Addiction has been long misunderstood for years until proper research was done on the subject. It took a long time to understand the inner workings of addiction, how it impacts the brain, what causes it, and who is more at risk for developing the disease. While many key factors can play a part in the development of addiction, psychology plays a significant role. Understanding the psychology of addictions can help those struggling have a better idea of what they are going through and what healing options there are.
Many do not realize exactly what classifies an addiction, so it is essential to start there. Addiction is when a person participates in any activity that results in pleasure that they cannot stop engaging with it even at the risk of their wellbeing, health, and more such as losing their home, job, family, and finances. For example, a person who cannot stop using marijuana despite isolating themselves from friends and family, losing their job, losing their house, and still continues to use would be considered to be struggling with addiction. However, it is not merely a lack of willpower that can cause this obsessive and compulsive behavior.
One of the most common causes of addiction is emotional stress. This is why addiction treatment begins with healing the physical aspects of addiction, then continues helping the person heal mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally. When you are undergoing emotional stress, the thought of facing whatever is causing you trouble can sometimes be overwhelming. Those who do not know healthy coping mechanisms to deal with their problems may turn to something that will help them escape, such as drugs or alcohol. This is often how addiction begins. As the person continues using, their brain equates pleasure with the presence of the substance, and they are no longer using just to cope with what they are going through, but rather because their body craves the substance they were using to manage their stressors.
While emotional distress can play a significant role in the potential development of addiction, trauma can also put a person at potential risk. Trauma is anything that someone goes through that causes severe emotional distress with lasting impacts on your physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual health. Traumatic experiences can include natural disasters, abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, terminal illness, and more. Some individuals have problems with their trauma where they have repetitive violent and disturbing memories, resulting in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Childhood trauma can significantly affect your decisions in the future. If you grew up in an environment where there was parental abuse or neglect, sexual assault, or other forms of trauma, your brain could have been significantly impacted by what occurred. You may not have taught what healthy coping mechanisms look like and therefore engage in unhealthy ones later in life to cope with what you have been through. You may also have suffered from a restructuring of the brain due to trauma, causing problems with behavior and cognition. These things can lead you to self-medicate to escape from bad memories and experiences. Without getting proper help, this can eventually lead to addiction.
Addiction can also restructure the brain by rewiring your brain’s reward system. Your brain keeps you motivated to continually engage in necessary actions to sustain life, such as eating, sleeping, exercising, having sex, socializing, and more by releasing “feel-good” chemicals (dopamine) to produce the feeling of pleasure. Because of this, you will continue to do these activities because of your brain’s reward system.
When drugs are involved, they “hijack” this system by causing an overload of these chemicals to be released in the brain. This overload of “feel-good” chemicals is what causes a “high,” or feelings of euphoria, that many people describe when using drugs or alcohol. Over time, your brain will have to adapt to the presence of the substances by making the circuit less sensitive and therefore releasing lower levels of the chemicals. This is because your brain relies on the chemicals from the drugs to produce enough dopamine, which is why you experience withdrawal when you begin the detox process in recovery.
In this way, addiction can change your psychology while you are actively experiencing the disease. Your psychology can raise your potential risk of developing an addiction, and addiction can change your psychology over time. Again, this is why most of recovery is learning how to regulate your emotions, change your behavior, and learn healthy coping mechanisms to support a healthy life.
Psychology and addiction go hand in hand, often causing a vicious cycle until the person struggling gets proper help. Research has shown that psychology plays a significant role in increasing one’s risk of developing addiction through emotional stress. Emotional stress can profoundly affect someone who does not know how to properly cope with complex emotions, causing them to look for an escape to get rid of the negative feelings. However, addiction can also change your psychology by “hijacking” your brain’s reward system. In treatment, you will need to focus on healing your mental health, brain, and behaviors to sustain a long and happy life. At NorthStar Transitions, we have extensive experience helping our clients understand the psychology of addictions and find healing through clinical excellence, personalized treatment, and evidence-based modalities. We focus experientially and somatically on teaching clients how to disrupt their reflexive behavior patterns, moving them beyond their addiction. Call us today at (303) 558-6400 to learn more and start your journey.
