Opinion - Do you have an addictive personality?

[Cathay]

Do you have an addictive personality, whether it comes to shooting heroin or collecting hummels? Does it run in the family?

As for me, I would say no. I can try or do anything without developing too much of a habit or addiction. However, I still have yet to try crack and heroin, so who knows how I would react to that.

[PsychoActivist]

First off, SWIM classifies an addiction not based on how often one engages in a particular activity or to what extent. An addiction to SWIM is when one engages in an activity and cannot stop or has a very hard time stopping. A compelling force that can be powered by a physical craving and/or mental obsession for more.

When someone asks what SWIM's "drug of choice" is, his usual reply is "more".
His drug of choice is "more".

With that said.....

SWIM has an extremely addictive personality. Every drug he has ever touched he has found himself addicted to in one way or another (including a mental addiction to Cannabis [which he now hates] about 7-10 years ago).

Aside from that SWIM gets easily addicted to other things as well. Here are just a few examples:

~ Sweets - SWIM goes through phases here. Sometimes he won't eat any candy or so for a month but when he finally does he eats a ton of it almost as if he can't stop. Lately it has been ice cream. He has to have at least 1 (usually 2) bowls a day.

~ Video Games - SWIM doesn't actually play many games. However, there have been a few PC games that once he started lasted him a year or more. He would play stats and really keep up with them. For a while, while he was jobless, he was playing BF2 (Battlefield 2) for about 12-14 hours A DAY! Sometimes he wouldn't sleep for 2-3 nights just to stay up playing. This also kept him sober for a while.

~ Movies - SWIM has been on a big movie kick lately. Blockbuster and Netflix both love his business. He usually watches 1 movie every night and on the weekends 2-3 each night. This is partly because SWIM doesn't have very many friends anymore that he can hang out with (since he quit drinking) so he stays at home a lot. SWIM has a Netflix membership where he gets 3 movies sent to him at a time and he still usually rents about 8 movies a week from Blockbuster.

~ Learning - Learning and studying in it self has become an addiction for SWIM. He loves to just look shit up on the internet. Things, stuff, anything. Anything he is unsure of what it is or anything he thinks to himself "I've heard of that but I don't know much about it" - instantly to the internet to learn. Books too. He loves reading in general but he always feels like he's accomplishing more when he reads some non-fiction history piece. Or just a book dedicated to teaching him something. Right now, he has been reading all about the human body, medical conditions, pharmacology, biochemistry, yaddiyaddiyaya.


As I said these are just to name a few. He is sure he could keep on and on but who wants to read anymore of this long, boring post??????
.....Yeh, didn't think so

[Coconut]

Psychoactives: my tree does not appear to have an addictive personality in this regard. He does everything in moderation, but is addicted to discussing and learning about them.

Sex: he was pretty much addicted to masturbation until he began on sertraline, which has killed his desire to watch hawt pr0nz. He still has sex though, but is not addicted to it.

Video games: he used to have a very heavy addiction to video games. Left 4 Dead recently reeled him into this world again, but he seems to be crawling back out thankfully.

Sweets: not addicted, but he likes to indulge.

Music: unquestionably. My tree actually suffers psychological withdrawal if deprived of music for prolonged periods.

[Laszlo1]

swim has really interesting addiction behavior (he thinks so, at least).
swim drinks daily when he can, which tends to be his summer activity of choice, and he drinks about 2 times every weekend. However, when monday rolls around, or when classes start up again, he snaps right back into sober living and has never seemed to have any trouble putting booze on the backburner for months at a time.

Swim also smokes cigarettes at various different levels. On a friday or saturday out "partying" he can smoke anywhere from 3 or 4 to a whole pack, depending on his mood. Swim started smoking alone just recently, and bought a big tub of drum to do so for cheaper. However in recent days swim has noticed his weekday smoking (usually just one before bed) has increased to more than his weekend smoking, and is currently taking a few days off just to make sure there's no addiction brewing.

adderall, and other pharm amphetamines are a whole nother animal, however. Swim goes months without calling his connection (they're friends, but not very close... it's not a business type thing), but every couple of months he gets a text and then his heart leaps into his throat in the moments before he cops... it's a bit shameful. Also, when he has a stash, he uses it pretty wildly, sometimes blowing up to 60mgs at once (he's a very small/skinny dude), and for 2-3 days on, one day off repeating, until the stash is gone and his nose is running like a faucet.

a brief physical dependence on Xanax had swim occupied for a period of about a week, but he sold his stash and decided to ride out withdrawals as soon as possible, because he didn't enjoy xanax at all. He thinks this is a pretty good example of non-addictive behavior, which comforts him greatly considering his reckless adderall tendencies.

to top things off, swim has a longggg family history of drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression. The only one swim seems to have gotten stuck with is depression, however, so he counts himself lucky, or counts himself as strong willed [which he prefers the sound of]

As a youngin' swim had a mighty thirst for PC gaming, and still sort of dicks around on video games when he's putting off work or just wasting time, but they really don't hold the appeal that they used to, but he's a little bit of an old schooler, almost exclusively Elder Scrolls III... Loser? Mhm.

Food... swim has a weird relationship with food. Either all in, or all out, but he enjoys it either way.

Swim plays lots of music, and listens to music constantly, in any situation where it isn't rabidly anti social to have a single headphone in, swim will do so gladly. Music gets him through life in ways drugs never could, to be honest.

Reputation Comments on this post:

"Music gets him through life in ways drugs never could, to be honest." I loved this =)

[Junket]

Now a days, I don't have an addiction to any substance or any tangible item, but I have addictions to ways of living.

Love for me is very very addicting, when I'm with my girlfriend there is a certain feeling I get and I crave it. I can simply not get enough of her...

Learning is addicting too. When I learn about an interesting topic/activity I always indulge myself in the culture and find out as much as I can about it.. random example: snowboarding.. After my first time going I went and looked up all the tricks, checked out boards and researched future snow conditions. Crazy shit like that.

Procrastination is something I'm helplessly addicted to. I always do it and I always suffer the "withdrawals" of not doing what I should be doing when I get a bad grade in a class or some shit

The only non-way of living addiction I have is with music. If the beats aren't blastin out my speakers then we have problems

[Nature Boy]

I don't think there's such thing as an addictive personality to be honest. It's a catch-22 phrase invented by the media in order to explain why some people become addicted to drugs or what not. There may be ways of measuring certain peoples' susceptibility towards addiction with certain substances and/or certain states of mind but this would have more to do with chemical reactions rather than an actual individual's personality. Personality is molded by your surroundings and experiences for the most part. Maybe there's a genetic connection or something. Still however, I think it's a way of submitting to one's lack of self-control. Pretend you have an addictive personality that you can't do anything about and pretend you can justify over-inclination in one pursuit. Mental addiction is choice.

[Junket]

Originally Posted by Nature Boy

I don't think there's such thing as an addictive personality to be honest. It's a catch-22 phrase invented by the media in order to explain why some people become addicted to drugs or what not. There may be ways of measuring certain peoples' susceptibility towards addiction with certain substances and/or certain states of mind but this would have more to do with chemical reactions rather than an actual individual's personality. Personality is molded by your surroundings and experiences for the most part. Maybe there's a genetic connection or something. Still however, I think it's a way of submitting to one's lack of self-control. Pretend you have an addictive personality that you can't do anything about and pretend you can justify over-inclination in one pursuit. Mental addiction is choice.

Kind of a bold statement.. I'd have to disagree though man.

Some people naturally have an inclination for repeated use of substances, repeated desire for crazy sexual fetishes, etc...

Your surroundings and experiences do play a great role in it but its not just chance that if your parents are alcoholics, you have a greater risk to be one too.

To say its a way of submitting to ones lack of self-control is pretty outrageous.. a lot of people acknowledge their addictive personalities and are able to control them in a safe, healthy way. That doesn't mean they don't exist..

I agree that its sickening when somebody opts out of recovery and just gives up and says "oh it's just how I am, its my addictive personality" but to say its just media created trend? nah man, nah

[Nature Boy]

Originally Posted by Junket

To say its a way of submitting to ones lack of self-control is pretty outrageous.. a lot of people acknowledge their addictive personalities and are able to control them in a safe, healthy way. That doesn't mean they don't exist..

I agree that its sickening when somebody opts out of recovery and just gives up and says "oh it's just how I am, its my addictive personality" but to say its just media created trend? nah man, nah

Rather than saying that, wouldn't it be better to produce some evidence? I would surmise that an individual with a supposed 'addictive personality' who just so happens to have it under control doesn't actually have this addictive personality in the first place. If they have managed to control it, where did it go? If something's deeply-rooted in your personality, it won't just disappear.

Now we know there are people who over-indulge in certain things, but this ability is within everyone, just as is the ability to control one's indulgences. Labelling someone as having an addictive personality is pseudoscientific at best considering there's no data to back it up. Of course this doesn't mean that this data isn't entirely unobtainable. Bring back some brain scans with irregular censory stimulation and I might very well agree with you. The problem is that most people slap this label on themselves without thinking twice. SWIM could just as easily dub himself as having an addictive personality just as much as he could complete deny it. He's never had any problems controlling substance use but is he addicted to surfing the net, watching TV, lying in bed late and countless other things he does regularly and enjoys? Probably not. Addiction needs to be defined in physical terms i.e. an alcohol addiction complete with withdrawal symptoms and a lack of physical well-being. Behavorial addiction is merely a state of mind, a glaring big, albeit unlikely, 'if'.

Back to your point about paternal alcoholism. Yes, there are people who have alcoholic parents but without producing genetic proof, making this claim that their children are more susceptible towards becoming an alcoholic is merely just guesswork. Alcohol is an addictive substance by its very nature. Anyone has the capability to become addicted to it. Only some do less than others, and this is where free will comes into it. It isn't delved into our evolutionary make-up to instinctively wake up in the morning, empty out your wallet and pay for the nearest bottle of hard liquor. People need to stop making excuses for themselves.

[dyingtomorrow]

SWIM abused hard drugs, cigs and alcohol since he was like 9-10 years old, but never felt anything close to addiction; nor could he understand how it was possible. How could someone not have the willpower to just overcome it? They must be weak or just a worthless person.

Well, SWIM is a hardcore heroin addict now. All the men in his family have a history of drug and alcohol abuse, all except his father are dead now from it (but father has disappeared for a long time). His father loved opiates but never crossed the line into heroin. Most of SWIM's memories of him are him laying around on the couch being all fucked up on codeine. His uncle died from AIDS from sharing heroin needles, and his other uncle was also a heroin addict for a while but died mostly from alcoholism related problems. SWIM and his brother are irreversible heroin addicts, and their mother is very devastated to see the cycle that killed her brothers, made her mother into a perpetually crying depressed isolate, and drove her to divorce reemerge in her sons. It is probably almost as terrible as SWIM feels without heroin (normally that is, not including withdrawals).

To answer the question, SWIM has to say now that he would probably get addicted to anything now. Infact, he is seeking addictions to help him cope, even though he knows nothing will do it like heroin. He would get addicted to crystal meth he kinda figures, even tho he is immune to cocaine/crack addiction for some reason and is not an "upper person." Nothing compares to heroin. SWIM would never spend a dollar of his cash on anything but heroin.

[Waste]

Honestly swim didn't think so, but it turns out he actualy has quite weak willpower.
Even something as simple as GBL he finds it very hard to say no to, so much so that he can see a habbit forming after using every night for a week or 2 and has to really force himself not to take any more.

The trouble is he would have "forced himself" not to take any more 2 or 3 times before actually taking a break, and even then after a week he will be straight back on it.

Makes him very wary of trying opiates and what not

[Matt The Funk]

When SWIM first started using he would have said no way! Since all the time has passed he would change his answer to, when SWIM isn't spiraling in depression, he tends to act on impulse(as hard as any addiction to control), which makes me feel "addicted" to many things...although it's different from what he feels for opiates/opiods, cannabis(more ritualistic), and most sedatives/hypnotics.

[SusAngelo]

swim thinks she has a addictive personality.
for some years now swim has regulary used whatever swim came over to cope with her feelings.
so, swim is kind of addicted to use something that ceeps the feelings away.
swim uses medication and hash every day.

[notts.pirate]

SWIM has an addictive personality, from drugs/drink to his cars to anything he enjoys

SWIM also gets bored easily which doesnt help matters

[benzup!]

swim is too lazy to get addicted to anything. which is why smokes weed, which suits him and his mates perfectly, but thats not really an addiction, just something to do.

[PROZACphil]

Addiction, Webster defines addiction as being "2 : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal; broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful." These words mean nothing to me. Addiction is not a disease that you can catch, or something that can be inherited, it is a state of mind.

Where as over 66.33% of this forum replied to this poll as to having an addictive personality, I find myself fortunate to be part of the other 33.67% who does not carry these traits.

I find addiction to be a state of mind, for someone who's (no offence) weak, or someone who's been lead to believe that addiciton is inevitable. I grew up personally with a father who was an alchoholic for years, and than died of a cocaine overdose. I also had a mother who drank herself to sleep for many years up until recently due to her weak state of mind. I know all about addiction. I've seen how it destroy's people and family's, but it is not all of the substance's fault. Weak minded people are addicted to they're doom, so they find an equally addictive substance to drown them in they're sorrows, which results in a better feeling some how. Neutons Third Law of Motion, for every action, they're is an oppsitie and adverse reaction... Bad + Bad = Good in a weak state. And I was told by teachers and elders that I would be a similar path if I didnt watch myself. Now nine years after my fathers death, three years after my mothers ending addiction, I can safely say I've never had an addicitive moment (besides surfing and snowboarding) with a substance. I've never had that "I Need" moment.

I'm not saying that it is all your fault, and that certian substances are not addictive. Anything can be addictive, some more than others. Chocolate or Candy can be addicitive. Activites can be addicitve as well, jogging or more harmful activites such as 'binging and purging' (voluntary-vomiting) such as my ex girlfriend once had, can all be addicitive due to a weak state of mind, and possible addicitive personality.

Back on track to substances, I find every single substances can be abused in an addictive form. To me an addictive personality is someone who doesnt know better, someone who has been put down and hurt, possibly bored. I find addiction is mainly a state of mind, of weak moments that lead to weaker moments. Addiction is a state of mind in which one is not able to enjoy something in small doses.

I have smoked a whole pack of ciggaretes and never felt the need to smoke again, I've done weed, and never had a I need moment. I've never needed anything in excess. I enjoy it, I dont abuse it.

Reputation Comments on this post:

interesting viewpoint from an outsiders perspective