What is Addiction?

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease with genetic, psychosocial and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. The disease is often progressive and fatal. It is characterized by continuous or periodic episodes: impaired control over use, use despite adverse consequences, and distortions in thinking, most notably denial.

Primary concerns the nature of addiction as a pathological entity separate from other physiological conditions that may be associated. Primary concerns that addiction is not a symptom of another underlying disease process.

Involuntary disease means a disability. Represents the sum of the abnormal phenomena that occur in a group of individuals. These phenomena are associated with a specific set of common characteristics, so that these individuals differ from the norm, and that puts them at a disadvantage.

Often progressive and fatal means that the disease persists over time and that the physical, emotional and social are often cumulative and progress as the use continues. Addiction causes premature death through overdose, organic complications involving the brain, liver, heart, and other organs, depending on the type of addiction, and contributes to the occurrence of suicide, homicide, violence, abuse, rape and sexual abuse, accidents and other traumatic events interpersonal and / or family.

Des-control refers to the inability to limit the use, duration of the episode of use, intensity of use and the behavioral consequences of use.

Concerns associated with the use refers to excessive investment attention to the use, substrate use, use effects, situations involving the use, which means a huge investment of energy and time in addictive activities, resulting a relative neglect of the important interests of daily life.

The adverse consequences are problems related to the use that lead to impairments in the areas of: physical health, psychological functioning, interpersonal functioning, occupational functioning, and legal problems, financial and spiritual.

Denial is used here, not only in the psychoanalytic sense of a simple defense mechanism that disqualifies the meaning of events, but more broadly including a wide range of psychological maneuvers designed to reduce awareness the fact that the use is the cause of the individual's problems, one solution to these problems. Denial becomes an integral part of the disease and a major obstacle to recovery.

Posted in Addiction