4 ms·

"The idea that an activity, rather than a substance, can be addictive is contentious among doctors" As a person who has been struggling with video game addictio

"The idea that an activity, rather than a substance, can be addictive is contentious among doctors" As a person who has been struggling with video game addiction, especially in order to combat the loneliness I have been experiencing during the pandemic, I would disagree. While it is unlikely one would get an addiction in terms of physical dependency, psychological addiction is a whole other question. That being said, one can also get addicted to exercise, so I guess its not a reason to keep it out of the Olympics!

chirau 6y ago
I wonder whether watching porn is an activity or substance.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Activity. Substance means imbibing a chemical (e.g. eating, injecting, breathing).
gameswithgo 6y ago
There is a great article out there about the difference between the strength of compulsion and the strength of physical side effects. The two are not linked. That is, one drug may have horrible withdrawal effects, but cause relatively weak compulsion to continue using. Another drug may cause extremely strong compulsion to use and have no withdrawal symptoms at all. The idea that addiction only actually exists when there are physical withdrawal symptoms is just wrong, and it is a very harmful wrong belief.
have_faith 6y ago
It's all substance eventually right? the activity causes your body to produce excessive amounts of something addictive.
- snet0 6y ago
  But the substance is not the videogame itself, but rather is some complex neurochemistry. By this logic, basically all "drug" addictions are actually instantiations of a more primitive addiction to neurochemicals. Operating at this level of abstraction is useless, because there's no actionable decision points.
kleer001 6y ago
From my understanding of addiction is the essential terms are "compulsive engagement" and "adverse consequences".
Jetroid 6y ago
Have you tried Gamequitters [1] for helping you with your addiction? I met the guy who runs that site a few years ago, and he's been able to help a lot of people with that. He was an ex-gaming addict himself and seemed really passionate about the subject. [1] https://gamequitters.com/ https://gamequitters.com/
chongli 6y ago
This highlights something that's made me uncomfortable for a while. In discussions around addiction, suicide, and other mental health outcomes, the focus is almost always placed on stopping the undesirable outcome. They'll put timers that kick people off games, they'll put barriers and nets around bridges people commonly jump from, etc. What they aren't doing is treating the root cause of the problem: loneliness, listlessness, depression. These are problems of our society and they seem to be getting worse over time. We need to change this. We need to build real communities where people belong. We need to build relationships. We're not doing that though. We're becoming more and more atomized.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  You can hire a contractor to build a net, but you can't hire a contractor to make people have more friends.
Someone 6y ago
It is hard to strictly define the term “addiction”, and experts will disagree about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction has a seemingly clear definition “Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences.”. Labeling it a brain disorder implies it must involve a biological process, and that, to some, implies it must include some physical or chemical stimulus. However, that page also says “many scholars who study addiction argue that the brain disease model is incomplete and misleading”. That Wikipedia page also says “The term addiction is misused frequently to refer to other compulsive behaviors or disorders, particularly dependence, in news media.“ So, the mainstream opinion seems to be that not all compulsive behaviors are addictions.
- snet0 6y ago
  I think this runs into an important problem of trying to overly formalise categories, which makes sense for medical usage, but just leads to pedantry in most cases. If some one feels "addicted" to some thing, and almost anyone would agree that they at least seem to be so, it's of no use to say "well technically, addiction requires these conditions and must be verified by this test". There's a similar thing with depression, where people will try discredit others by implying their depression isn't real because it hasn't been diagnosed and confirmed by a doctor. If you're really damn sad for a really long time, our word for that is depression. If medicine wants to use the same word to describe a similar-but-more-precise condition, they can feel free. But most of the time we're not talking in a medical context.

chirau 6y ago

I wonder whether watching porn is an activity or substance.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Activity. Substance means imbibing a chemical (e.g. eating, injecting, breathing).

gameswithgo 6y ago

There is a great article out there about the difference between the strength of compulsion and the strength of physical side effects. The two are not linked. That is, one drug may have horrible withdrawal effects, but cause relatively weak compulsion to continue using. Another drug may cause extremely strong compulsion to use and have no withdrawal symptoms at all. The idea that addiction only actually exists when there are physical withdrawal symptoms is just wrong, and it is a very harmful wrong belief.

have_faith 6y ago

It's all substance eventually right? the activity causes your body to produce excessive amounts of something addictive.

snet0 6y ago
But the substance is not the videogame itself, but rather is some complex neurochemistry. By this logic, basically all "drug" addictions are actually instantiations of a more primitive addiction to neurochemicals. Operating at this level of abstraction is useless, because there's no actionable decision points.

kleer001 6y ago

From my understanding of addiction is the essential terms are "compulsive engagement" and "adverse consequences".

Jetroid 6y ago

Have you tried Gamequitters [1] for helping you with your addiction? I met the guy who runs that site a few years ago, and he's been able to help a lot of people with that. He was an ex-gaming addict himself and seemed really passionate about the subject. [1] https://gamequitters.com/ https://gamequitters.com/

chongli 6y ago

This highlights something that's made me uncomfortable for a while. In discussions around addiction, suicide, and other mental health outcomes, the focus is almost always placed on stopping the undesirable outcome. They'll put timers that kick people off games, they'll put barriers and nets around bridges people commonly jump from, etc. What they aren't doing is treating the root cause of the problem: loneliness, listlessness, depression. These are problems of our society and they seem to be getting worse over time. We need to change this. We need to build real communities where people belong. We need to build relationships. We're not doing that though. We're becoming more and more atomized.

whatshisface 6y ago
You can hire a contractor to build a net, but you can't hire a contractor to make people have more friends.

Someone 6y ago

It is hard to strictly define the term “addiction”, and experts will disagree about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction has a seemingly clear definition “Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences.”. Labeling it a brain disorder implies it must involve a biological process, and that, to some, implies it must include some physical or chemical stimulus. However, that page also says “many scholars who study addiction argue that the brain disease model is incomplete and misleading”. That Wikipedia page also says “The term addiction is misused frequently to refer to other compulsive behaviors or disorders, particularly dependence, in news media.“ So, the mainstream opinion seems to be that not all compulsive behaviors are addictions.

snet0 6y ago
I think this runs into an important problem of trying to overly formalise categories, which makes sense for medical usage, but just leads to pedantry in most cases. If some one feels "addicted" to some thing, and almost anyone would agree that they at least seem to be so, it's of no use to say "well technically, addiction requires these conditions and must be verified by this test". There's a similar thing with depression, where people will try discredit others by implying their depression isn't real because it hasn't been diagnosed and confirmed by a doctor. If you're really damn sad for a really long time, our word for that is depression. If medicine wants to use the same word to describe a similar-but-more-precise condition, they can feel free. But most of the time we're not talking in a medical context.