The Psychology of Addiction: Key to Addiction Treatment

Addiction is a subject that up to now is still poorly understood. And researchers have different opinion to what causes addiction. To understand what a causes addiction and much more about addiction the researchers have developed two models. The first model of addiction is known as the disease model of addiction. This model describes an addiction as a disease with biological, neurological, genetic, and environmental sources of origin. The disease model of addiction has been criticized that it encourages stigmatization. The researchers opposed to this school of thought argue that when you label somebody as an addict he will lose self-control of the substance he uses and this will leave them withdrawn and stigmatized. The other model is known as the Choice model of addiction. The addiction is like the choice model with a disorder of genes, a reward, memory, stress, and choice. All these models of addiction result in compulsive behavior.

As known to you, psychology is a science devoted to understanding human behavior. By extension psychology tries to find out why people behave in a certain manner. Psychologists are very important people in the world today as they are devoted to improving the quality of people’s lives and their life satisfaction. Psychologists consider behaviors that promote people’s well-being and life satisfaction adaptive behaviors. Behaviors that serve to limit people’s functioning and diminish life satisfaction are termed maladaptive behaviors. These maladaptive behaviors are harmful not only in the people that possess them but to their environment as well and so should be curbed. Addiction is one of the common maladaptive behaviors that psychologists have put in place psychological models to help in understanding why people become addicted to some substances.

Typically, when an addict experiences pressures that comes with his daily life duties he will go for his drugs to help navigate through the hard time. There is something that triggers his memory and demands that he take his drugs of abuse to help him cope with the pressure. The addict feels that he must just use the drugs to be safe from the pressures. Most addictive drugs are taken for this purpose. Generally the psychology of addiction can be summarized in three crucial elements.

An addict gets a feeling of helplessness before indulging in the addictive act

Before someone goes for an addictive substance he will have a feeling of powerlessness. For example a father who is not able to cater for his family basic needs feels helpless and this feeling may overwhelm him. He therefore will go for a drink to help him view the situation more lightly. The person will feel empowered and in control of his situation after taking alcohol. Emotionally he will be at peace with himself when he is drunk. There are also other non-drug addictive substances that work in this same way. The use of drugs to reverse feelings of powerlessness is referred to as psychological purpose of addiction. However reasons that will make an addict helpless are different to every one of them. The bottom line is that addicts will attempt to solve problems by taking their addictive substances.

Feelings of overwhelming helplessness, such as the feelings that precipitate addictive acts result into a feeling of rage.

When an addict is in a helpless situation he will lose control of himself and the thought that he is out of control of his own life produces rage. The rage is a reaction to the feelings of loss of control and the emotional baggage that comes with the feeling of loss of control of oneself. This rage is the powerful drive behind addiction. The anger that a person gets when he feels helpless has the capacity to overwhelm his judgment while he is in the throes of the rage. It is precisely the presence of this rage at helplessness that gives to addiction its most defining characteristics which include the great intensity with loss of usual judgment and seemingly irrational destructive behavior that are common in addicts.

Addicts express their rage when helpless through substitute behavior

Psychologists opine that if all addicts expressed the cause of their rage directly then there would be no addiction. In most cases addicts will not face their problems head on but will do something to substitute for the head on interaction with their problems. An example here is this. Suppose a man comes back home and his wife begin quarreling him over a past mistake, he ought to sit down and talk about the issue but in case of an addict he may respond by going out for a drink to ease himself. In this place the right act that is to face his wife and talk to her is replaced by an addictive act which is going out for a bottle of alcohol to get drunk and make him feel much more in control of his situation. If he continues to solve his problems through drinking the behavior might become too compulsive to him such that he will never ever solve even a single problem without the help of alcohol and so he becomes dependent on alcohol.

The treatment of addiction requires massive knowledge on the psychology of addiction. Every person has a unique addictive behavior and so it is better to understand an addict and why he is dependent on a particular. The past treatments on addiction have been poor because of the simple reason; poor understanding of psychology of addiction. Dr. Dalal Akoury (MD) of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is dedicated in helping all addicts. Visit her at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for help.