Addictions Aren't What they Used to Be

Nowadays a lot of my friends call every bad habit and about any pattern of behavior an addiction. That is a severe overstatement of the facts.

Yesterday many of us heard the vaunted American icon, NPR, run a series of "VERY SERIOUS DISCUSSIONS" about the latest threat to our nation. It is; Blackberry Addiction!!!!!!!!! The next thing we know New York City will ban Blackberry use just like they have banned fatty foods from eating places.

That is bogus and misleading, but not any more misleading than much of the rhetoric about addictions of any kind. You hear it from almost every TV show and every pulpit. Porn Addiction and Eating Addiction and Sex Addiction as well as TV addiction. But the most egregious mislabeling comes when professionals in counseling and health care indicate that people can get addicted to a substance itself. They imply that some things are so toxic that they will hook us forever if we once start to use them. In fact, this is the myth behind much of the current discussion about what people are calling Addictions.

But that is wrong. Dead wrong and it leads to thinking that addicts cannot change or if they can it is a life long struggle with lots of medical assistance. Most people who stop their bad habits do so with no professional counseling or medical assistance at all.

It is not alcohol that is the problem nor is it pornography or food. The habit of over eating or over drinking or over sexing comes from within not without. Listen to the following research and be as amazed as I was.

Heroin Use by Viet Nam Vets

American soldiers in Vietnam provided an important although overlooked observation. Many enlisted men in Vietnam regularly used heroin. However, only 5% of those considered addicted were still using it 10 months after their return to the US.

Treatment did not account for this high recovery rate. Why does not everyone become addicted when they repeatedly inject a substance reputedly as addicting as heroin? If a substance like heroin is not inherently addicting to everyone, but only to a small minority of human users, what determines this selectivity? Is it the substance that is intrinsically addicting, or do life experiences actually determine its compulsive use?

This research, called the Adverse Childhood Events Studies, indicate that much of our current understanding about addictions is flawed, deeply flawed. Perhaps it is not the chemical makeup of the drug but the emotional makeup of the user that counts.

More Research

Surely its chemical structure remains constant. Our findings indicate that the major factor underlying addiction is adverse childhood experiences that have not healed with time and that are overwhelmingly concealed from awareness by shame, secrecy, and social taboo.

The compulsive user appears to be one who, not having other resolutions available, unconsciously seeks relief by using materials with known psychoactive benefit, accepting the known long-term risk of injecting illicit, impure chemicals. The ACE Study provides population-based clinical evidence that unrecognized adverse childhood experiences are a major, if not the major, determinant of who turns to psychoactive materials and becomes ‘addicted’.

Protect your heart for out of it come the issues of life. Holy Bible

The church, prayer and loving friends and family are the best places to find assistance and help to change.