This may not belong in social justice, if not please move it.
here are my thoughts. I have never been addicted to any substance. I spent years cutting myself and suffered from bulimia and anorexia. When my mother found about all of the things i had been doing in my little life she took me to a psych. This woman insisted that i was addicted to drugs because iw as smoking pot twice a month. I was also addicted to sex, according to her. ( had sex about 3 times at this point). She automatically put me into the "addicted" category with no basis for it. I was later diagnosed as bipolar and my mom took awhile accepting it because she had this idea in the back of her head that i was just addicted to things.
so here are my questions for all of you:
who decides what is a disease and what is an addiction and what is both?
what would you all catagorize as each (are EDs in one or both? cutting? etc.)
when is something considered a disease rather than just "the blues" (when does one cross from being a sad teenager to a bipolar person)?
When does one know they have hit "addiction"?
and any thoughts provoked from this post.
i dont have the answers for you, but wanted to comment that this is a great question.
like, when did i cross the line from having a little anxiety, to having full blown anxiety disorder requiring meds???
how did i get from wanting to party and drink, to having the disease alcoholism???
im thinking that the "disease" part comes from research into our bodies, like we have certian genes, or chromosomes or somthing? does that make sense??
Cutting can be an addiction. my theory is some type of hormone is released when you cut and you get addicted to that. Just like sex addiction ictually an addiction to what is released during the act.
I think something is considered a physical addiction if we receive an endorphin reward after regular consumption.
So officially it is impossible to become physically addicted to many substances that are refered to as addictive as these do not trigger release of chemicals in the brain. For example with pot you would have to smoke pounds to trigger the 'reward'.
Cutting does release an endorphin rush. Enough for it to be a reward? No idea.
But physical definitions aren't the whole story, I believe what makes an addiction is how it impacts on your life.
I'm going to have to second the theory that cutting is an addiction. I've had severe episodes where I would be really depressed, and I would cut myself to feel better. Yes, there was a rush there. I had to stop because my mother found out, but I missed it almost as much as I miss cigarettes during the many times I've quit. I struggle to this day with it. Whenever I'm depressed, there would always be a little voice in the back of my head that if I cut myself, it would make the pain go away.
So to me, cutting is an addiction. I probably would not have gotten started with it if I wasn't so depressed, though.
I think personally when you have a disorder or addiction they have some similaritues.... they both have taken over some part of your body, wether it be physical, emotianal, or mental. I believe that all addictions or disorders can be considered diseases.... (wow I think I just worded that wierd and I confused myself!!!) They are all something you need to recover from.
Absolutely. I've had nights in the past where I was so angry and upset and crazy that I couldn't a damn thing. As soon as I cut, I was able to cal;m down and go to sleep. I beleive 100% that endorphins were at play.
i don't know that there can be a textbook definition that says behavior x is an addiction while behavior y isn't. i think when it starts to have effects on the way you live your life and you plan around a behavior and whatnot, it crosses the line into addicitve.
as far as ED and cutting and whatnot. i think there is addiction to a substance (alcohol, drugs, food) and there is addiction to a behavior (sex, weight control through bulimia and anorexia, cutting).
who decides what is an addiction? i don't know. a lot of different things for different people.
an example from my life, cocaine became an addiction for me when i couldn't get through my day without planning where i was getting it and when i was doing it. when i couldn't go visit my family for the holiday weekend without making sure i had enough to get me through. i would say my dad's sexual habits became an addiction when 2 marriages were threatened and he could not stop his behaviors. well,they were probably addictions before that but that is when it came clear to some outsiders.
hope that makes sense.
alcoholics in my life have told me that what made them alcoholics is that they were incapable of "drinking like normal people." This could mean any number of things, but seems like it could be summed up by saying this:
that alchohol caused problems for them, but no matter how bad the problems got, they wouldn't or couldn't stop drinking (at least without help). Like, a normal person will enjoy drinking, maybe even binge drinking. But given a compelling reason to stop (health problems, a crisis, whatever), a normal person will no longer drink. An alcoholic will..
Im the same way. I used to cut and once I did I felt better.
That is a major thing that is overlooked.
I do not know if cutting for me was an addiction, I hid in the bathroom and sliced myself to pieces everyday from primary school to not so long ago with a scalpel or razor because I was extremely depressed then I put on a jumper and pants, smiled and resumed my "happy" "normal" self.
I have a mental illness so maybe it was a result of that, who knows?
Or maybe it was the depression caused by said illness that made me cut and therefore led to an addiction...
Or it could be that some people run or cry when they are stressed or depressed others of us cut.
It does release endorphins that make us feel better, hence why we keep doing it to deal with things.
But i've never been quite sure whether i've seen it as an addiction rather than a release of horrible feelings (albeit not a very healthy release) just like running or crying or whatever.
It could just be another thing that makes you feel good when you are down that is focused on because it is worse than other mechanisms used to relieve these feelings.
Though yeah it could be an addiciton and because I did it for so long I never noticed.
its true, i learned that somewhere.
people used to say that you are an alcoholic or adicted to something else when you will sit and do it alone.
i dont know about that though. i know a lot of peope who have a rough day and come home by themselves and drink a beer, and thats not addiction.
i think what defines addiction is when a certain behavior causes negative circumstances in ones life, the person keeps doing it despite negative consequences and they have a hard time stopping it even when they want to. i think this happens with both phyisical and psychological addictions.