Addiction
hideThe term "addiction" is used in many contexts to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence, such as: drug addiction (e.g. alcoholism), video game addiction, crime, money, work addiction, compulsive overeating, problem gambling, computer addiction, nicotine addiction, pornography addiction, etc.
In medical terminology, an addiction is a chronic neurobiologic disorder that has genetic, psychosocial, and environmental dimensions and is characterized by one of the following: the continued use of a substance despite its detrimental effects, impaired control over the use of a drug (compulsive behavior), and preocupation with a drug's use for non-therapeutic purposes (i.e. craving the drug). Addiction is often accompanied the presence of deviant behaviors (for instance stealing money and forging prescriptions) that are used to obtain a drug.
Tolerance to a drug and physical dependence are not defining characteristics of addiction, although they typically accompany addiction to certain drugs. Tolerance is a pharmacologic phenomenon where the dose of a medication needs to be continually increase in order to maintain its desired effects. For instance, individuals with severe chronic pain taking opiate medications (like morphine) will need to continually increase the dose in order to maintain the drug's analgesic (pain-relieving) effects. Physical dependence is also a pharmacologic property and means that if a certain drug is abruptly discontinued, an individual will experience certain characteristic withdrawal signs and symptoms. Many drugs used for therapeutic purposes produce withdrawal symptoms when abruptly stopped, for instance oral steroids, certain antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and opiates.
However, common usage of the term addiction has spread to include psychological dependence. In this context, the term is used in drug addiction and substance abuse problems, but also refers to behaviors that are not generally recognized by the medical community as problems of addiction, such as compulsive overeating.
The term addiction is also sometimes applied to compulsions that are not substance-related, such as problem gambling and computer addiction. In these kinds of common usages, the term addiction is used to describe a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity, despite harmful consequences, as deemed by the user himself to his or her individual health, mental state or social life.
For more information about Addiction, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with addiction
Dopamine enhances expectation of pleasure in humans
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Nov 12, 2009 |
4.2 / 5 (10) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Enhancing the effects of the brain chemical dopamine influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.
Flipping the brain's addiction switch without drugs
May 28, 2009 |
5 / 5 (5) |
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When someone becomes dependent on drugs or alcohol, the brain's pleasure center gets hijacked, disrupting the normal functioning of its reward circuitry.
Flies like us: They can act like addicts, too
Dec 10, 2009 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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When given the chance to consume alcohol at will, fruit flies behave in ways that look an awful lot like human alcoholism. That's according to a study published online on December 10th in Current Biology that is one of the ...
Scientists seek to manage dopamine's good and bad sides
Oct 07, 2009 |
5 / 5 (6) |
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The good, the bad and the ugly: That's a quick summary of the effects of dopamine, a natural brain chemical that's linked to pleasure, addiction and disease.
Cocaine Vaccine Shows Promise for Treating Addiction
Oct 05, 2009 |
5 / 5 (3) |
5
(PhysOrg.com) -- Immunization with an experimental anti-cocaine vaccine resulted in a substantial reduction in cocaine use in 38 percent of vaccinated patients in a clinical trial supported by the National Institute on Drug ...
Learning addiction: Dopamine reinforces drug-associated memories
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Sep 09, 2009 |
5 / 5 (1) |
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New research with mice has provided some fascinating insight into how addictive drugs hijack reward signals and influence neural processes associated with learning and memory. The research, published by Cell Press in the ...
Cyber junkies can unplug at US retreat
Aug 21, 2009 |
3 / 5 (1) |
2
The first US retreat for Internet addicts has opened its doors, welcoming a teenager that was captive to World of Warcraft online role-playing videogame.
Research shows temptation more powerful than individuals realize
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Aug 03, 2009 |
3.9 / 5 (7) |
8
Whether it's highlighted in major news headlines about Argentinean affairs and Ponzi schemes, or in personal battles with obesity and drug addiction, individuals regularly succumb to greed, lust and self-destructive behaviors. ...
Wastewater used to map illicit drug use
Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry
Jul 15, 2009 |
5 / 5 (3) |
3
A team of researchers has mapped patterns of illicit drug use across the state of Oregon using a method of sampling municipal wastewater before it is treated.
Site for alcohol's action in the brain discovered
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience
Jun 28, 2009 |
5 / 5 (10) |
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Alcohol's inebriating effects are familiar to everyone. But the molecular details of alcohol's impact on brain activity remain a mystery. A new study by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies ...
'Happy hour' gene discovery suggests cancer drugs might treat alcoholism
May 21, 2009 |
4.8 / 5 (4) |
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A class of drugs already approved as cancer treatments might also help to beat alcohol addiction. That's the conclusion of a discovery in flies of a gene, dubbed happyhour, that has an important and previously unknown role ...
Cocaine: Perceived as a reward by the brain?
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
May 19, 2009 |
4 / 5 (3) |
5
Cocaine is one of the oldest drugs known to humans, and its abuse has become widespread since the end of the 19th century. At the same time, we know rather little about its effects on the human brain or the mechanisms that ...
National study finds nearly 1 in 10 youth gamers addicted to video games
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
Apr 20, 2009 |
2 / 5 (4) |
7
Parents have been saying for years that their kids are "addicted" to video games, but a new study by an Iowa State University psychology professor is the first to actually report that pathological patterns ...
To Fight Drug Addiction, Researchers Target the Brain with Nanoparticles
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
Mar 23, 2009 |
4 / 5 (1) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A precise, new nanotechnology treatment for drug addiction may be on the horizon as the result of research conducted at the University at Buffalo.
Halting retrieval of drug-associated memories may prevent addiction relapse
Aug 12, 2008 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
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Disrupting the brain's retrieval of drug-associated memories may prevent relapse in drug addiction, according to new research in the August 13 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers reduced drug-seeking behavi ...
