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The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behavi

The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. The physiological effects of substance abuse is generally worse, but the cause is the same, from my experience and people I know the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in self destructive reward seeking behaviour as an unhealthy coping mechanism. This is where I think that addiction education is completely inadequate. They teach you in school that a certain percentage of people who will do drugs (or gamble, or play video games) will get addicted, like it's some random chance. It's not a random chance though. It's easy to tell people to not do drugs, or not play video games, or to ban them from doing it, but fundamentally they're just going to engage in some other destructive behaviour if they aren't given the tools and support to engage in healthy coping strategies. We need to be teaching people how to identify addictive behaviour as it starts, we need to teach people how to reach out for support and to ensure that support is available, and we need to teach people mental hygiene. We tell people to brush their teeth and wash their hands because you don't want to get sick, but we never bother to teach people how to look after their mind.

isodude 7y ago
Apperently a big issue with "gamers", which should not be confused with game addiction, is that kids use it to sooth their mental problems. If you have ADHD it's a effective way of getting something to do all the time with short bursts of dopamine. If you have social problems you can hide behind a screen with something you are familiar with.If you feel really unwell, like dealing with thr death of a relative, it's easy to play longer. To find out how healthy the relationship with gaming is, other factors are used instead, like do the person shower, eat and don't start the day by playing instantly? There are currently science being done on this right now, I should find this. Some kids are more prone to "get stuck" also, opening the door to an investigation into autism/asberger. In the end kids kinda find their own way and go out and play and get bored behind a screen. Alcohol addiction and video game addiction does not work in the same way.
- isodude 7y ago
  In Sweden we have these guys talking about gaming and doing some of the work to make "game addiction" a proper diagnose: https://www.reconnect.se https://www.reconnect.se There is no english version sadly. Maybe there are other organisations that are more global.
olalonde 7y ago
Your armchair theory is wrong though. The root cause of nicotine, hard drugs and alcohol addiction is overwhelmingly physical, not psychological.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Yes and no. We all had our shares of beers, but only few had the urge to do/continue binge drinking past university experience. You know, those guys going for extra rounds of shots when everybody barely stands. This behavior is there long before actual addiction comes. I'd say its a vicious circle, some are more susceptible to addictions than rest of us, and once those fall into addiction trap, its much harder to get out.
- apatters 7y ago
  As far as I understand this statement is inaccurate in regards to alcohol (I'm not sure about the other drugs). Psychological and physical dependency are two separate things. Alcohol addiction normally begins with psychological dependency and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too: https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/drinking-addiction-psychological-or-physical https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/drinking-...
  - pdpi 7y ago
    > and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too On the other hand, DT is the only form of withdrawal syndrome that can outright kill you, and alcohol is, generally speaking, one of the most dangerous drugs from which to withdraw.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. At that level, lots of non-addiction behavior is indistinguishable. > the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in self destructive reward seeking behaviour as an unhealthy coping mechanism. That's, AFAIK from the actual research, far from true; there are complex relationships between addictive behaviors and other psychological trauma and disorders, but what you describe does not seem to be the dominant relationship. Often, behaviors where use creates a risk of addiction are sought out because they also, outside of their addictive properties, offer mitigation of adverse symptoms of the other condition. But that's not the other condition causing “self-destructive reward-seeking behavior”. > we never bother to teach people how to look after their mind. Sure we do, we spend lots of time doing that; the messages are mixed, conflicting, and probably of negligible value because we actually have very little solid information and lots of conflicting and unvalidated folk wisdom when it comes to preventive mental health care (self or otherwise.)

isodude 7y ago

Apperently a big issue with "gamers", which should not be confused with game addiction, is that kids use it to sooth their mental problems. If you have ADHD it's a effective way of getting something to do all the time with short bursts of dopamine. If you have social problems you can hide behind a screen with something you are familiar with.If you feel really unwell, like dealing with thr death of a relative, it's easy to play longer. To find out how healthy the relationship with gaming is, other factors are used instead, like do the person shower, eat and don't start the day by playing instantly? There are currently science being done on this right now, I should find this. Some kids are more prone to "get stuck" also, opening the door to an investigation into autism/asberger. In the end kids kinda find their own way and go out and play and get bored behind a screen. Alcohol addiction and video game addiction does not work in the same way.

isodude 7y ago
In Sweden we have these guys talking about gaming and doing some of the work to make "game addiction" a proper diagnose: https://www.reconnect.se https://www.reconnect.se There is no english version sadly. Maybe there are other organisations that are more global.

olalonde 7y ago

Your armchair theory is wrong though. The root cause of nicotine, hard drugs and alcohol addiction is overwhelmingly physical, not psychological.

saiya-jin 7y ago
Yes and no. We all had our shares of beers, but only few had the urge to do/continue binge drinking past university experience. You know, those guys going for extra rounds of shots when everybody barely stands. This behavior is there long before actual addiction comes. I'd say its a vicious circle, some are more susceptible to addictions than rest of us, and once those fall into addiction trap, its much harder to get out.
apatters 7y ago
As far as I understand this statement is inaccurate in regards to alcohol (I'm not sure about the other drugs). Psychological and physical dependency are two separate things. Alcohol addiction normally begins with psychological dependency and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too: https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/drinking-addiction-psychological-or-physical https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/drinking-...
- pdpi 7y ago
  > and may or may not progress to a physical dependency too On the other hand, DT is the only form of withdrawal syndrome that can outright kill you, and alcohol is, generally speaking, one of the most dangerous drugs from which to withdraw.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> The root cause of addiction is the same, whether it's a behavioural addiction like video games, exercise, gambling, or sex, or drugs. It's reward seeking behaviour trying to cause a rise in dopamine levels. At that level, lots of non-addiction behavior is indistinguishable. > the root cause is underlying psychological issues that cause people to engage in self destructive reward seeking behaviour as an unhealthy coping mechanism. That's, AFAIK from the actual research, far from true; there are complex relationships between addictive behaviors and other psychological trauma and disorders, but what you describe does not seem to be the dominant relationship. Often, behaviors where use creates a risk of addiction are sought out because they also, outside of their addictive properties, offer mitigation of adverse symptoms of the other condition. But that's not the other condition causing “self-destructive reward-seeking behavior”. > we never bother to teach people how to look after their mind. Sure we do, we spend lots of time doing that; the messages are mixed, conflicting, and probably of negligible value because we actually have very little solid information and lots of conflicting and unvalidated folk wisdom when it comes to preventive mental health care (self or otherwise.)