4 ms·

Should we include weed and booze in this as well?

microwavecamera 7y ago
No.
manfredo 7y ago
Probably not weed, and definitely not alcohol. Chemical addiction is a physiological phenomenon. Behavior addictions are psychological.
- narag 7y ago
  I agree with your later sentences, but I have doubts that it implies the former. It's possible you have no physiological addiction to alcohol but you do have an addictive behaviour that involves alcohol.
- iSnow 7y ago
  >Chemical addiction is a physiological phenomenon. Behavior addictions are psychological. Doubtful, they all work via the same underlying hardware and excitation of the Limbic system doesn't care for the causes.
CyanBird 7y ago
The article does indeed mention them both >The nature of addiction has implications—more precisely, temptations—for businesses that sell habituating products. One is to encourage early and frequent consumption. Treat the lads, the saloonkeepers used to say, and you’ll have their money in the till when they’re adults. And the more they drink, the greater the profits. To this day, 80 percent of alcohol sales go to the 20 percent of customers who are the heaviest users, a pattern that applies across the business of brain reward. More than half of all marijuana finds its way into the lungs and stomachs of those who spend more than half their waking hours stoned. Insofar as addictions to marijuana, or to anything else, develop most often among the poor, the marginal and the genetically vulnerable, they are sources of inequality and injustice as well as illness.
- mruts 7y ago
  This isn't actually true. Those who have more income spend much more money on drugs. I used to smoke weed all day everyday for 10 years, and knew a ton of others that did so. None of us were poor, all had good jobs and made good income. Moreover, people that only smoke rarely and have never smoked get the wrong impression about what smoking all day does to you. I would hardly call it being 'stoned', more like being slightly buzzed and less anxious. I don't think anyone who didn't know me would have ever been able to tell, unless I smelled like weed or something. I now don't smoke at all, and the difference in experience is pretty minimal. I feel about the same as I did when I was smoking constantly, which is a testament to the powerful ability for neuronal self-regulation in the brain; both on and off drugs.
  - namanyayg 7y ago
    What led to quitting and how did you accomplish it?
    - mruts 7y ago
      I was reading some papers about the detrimental the effect of weed on working memory. So I decided to stop smoking a week after that. Surprisingly, my cognitive performance declined severely for a period of a couple weeks, as measured by dual n-back performance against my on weed baseline. After those two weeks, it started getting better. About a month later, I was at my on weed baseline. Two months after that, I have exceeding my weed baseline by a significant margin. I took an IQ test and realized about a 10 IQ point gain from my baseline IQ, which I was pretty happy with. In regards to accomplishing it, I dunno, I guess I just stopped all at once. I'm not the type of person who can handle moderation of anything really, so just quitting all at once worked really well. I had previously quit heroin a long time ago in my youth, so quitting weed wasn't really a big deal compared to that. It's been maybe 6 months since I last smoked at this point, and I don't really feel any different, besides my cognitive improvements I suppose.
      - namanyayg 7y ago

No.

Probably not weed, and definitely not alcohol. Chemical addiction is a physiological phenomenon. Behavior addictions are psychological.

narag 7y ago
I agree with your later sentences, but I have doubts that it implies the former. It's possible you have no physiological addiction to alcohol but you do have an addictive behaviour that involves alcohol.
iSnow 7y ago
>Chemical addiction is a physiological phenomenon. Behavior addictions are psychological. Doubtful, they all work via the same underlying hardware and excitation of the Limbic system doesn't care for the causes.

CyanBird 7y ago

The article does indeed mention them both >The nature of addiction has implications—more precisely, temptations—for businesses that sell habituating products. One is to encourage early and frequent consumption. Treat the lads, the saloonkeepers used to say, and you’ll have their money in the till when they’re adults. And the more they drink, the greater the profits. To this day, 80 percent of alcohol sales go to the 20 percent of customers who are the heaviest users, a pattern that applies across the business of brain reward. More than half of all marijuana finds its way into the lungs and stomachs of those who spend more than half their waking hours stoned. Insofar as addictions to marijuana, or to anything else, develop most often among the poor, the marginal and the genetically vulnerable, they are sources of inequality and injustice as well as illness.

mruts 7y ago
This isn't actually true. Those who have more income spend much more money on drugs. I used to smoke weed all day everyday for 10 years, and knew a ton of others that did so. None of us were poor, all had good jobs and made good income. Moreover, people that only smoke rarely and have never smoked get the wrong impression about what smoking all day does to you. I would hardly call it being 'stoned', more like being slightly buzzed and less anxious. I don't think anyone who didn't know me would have ever been able to tell, unless I smelled like weed or something. I now don't smoke at all, and the difference in experience is pretty minimal. I feel about the same as I did when I was smoking constantly, which is a testament to the powerful ability for neuronal self-regulation in the brain; both on and off drugs.
- namanyayg 7y ago
  What led to quitting and how did you accomplish it?
  - mruts 7y ago
    I was reading some papers about the detrimental the effect of weed on working memory. So I decided to stop smoking a week after that. Surprisingly, my cognitive performance declined severely for a period of a couple weeks, as measured by dual n-back performance against my on weed baseline. After those two weeks, it started getting better. About a month later, I was at my on weed baseline. Two months after that, I have exceeding my weed baseline by a significant margin. I took an IQ test and realized about a 10 IQ point gain from my baseline IQ, which I was pretty happy with. In regards to accomplishing it, I dunno, I guess I just stopped all at once. I'm not the type of person who can handle moderation of anything really, so just quitting all at once worked really well. I had previously quit heroin a long time ago in my youth, so quitting weed wasn't really a big deal compared to that. It's been maybe 6 months since I last smoked at this point, and I don't really feel any different, besides my cognitive improvements I suppose.
    - namanyayg 7y ago