TWO KINDS OF ADDICTION

The stages of negative addiction are defined as:

(a) compulsion to seek the experience,

b) loss of control in limiting intake

(c) emergence of a negative emotional state (e.g., dysphoria, anxiety, irritability) when access to the drug is prevented.

Then there is a small cycle within the act of taking the drug:  

1.  preoccupation/anticipation, 

2.  binge intoxication, 

3.  withdrawal/negative affect

The stages of positive addiction are much the same in mechanism, but quite different in consequences.

(a) wanting to repeat the experience

(b) limiting it for practical reasons

(c)  good health consequences, including a good mood

Again, the little cycle of “consumption” is present:

1.  preoccupation/anticipation  (maybe acquring special gear, putting on makeup, or organizing friends)

2.  a “high” while at the game or dancing or competing or exercising

3.  the let-down afterwards, but softened by good memories

It is also possible to get “hooked” on second-hand (empathic) experience, like attending the ballet though one isn’t a dancer.  Some experiences and substances are so intense that they hijack the whole addiction cycle on first impact, but this is true of both positives and negatives.  Heroin or chocolate or zip-lining?  (Zip-lining is being strapped into a harness and “flying” by sliding down a long cable.) 
  

Some estimate that about 10% of the population is exceptionally susceptible to addiction -- that means 90% are not.

Addiction to negative (damaging) acts or substances is intensified if there are no competing activities to try, esp. if none of them are appealing and the general context of the person is either boring or painful.  But positive addictions can crowd out or at least dilute the appeal and practice of damaging addictions.  In this way people can help each other.

Try this definition of porn:  anything that intentionally causes a sexual physiological reaction without actually constituting sex.  That’s why it’s so hard to decide what is porn.  One person’s porn is another person’s bore.  It’s in the PERSON.  It is often said that sex is in the brain, and porn is what can touch the sexual patterns of the brain.  But there are also vibrations, certain movements, and other sensualities -- not connected to sexual places on the body -- that can trigger those reactions.  Laundry dryers, motorcycles, extreme beauty -- do we include nursing infants here?  Watching others have sex kindles enough empathy for us to have sympathetic reactions and those can be addictive, like soap operas or novels.

Strangely, violence can stimulate and intensify sexual reactions.  (“They like it rough.”)  There are those who say that it’s because the parts of the brain that handle violence are so close to the sexual areas that crossover can leak through easily, like the phenomenon of people whose color sense in the brain has developed next to their number concepts, so that numbers appear colored in their minds.  Seven might be red, nine seem yellow and so on.

The culture itself encourages mixing sex and violence.  One way is by separating sex from intimacy and bonding.  As the philosopher suggests, whores are not paid to love you -- they are paid to leave after the act.  (Loving customers is an emotional disaster for someone doing paid sexwork, but that could be their addiction.)  

Another way is wartime when adrenaline floods the system and domination includes permission to physically punish others for one’s own gratification, as a form of looting and humiliation of the enemy.  A third along these lines is official behavior that accepts the power of men to abuse sexually, violently, and emotionally -- like the Eastern Montana judge who blamed a girl for her rape by a much older teacher.  She committed suicide later, which was not seen as a sign of vulnerability but as a marker of defectiveness that justified abuse. 

Small town sports are packed with addictions both positive and negative.  The rewards of playing the game, the powerful fusion with an aroused crowd, the empathy with young bodies leaping and plunging, are very strong.  But there is also an addiction to the entitlement of being “Number One” that gets mixed with sex, alcohol, and gambling. The physical exaltation of playing a ball game can -- under unfortunate circumstances -- become converted to violence against others not in any game.  Particularly a ball game like football.  Or the disastrous pseudo-sport of extreme cage fighting advertised in the Great Falls Tribune.

The consistent complaint of teenagers and young adults is that there is nothing to do.  Idleness and boredom set the stage for addictions to negatives more powerfully than almost any other cultural context.  Include being superfluous, never listened to by anyone significant, powerless against a bleak economic future, only valuable through extraordinary effort or luck but clueless about how to find them.  Toxic addictions pitched by the media seem like the only way to bear one’s fate.

Note the infinitive “to DO.”  Schools, churches and other institutions charged with teaching kids how to do things have subtly shifted over to entertainment.  That is, they have lost interest in establishing the primary positive addictions of skill at writing, art, math, science and other lifelong and occupational pursuits and instead have ordered the teachers to “make classes fun,” by providing entertainment, a secondary addiction and therefore diluted.  The teacher goes frenetic in the front of the room while the kids yawn.  Where’s the violence, the sex, the fat and sugar?  

Look again at the stages that are at the beginning of this post.  Don’t they sound like craving donuts or chocolate while trying to stay on a diet?

The stages of negative addiction are defined as:

(a) compulsion to seek the experience,

b) loss of control in limiting intake

(c) emergence of a negative emotional state (e.g., dysphoria, anxiety, irritability) when access to the drug is prevented.

Then there is a small cycle within the act of taking the drug:  

1.  preoccupation/anticipation, 

2.  binge intoxication, 

3.  withdrawal/negative affect

Addiction is a natural metabolic sequence of molecules and neuron firing that gets “hooked” up with something that’s not good for you.  I have a Native American friend who has taught his daughter to avoid drinking.  “Not even once,” he says, like the meth addiction advice.  His family has been vulnerable to alcohol addiction.  My family is as well, and I’m not Native American.  But I have a feeling that drinking could cost me my life.  For me it is so full of hooks, such emotional velcro, that I couldn’t resist.  So my addiction is books.

Even so, by now I’ve watched so many glamorous movies, so many powerful series, in which the characters constantly engaged in little ceremonies involving elegant decanters and crystal goblets, that I can sometimes wonder whether it might be . . .  but no.  Instead I watch BBC films and focus on the tea ceremonies.  

Addiction is a normal response that gets distorted by circumstances.  It is in the addict, not the substance.  The substances come and go.  We should be teaching kids how to build a positive addiction to ways that will keep them healthy and . . . alive.  You remember this saying?  (It was big when I was little.)  “Never tell kids not to put beans up their noses.”  The forbidden is always so attractive.  The media tells kids not to do stuff that will ruin their lives.  They even name them.  And show you how to put them up your nose.