What are the differences between needs and addictions?


jts

Recommended Posts

Question. What are the differences between a need and an addiction? For example a need for water and an addiction to alcohol?

Here are a few ideas or theories, maybe to get a discussion going.

1. Indulging a need decreases the need. Indulging an addiction increases the addiction.

For example you need water, you are thirsty. So you drink water and you are no longer thirsty.

But if you crave whiskey and drink whiskey, well there is a saying, one drink is too many and a thousand are not enough.

2. Abstaining from a need increases the need. Abstaining from an addiction decreases the addiction.

If you need water and you abstain from drinking water, the thirst increases. If you abstain from alcohol (or whatever), eventually the addiction weakens. ('eventually' might be a long time.)

3. Things are addicting to the degree that they are harmful.

Nobody gets addicted to pure water. Salt water or any kind of impure water might be different. Nobody gets addicted to lettuce or tomatoes or cucumbers. When people get addicted, it is usually to some kind of poison. And the worse the poison, the easier it is to get addicted to it.

You might argue about whether food can be addicting, but when people compulsively over-eat (as some people do), it is usually the wrong kind of food, often with bad stuff added to it. Look at what (not to be confused with how much) fat people eat vs what thin people eat.

4. The degree of addiction is proportional to the harm already done by the thing one is addicted to.

If you do it (smoking or alcohol or whatever) moderately enough and give yourself enough time before you do it the next time that you completely recover, you don't get addicted. Perhaps the degree of addiction can be taken as a measure of the degree of harm done.

Breaking the addiction might involve reversing the harm done.

The reason why one gets addicted (according to my crackpot theory) is the body adapts to it rather than spending energy and nutrition resources to fight it continuously, which would be exhausting. An addicted body is an exhausted body, it has given up fighting the poison because it is too exhausted and instead tries to live with the poison. The exhaustion seems to somehow create an illusion of need for the thing that caused the exhaustion.

5. Needs have a natural stop. Addictions don't have a natural stop, except maybe sickness.

Observe a dog vigorously lapping up water. Suddenly he stops. He had enough. With needs, there is such a thing as enough. With addictions, probably not, unless the indulgence is to the point of sickness. Then your body puts a stop on it to protect itself. This is maybe a repeat of point 1.

6. (This is just a theory, like all these points.) Indulging a need is associated with enjoyment. Indulging an addiction is associated with absence of suffering.

You can enjoy good food, especially when you have a good sense of taste. But do people really enjoy smoking? Or are they escaping from the suffering caused by not smoking?

Neuroadaptation.

There is a thing that Dr. Alan Goldhamer calls 'neuroadaptation'. I don't understand this very well.

At TrueNorth they put this man on a pre-fast diet which included salads. He had a hard time eating it, saying it didn't taste right. After the fast, coming off the fast, they gave him the same salad. This time he said the chef finally got the hang of it and it's not bad. The salad did not change; his sense of taste changed.

Smokers who fast sometimes find that after the fast they don't like tobacco.

It seems that fasting sometimes modifies the sense of taste so it is more sensitive to things, both good and bad. Good things taste better, bad things taste worse.

-- jts

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now