Our paths take multiple twists and turn through life, including inevitable highs and lows, but one of the hardest challenges people can encounter is facing up to addiction – and, very often, the most difficult part of that recognizes we have a problem in the first place.
The very nature of addiction means it can creep up on us without us realizing it, often assaulting the senses and making us a slave to our desires. Addiction has the power to take us hostage, altering the way our brain reacts to rewards and frequently even changing our memory functions and motivational traits. An addict will more often than not place a substance or behavioral characteristic above anyone and everyone else in their life to satiate their desires constantly.
The challenge of recognizing addiction in ourselves and others
Patterns of addiction are sometimes extremely hard to recognize in ourselves and others. Addicts do everything they can to disguise, hide or justify their behavior to keep receiving the psychological high of fulfilling their goal and getting their ‘reward’. If someone is truly addicted, they will do anything they can to keep experiencing that same mental ‘hit’. The source problem of compulsion can be equally as varied, but working with an addiction coach to help during a family crisis could help you identify and address the reasons behind your compulsions. You could even choose to admit yourself in a rehabilitation center and go through their prescribed treatment and therapy in order to overcome your shortcomings. Addiction treatment resources could help you get a better idea about how to find various clinics and navigate through the entire process.
The most common types of addiction
While there are no rules regarding what people can become addicted to, certain forms of addiction are more common than others. In truth, addiction can be considered anything that becomes such a hook to a person that they find it impossible to abstain – whether that be a substance or a behavior (often the two are inextricably linked). Some of the more frequent types of substance addiction include:
- Alcohol addiction
- Smoking – most frequently resulting in nicotine – addiction
- Drug addiction – whether legal or illegal narcotics
- Addiction to medication
- Addiction to inhaled products such as aerosols, glue, spray paints, etc.
However, while substance addiction is often considered the most widespread and most dangerous form of dependence, significant research has proven behavioral addictions can be equally (if not more) destructive. Behavioral addictions include (but are not limited to):
- Gambling addiction
- Addiction to work
- Addiction to sex
- Using the internet and social media
- Being addicted to shopping
- Playing video games
As mentioned, addiction can take many forms but learning to recognize the initial warning signs is one of the best ways to prevent a habit from turning into a compulsion.
Learning to recognize the early signs of addiction
Addiction doesn’t tend to happen overnight, and often sufferers follow a similar pathway into their dependency and feelings of compulsion. Routes to addiction most commonly start with:
- A family history of addiction – particularly to a substance (though emotional dependencies can often also transfer between generations)
- A willingness for experimentation
- Trying to find places or situations where the addict can find the same emotional or substance-based high
- Inexplicable feelings of being drawn or attracted to a substance or activity
- Binging on a substance or activity – frequently followed by little or no remorse
Changes in mental state or personality
The mental signs of addiction are frequently the hardest to pick up on – particularly if you’re the one suffering the addiction, as you’ll likely do everything you can to justify your behavior. However, if you are experiencing any of the following, they may be signs of a more significant, underlying issue:
- A loss of interest in sports, activities, or past times that used to give you a high
- Recurring failure to meet your normal obligations such as work, time with family, sporting meetings, etc.
- Making excuses for – and failing to accept – the negative impact of your behavior
- Being neglectful of people and relationships that were once important to you – including acting negatively to those closest to you
- Heightened risk-taking – especially when related to seeking the source of your high (i.e., taking risks to buy drugs)
- Becoming more secretive or lying to try to cover the tracks of your addiction, e.g., lying about how much you took of a substance or how long you spent doing an activity
- Finding difficulty sleeping frequently resulting in periods of debilitating fatigue
The take out
By its very nature, addiction is one of the hardest things to detect in a person – particularly if it strikes you personally. However, if you stay aware of the tell-tale signs noted above, you’ll go a long way to nipping problems in the bud before they manifest themselves into bigger issues.
