and hit them with booze... their craving begins again and grows. Alcohol is different.
Never neglect the mental component of addiction. It's there just like the physiological side of it.
I have a theory about addiction from my personal experiences and from observation. Anybody can be an addict to certain things... like cigarettes, coffee, etc. Also, anybody can be a non-addict.
I'm not sure of this. I'm a former cigarette smoker, and I know many people who could take a cigarette or leave it. Quitting my pack a day habit over two decades ago was excruciatingly painful, and I'm fairly sure that if I were to pick up a cigarette now, I'd be back up to smoking a pack a day. However, others can smoke occasionally and never become addicted. I think we all have different genetic predispositions.
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Never neglect the mental component of addiction. It's there just like the physiological side of it.
Truth is, addiction is an idiopathic disease. Idiopathic: relating to or denoting any disease or condition that arises spontaneously of for which the cause is unknown.
There just isn't any definte cause that explains why people become addicted -- why some folks can have one cigarette every week and some will ask for a smoke on their deathbeds dying from lung cancer; why some folks can have a cocktail and a glass of wine at dinner, while for others a glass of wine and cocktail is dinner; why some folks can try cocaine, hate it and never do it again while others become addicted and homeless over it; why a famiy of six alcoholics has one, and only, one sober child; and so on and so on.
Genetics, environment, individual psychology, and personal physiology all combine is different ways that make some folks "cross the line" between casual use and addicition. But no one has ever figured out what the definitive reason or combination of reasons is. No one.
It starts with the first taste of whatever drug/alcohol one takes. If you don't try it, you won't get addicted. Simple as that. I've never seen a crack head who never tried crack.
If it were only that simple. With that logic, if you simply stay a virgin, you won't become a sex addict? If you never play bingo or buy a raffle ticket, you won't become a gambling addict? If you never buy clothes or shoes, you won't become a shopping addict? If you never take a pill for a toothache or surgery pain, you won't become a prescription drug addict? If you don't eat food, you won't become a morbidly obese food addict?
From the article: "For a psychologist like me it suggests that even addictions can be thought of using the same theories we use to think about other choices, there isn't a special exception for drug-related choices."
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