[ExI] addiction

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Mon Mar 21 20:30:17 UTC 2016


On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 12:39 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> General question about addiction:  just what constitutes addiction?  I
think it's very
> fuzzy.  If one bases it on the appearance of withdrawal symptoms of a
physical
> sort, then I am an addict, as I have been taking Tramadol for decades for
my back
> pain.  When I started adding some decaf to my regular coffee beans I
noticed
> some withdrawal.  Ditto when I quit alcohol and tobacco.  I must be some
sort
> of poster boy for those who get addicted and then get unaddicted.
Quitting
> tobacco was by far the worst, followed by the time I ran short of
Tramadol and
> could not get any more fore several days.  I was told when I started that
one that
> it was not addicting!  Talk about needing more study of a
drug......Curiously I had
> no withdrawal from quitting alcohol, despite drinking a fifth of vodka a
day.  Felt
> better immediately.
>
> I might accept gambling as an addiction but not sex or shopping.  It
can't just be
> something that one overdoes.  It has hurt one's life in some way.  You
can't just
> miss it if you don't have it.  I might have to start planting on my roof
if I want any
> more roses, as I have 120 now and no more room.  Will I have withdrawal?
Stay
> tuned and see.

My guess is that addiction is, for the most part, a category of disapproval
being used as if it were something other than that. People will joke around
and talk about, say, oxygen addiction or a water addiction, but the way
addiction is almost always deployed is in terms of some behavior that
either totally disapproved of someone or that's disapproved of when it
overreaches some limit according to that person.

By the way, IIRC, Stanton Peale made a distinction between addictive
things/actions and addictive people. This is kind of tangential to my above
point, though it could be taken to mean that some people are much more
likely to meet with social disapproval, though the form their behaviors
take may vary. (I believe that Peale was arguing that if, say, the heroin
addict -- as defined by conventional standards -- were not addicted to
heroin, they would find something else to be addicted -- as defined by the
conventional standard -- provided the opportunity presented itself. In
other words, some people are just more prone to get addicted overall -- and
meaning others are generally not so prone. This goes along with the old
saying that the sheep will find the butcher.)

By the way, this is not to belittle folks struggling with behaviors they
actually want to change.

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160321/f69980e3/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list