Behavioral Addictions

Behavioral Addictions

Behavioral Addictions

Addiction is a descriptive term that commonly describes the use of substances and drugs. Addictions are long term periods of performing possibly the wrong way. Behavioral addictions can cause grief and damage in someone’s life. There are treatments and drugs available to help curb your daily miscreant behavior.

Addiction can belong to a number of favorable ways to behave for an individual. Addictions can take the form of unfavorable ways to act, in case of fighting too much. Some types of addictions, like shopping addiction can be widely accepted and can go undiagnosed.  If a person feels they spend too much at the arcade when he or she is spending more than fifty dollars a day at the activity, then they indeed are experiencing a behavioral element that they can seek treatment for at drug rehabs.

Drug and Alcohol Addiction

Drug and alcohol addiction can be considered, then, a type of behavioral addiction according to About.com’s explanation of how closely related drug addiction is to behavioral addiction. There is more risk involved like when a court has taken an individual in for a ticket and forced the person to receive drug and alcohol treatment under possibly stricter terms. Drug and alcohol addiction treatment can get a patient back to not abusing his or her beverage of choice and can even get people to quit drinking for the rest of their life. There are many clients who will stop abusing alcohol and there are 12-step programs available for people who drink too much. Alcoholism is responsible for many serious diseases including cancer and cirrhosis of the liver. People can seek refuge from alcoholism and a number of the adverse effects of it.

Substance Addiction

Many of the treatments that are available for substance addiction are advertised for behavioral addiction as well. From the same related Internet search, which makes some difference, yields results from drug addiction and substance addiction programs. Drug addiction programs are common for individuals to recover from their addictions. Clients can sometimes choose the substance addiction program of their choice even when referred by the local court system.

Shopping Addiction

Shopping addiction is a behavioral addiction that affects around 10 percent of the population. Shopping addiction is an easy addiction to get caught up in because major store brands want people to buy things and so they advertise highly. Having too much purchasing power can create an addictive behavioral problem that is alright by most people’s standards. Shopping addiction can happen without the individual recognizing it. When there is common stress in an addicted shopper’s home, family, or business life, the person will go out and start shopping as part of  their remedy for relieving the stress in their life.

Shopping addiction and other addictions can leave a negative impact on a person’s life. Just because shopping addiction doesn’t sound like a problem to some people, these types of behavioral addictions can cause other dramatic events if not treated. A shopping addiction can be very serious because it can leave an individual in tremendous debt to the point that they cannot pay their household and other important bills. Gambling addiction is another behavioral addiction that can take large amounts of money and value out of people’s lives.

Video Game Addiction

Video game addiction is another addiction that hits under 20 percent of the population. In some cases, that is almost one fifth of the U.S. that can  have relentless video game addiction. Some of the negative side effects of video games can include violence. Violence is often depicted in video games often to a point of affecting a person’s mental well-being. Nobody wants to see violence, and violence fills more jail and prison populations with unhappy inmates. Treatments for video game addiction can also include psychology. People that suffer from video game addiction spend too much time in dealing with video games and they forget how to deal with life. They lose touch with how to deal with people in daily life. Social interactions involve less skill. There is more time spent playing the computer instead of remembering talking to your friends, clients, or co-workers. “Detached” is how addicted video gamers are described, but they can decide to seek treatment and get back in the real world.

Symptoms of an Addiction

Unhealthy behavioral addictions such as: gambling addiction, internet addiction, pornography addiction, sex addiction, shoplifting addiction, shopping addiction, smoking addiction, sugar addiction, video game addiction, and work addiction can be described as too much time spent doing one thing. There are amounts of skill not learned elsewhere in other activities. When a person gets too heavily into shopping, gambling, video games, etc., he/she can lose touch with other aspects of daily living. In fact, other aspects of daily living become more detached, and too much time is spent with the addiction. Symptoms of an addiction can include running up bills unreasonably, taking out too much time for the addictive activity, avoiding outside contacts, and not connecting with the people outside anymore. Generally too much priority is given to the addictive activity and other aspects of daily living go down in value and acceptance. Other aspects of the addicted person’s life may suffer including appearance and maintaining responsibilities. If you are a person that is beginning to lose contact with the outside world because of one or two activities that take up too much time, you may have behavioral addictions. These addictions can qualify a person for treatment.  There are many different treatment programs that can help with all types of behavioral addictions.

Sources

Elizabeth Hartney, About.com, July 29, 2010, What Are Behavioral Addictions? – Click Here