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ConstantCravings.docx

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This text has been adapted from an article which appeared in The Guardian – a British newspaper.

This is not a scholarly publication and this article was not peer reviewed by experts and there is no claim that the author herself is an expert on this subject. As this is a newspaper article, no references list is provided to show where the sources where this information has been found.

However, the text does two things to show its sources. Firstly, in the online, original version of this article contains some hyperlinks to the sources where the author has found the information. These hyperlinks do not always lead to reliable sources; some of them lead to other articles by the same author or to Wikipedia entries. Secondly, the author makes it clear that much of her information comes from interviews with experts in the field. She directly quotes these experts and she also introduces them by giving their names, positions and qualifications to establish them as trusted, expert sources.

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Constant cravings: Is addiction on the rise?

GLOSSARY

Adapted from;

Fleming, A. (2019, January 9). Constant cravings: Is addiction on the rise? The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/09/constant-cravings-is-addiction-on-the-rise

addict (n): a person who cannot control their consumption of something (e.g. drugs) or who cannot control a habit (e.g. shopping)

addiction (n): a need for something – this need is something which cannot be controlled e.g. I realized that I had an addiction to coffee when I just couldn’t start work without a strong cup of black cappuccino.

behavioural (adv): related to behaviour - things that you do e.g. That little boy has behavioural problems. He keeps hitting other children in the class.

cue (n): something which causes you to remember something, to feel something, to think something or to do something e.g. When I gave up smoking, I also had to stop having a coffee at work. I always had a cigarette on my coffee break so coffee was a cue to smoke.

craving (n): the feeling of wanting something very much – this feeling can be difficult to control e.g. During pregnancy, some women get cravings for particular foods. My sister had terrible cravings for mint ice-cream during the second month of her pregnancy.

disorder (n): a physical or mental illness

gamble (v): to bet money (eg on a card game or a horse race) in order to win more money e.g. He gambled away $10,000 before he went to the doctor for help with his problem.

stimuli (n): things which causes you to do, say, remember or thing something e.g. In order to develop, young children need the right stimuli. Parents need to talk to them a lot, for example, so that they can develop language.

suicide (n): killing yourself

withdrawal (n): stopping an addictive habit – and the physical/emotional reactions to stopping e.g. I’ve stopped smoking and drinking coffee. The withdrawal symptoms for cigarettes were not so bad – I felt nervous and angry for a few weeks. However, I had terrible headaches when I stopped having coffee.

Addiction was once seen as something which affected people on the edges of society and involved substances such as alcohol and hard drugs. Now, however, the list of possible addictions has expanded to include a number of everyday activities - from sugar to shopping to social media. The UK’s first National Health Service (NHS) internet-addiction clinic is opening this year; the World Health Organization (WHO) has included gaming disorder in its official addictions diagnosis guidelines.

Many of these newer problems are seen as behavioural rather than physical, substance-related addictions – but the consequences can be as serious. Gambling is generally agreed to be a behavioural addiction. Suicide rates, along with the likelihood of substance addiction, are higher among compulsive gamblers. “I see gambling students who drop out of university because they can’t stop,” says Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a consultant psychiatrist who works on addictions with the NHS. “I see people with shopping addictions who are in so much debt because they couldn’t stop themselves from buying three dresses in different sizes. In the end their businesses and families suffer.” Excessive use of online devices is seen my many as one of the key behavioural addictions. When the addiction charity Addaction commissioned a YouGov survey in October 2018, it found that parents are twice as worried about their teenage children being addicted to social media as they are about drugs, and a similar ratio when comparing worries about gaming and drugs.

Not everyone agrees with defining these new disorders as addictions – after all, you can’t overdose on them. Gambling and gaming are the only ones to have made it on to the WHO list of addictions. However, a change in the way we understand addiction is now happening. Most of the standard criteria for addiction diagnosis do apply to these disorders, says Michael Lynskey, a professor of addiction at King’s College London: “Tolerance, neglect of responsibilities, inability to stop, withdrawal.”

Terry Robinson, a respected professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, has identified three factors that could help explain why “there seems to be a wider variety of problematic things [to get addicted to]”. The first factor is that our modern environment is full of stimuli which can cause cravings. “People don’t understand the power of cues and stimuli.” In fact, addicts can start liking the cues more than the end goal. Lynskey agrees, adding “some of the marketing and design of gambling machines very effective in finding ways to attract users and boost dopamine and retain them”. The “like” button on social media, is a similar example. Introducing a report into the effects of social media on young people in early 2018, the UK’s children’s commissioner Anne Longfield wrote that “some children are becoming almost addicted to ‘likes’ as a form of social validation”. Robinson’s second consideration is dosage. Our liking of sweet foods suited us when we were hunter-gatherers, helping us choose high-energy foods. Now, we have high-fructose corn syrup, which gives us unnatural levels of glucose, much stronger than anything our ancestors experienced. Similarly, with drugs, he points out: “Chewing coca leaves in the Andes is not the same as smoking crack cocaine. The difference in strengths can increase the chances of addiction.” His final factor is simply access. “Food, gambling and drugs – availability these days is much greater than it was in the past.”

Another theory about the increase in addictive behaviours comes from a series of experiments conducted in Canada in the late 1970s known as Rat Park. The psychologist Bruce Alexander found that lab rats, while kept alone in empty cages with the option of drinking either plain or drugged water, easily became addicted to heroin. However, if you put rats in a large, toy-filled enclosure with other male and female rats for company, this is not the case. The situation and surroundings were causing addiction, rather than the drug itself. Anderson calls this theory of addiction “dislocation theory”. “The modern world breaks down all kinds of community, all kinds of tradition and religions – things that have made life full for people in the past,” he says. “We have to reinvent society to make sure there are enough connections for human beings with each other in a traditional way, so that people can grow up and be content enough so they don’t need to find substitutes in addiction for life.”

Bowden-Jones says the best approach for treating behavioural addictions is using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help avoid cues (for example, taking a different way home so you don’t pass the place where you normally gamble), rewarding good behaviour and constantly reminding yourself what you have to lose. A modern challenge is that some sources of addiction are everywhere and may be a necessary part of our lives: recovering behavioural addicts cannot be told to completely avoid the internet, for example. “Younger generations will be socially cut off,” says Bowden-Jones, “and what our patients say is when they feel they’re missing out, it pushes them more toward the virtual life that they already have a problem with rather than engaging properly in their face-to-face lives.” “There’s a great distinction,” says Bowden-Jones “between functional use and use that is not necessary. It’s like eating too much cake, which makes you feel bad. People who are on social media too much find that it’s not a positive experience, although it may have started off as such.”

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