The 9 Signs of Addiction and How to Start Recovery
What is Addiction?
Addiction is a word that can cover a huge variety of behaviours, from using Facebook to taking cocaine. At the same time, there is confusion about what an addiction actually is, or what the signs of addiction actually are.
The problem is that things like denial, defensiveness, shame, stigma and fear are often factors for people who may be addicted. This makes identifying addiction a tricky process, because having an addiction is hard to admit.
So, to make things clear, here are the 9 main signs of addiction.
The 9 Signs of Addiction:
No Control: You feel like you have to do or take whatever it is you're addicted to. So, maybe you say to yourself “I'm not using Facebook tomorrow”. But when tomorrow comes, you just have to use it. So, you do. You're compelled to do it.
No Choice: You don't choose to do it, you find yourself doing it. You might not even notice you're doing it. It's that moment you realise your having a cigarette, or on Facebook, or whatever, and you haven't really made a choice to do so. It just happened.
Needing More: You find yourself doing it over and over, more and more, or in higher intensities, to get a better kick or a higher high, or a more immersive distraction. Whatever it is - social networking, food, exercise, porn - you keep coming back for more, because you want another kick. Escalation, increasing the dose of the addiction, is common here.
Self-Regulation Use: You indulge regularly when you want to regulate emotions, like boredom, loneliness, tiredness, anger, pain, self-hate, stress, or any other unpleasant feeling. So, smokers claim having cigarette helps them relax. Video game addicts claim video games helps them "switch off".
Dependence: You feel you couldn't cope without it. This fear of not being able to cope can often lead to denial.
Time: A lot of your time is spent either indulging the addiction or trying to fight it. Often this can result in thoughts during indulgence, such as 'I really should be doing X, Y, or Z' or even 'I'd really like to do A, B or C' such as 'I really should go to bed now'. However, the addictive behaviour continues on regardless.
Obsessive: You put lots of emotional and mental energy into hiding, handling, indulging, or struggling with the addiction. The addiction is always on your mind, or never far away.
Energy: You end up tired, even 'frazzled,' after spending a lot of your energy on indulging the addiction instead of doing other, more nourishing or relaxing activities.
Disruption: The addiction affects your self-esteem, family relationships, social, love or work life, while also impacting on your physical and mental health.
Are you Addicted?
The above signs of addiction can be applied to a wide variety of possible behaviours, from watching TV to smoking cannabis, from drinking alcohol to going to the gym, from over-working to looking at pornography. Addiction comes in many forms, but most addictions will end up showing many of the above signs. Addictions don't have to be chemical, like drugs, they can also be emotional or even purely habitual. In many cases, it's a combination of all three.
What Next?
As you can see, addiction can span a hole range of situations, and have varying degrees of extremes. There are many forms of support for people struggling with addiction, and often these depend on the type of addiction at play. For example, for alcohol addiction there are abstinence-based groups like the AA and addiction counsellors. On the other hand, after reflecting on it, a person might want to reduce their use of social networking, but not know how to do this. As addiction can come in many forms, it’s good to have a range of possible resources, which I’ll link below.
Often the best place to start is your GP, who may know local resources and organisations that you could contact. Of course, if you’d like to work with me on exploring ways to recover from addiction of any kind, please feel free to contact me use my contact page.
Tackling addiction take courage, and can be quite a journey, but with support and the right tools, you can do it!
Resources
Here’s a small collection of resources to get you started.
Russell Brand on Addiction: (from The Spectator)
NHS Overcoming Addiction: Wealth of Info on Overcoming Addiction
Sober Nation: Facebook Page
Society for the Study of Addiction: Lost of Info and Research into Addiction
You might also find the following video interesting: