How much focus are we allowed to utilize towards the object of our desires?
Arguably we are all inherently hedonists that are seeking out what we find pleasurable and shielding ourselves from what is painful, but there is a rule of moderation out there which complains about focusing too much interests too long on specific items.
I think it is interesting to note the morality attached to addiction. The worse something is thought of through social morals, the less time you have to do it for it to be considered an addiction. And on the opposite end, the better something is considered socially moral, you have to do it quite a bit more extensively before it is considered problematic.
Now I understand there is typically a point in which the addiction or the dedication towards a certain entity has a detrimental affect on you or your loved ones, but what role does morality play in addiction?
And not only that, but is addiction more of an individual philosophical problem than a medical one?
I think that addiction can make you lose your morality, the stronger the addiction the more loss there will be. However, I feel that no matter what loss there is, essentially you are still the person you were before the addiction because it’s your addiction that makes you behave in a certain manner because of your predicament. The solution I believe is not trying to overcome your addiction completely but only to bring it down gradually to the point where you can live with it in a healthy manner. Addictions are not bad, only their extremes are. Also, addictions are there for a reason which is satisfaction - to make us feel satisfied and happy. It’s possible there is something lacking in our life and that’s why the addiction is there in the first place to substitute for the lack of satisfaction in our life. Now with hard drugs, I’ve heard that you can become addicted the second time you take them. If that is true then I’m not sure how that works. But for ANY addiction I’d say the premise is the same, it’s the mind that is addicted. It’s not a “philosophical” or a “medical” problem but a mental one. And since every addiction longs for satisfaction or happiness, I’d say that you can definately find a way to satisfy yourself in other ways and find happiness and lose your strength of addiction. The reason I believe it to be so is because the addiction (other than drugs) is there mainly because you are unhappy in life about something. That’s what I believe but I may be wrong, I don’t know.
I am not sure I follow you here, and it would help if you could provide some examples.
Stanton Peele, Herbert Fingarette, Jack Trimpey, are just a few who have written about the contemporary mythology of labelling addictions and behaviors as diseases. Stanton Peele gives a pretty competent historical overview in his book Diseasing of America on how America has come to assign moral values and religious meaning to peoples’ bad habits.
Obviously, depending on the severity of the problem, it can be a medical one for the immediate sufferer. However, for the solution I’ll defer to BeenaJain:
Probably without knowing it, BJ is pointing out here that at its core, the solution to any bad habit –whether it be a behavior like sex “addiction” or gambling, or a physical addiction to heroin– lay in personal responsibility: At some point (i.e., allowing for whatever detox period may be appropriate), the addict must consciously choose to abstain. Dyer once said Choice is the ultimate freedom, and the power to choose is a psychological, or mental, faculty which we all have.
Well it is the power to choose that brings us to the addiction in the first place, right?
Looking at “addiction” philosophically I think it is interesting to note Freud’s pleasure principle confrontation with the reality principle.
I appreciate this perspective as opposed to some overgeneralized disease model in which “addiction” is an uncurable and hopeless genetic malady.
Through Freud, we can see that addiction stems from favoring our hedonistic desire over depriving ourself of such pleasure to accomodate external social demands.
Isn’t addiction really nothing more than a stigmatized label to distract someone from themself in favor of society? Because behaviors cannot really be considered addictive unless they infringe upon social morality to some extent.
If we took away the social demand could anything be an addiction?
I think it can be both. If we say that a brain which ceases to produce its own dopamine because of heavy drug use, which, in turn, has a negative and depressive effect on other aspects of the body and behavior, then yes. The body would then require those drugs to function at the level it once could without the drugs and before it ceased to produce its own neurotransmitters.
As for the philosophical problem, there is no such thing as ‘psychological’ addiction. There can be ‘habit,’ but habits are not necessary to merely function. Psychological addiction is usually confused with weak will power. Note how many drug users might say “I need it to feel happy,” etc., etc.
I think something can really only be called an adiction when you lack the second order desire.
That is if you want crack, but you don’t want to want crack.
I suppose its also possible that you want crack, want to want crack, but don’t want to want to want crack- that could count to.
My point is to be addicticed you have to be at odds with yourself, and its beyond just being abivanlent- its if you honestly and assureadly don’t aprove of your own behavior.
So, as long as your sure on all levels you want something, you can devote all the enegy you want without being addicted. The only one who can ever know if your truly addicted is you.
Not really sure where we’re going with this. I think if you’d placed this discussion in the Philosophy forum proper I could better understand what it is you’re after, Enigma.
But no, addiction is real enough. Depending on the substance it can be a life-threatening matter. It’s not a sociological invention or concocted label.
If a behavior or substance indulgence is self-destructive, then you have a problem. Plain and simple. There is little use in dragging the subject of addiction into a light of morality or philosophy when the sufferer is dying of it; i.e., inhaling paint-thinner (huffing) or severe alcoholism.
Addictions to substances are real. They are not moral or sociologic inventions.
Disagree with that, De. Pot shows no physiological dependence but it is just as surely addicting for some people as any other substance.
Addiction to substance are real, but there are all kinds of social and moral interventions used to counter them. In my opinion, it is the social and moral implications that create “addiction” in the first place.
Here is a hypothetical situtation to put this in perspective:
Say you are alone on a remote island. Is it possible for you to be “addicted” to anything if you are the only one there? It takes an outside perspective for addiction to become an issue. If you are consumed in establishing your hedonistic desire, who is to limit it for you other than yourself? And without any external social influence to place demand of temperance upon you, then I feel it would be impossible for addiction to be an issue.
Addiction, at least in my opinion, is based upon social demands of moderation. Without the social demands, then addiction would never be a problem because you are consumed in your hedonistic desire. And this consumation becomes a “problem” only through external influence. If it was solely an internal problem then you wouldn’t repeat the behavior. And if you did refuse to repeat it, then it isn’t an addiction. People repeat the behavior dispite external demands to cease. This is where addiction derives from. Not from the self, but external of the self.
Let’s take that hypothetical situation a bit farther. For the first few months, you are able to satisfy your hedonistic desire. Let’s say you discover on that island a plant that gives you a feeling you have never had before, and you desire greatly. So, you start using this plant on a regular basis. Eventually, however that plant will stop giving you mental satisfaction. That is simply the way of human nature. Use of anything to the excess may provide extreme pleasure in the beginning, but eventually it will no longer be able to fulfill your needs mentally. If that is your only source of stimulation, you will lose your phychological desire for that substance. You will desire to seek something beyond what you are doing. Hell, you’re on a deserted island. One would think that it would be enjoyable to explore the expanse of the island. Perhaps you are interested in figuring out a way to improve whatever shelter you are using. Or maybe observation of how the insects react to certain plants to possibly protect yourself from insect bites.
There are two solutions. Stop using it daily and start doing other things, or continue using it and hate yourself for it. If you make the choice to tone down your usage, and are able to do so, you are not addicted. If you continue using regardless, you are psychologically addicted. Regardless of whether or not a person considers a psychological addiction weak minded, the addication itself remains, because you are unable to stop yourself from using it, even if your concious mind desires you to. And that addiction will cause self hate, spiraling down into depression.
This, to me, is not a disease. I would consider it weak minded personally, but just because I consider it weak minded, does not mean that it does not exist for some people.
Now, if you conciously make the desicion to only use it once a week, but when you skip your first dose, you experience severe physical reactions, you are now physically addicted to the substance. When I say severe, I am speaking of seizures, and other major physical trauma associated with a physical addiction. This is still not a disease to my way of thinking. It may be less weak minded in my opinion to continue using it after physical truama occurs, but that still does not make it a disease.
And in both of these situations, the addiction happens without outside influence of society and morality.
I beg to differ. If you lose the psychological desire for a substance, then you will not continue to do it. There is no desire to.
Tolerance levels increase for drugs with usage, but the moment there is no reward for such usage then the usage will stop. There is no motive for continuing if there is no benefit. The behavior will cease.
What exactly do you base that statement on? Intellectually one can very easily recoginize that a pattern of behavior is counter productive, but changing the behavior pattern is a different matter entirely. The situation in question revolves around a single individual away from the constraints of society, but I fail to see how society impacts a person’s decision that a pattern of behaviour is self destructive.
Someone who is addicted to smoking may recognize the fact that the addiction is looked down upon in society. That person could function perfectly well with no problems smoking, and will consider his smoking an addiction only because society views it as such.
That same person when confronted with coughing up blood every morning will intellectually understand that the coughing is a direct result of his smoking, but psychologically will be unable to stop. While this isn’t the case with every smoker, it’s the case with quite a few of them.
In my post above I made a mistake. I realize I’m wrong when I say that it’s the mind that is addicted. I thought about it and my mind would not accept it even though all professionals agree that it is the mind that is addicted. No! You see the mind is pure, it cannot be addicted. On top of that, the mind is a very rational thing, it would rationalize that addiction was not a good thing and so would think itself out of the addiction problem, but it can’t. This is why it can’t -
It’s because it’s the heart that is addicted. Remember? “The heart has reasons, that reason does not understand.” So, the mind is helpless in front of the heart. Which obviously means that the heart is bigger, and in matters of the heart, the mind is just a pawn or puny. Therefore, no matter what, it is very difficult to get rid of an addiction. If it was the mind’s domain, the mind would think itself out of it but it can’t because the heart can be irrational.
Using terms like “weak-minded” is to fall back on the old fallacy of willpower as the key to conquering addictions. “If only he had more willpower he wouldn’t drink so much,” et cetera.
LOL, no. No, you don’t need to throw a fit or be at death’s door to be physically dependent on/addicted to something.
You are absolutely correct, Kissa-pooh. Without getting mired by labels and semantics in the great disease debate, for the most part you and I are in agreement on what constitutes an addiction. It ain’t society. In fact, defining addiction by imposing sociological criteria is to confuse two separate fields altogether: The biology of personal health and sociology. The former is fundamentally medical; the latter, practically political!
Here, Enigma is denying (or simply unaware of) the existence of addiction. Desire in itself has very little to do, for example, with an addiction in which physical dependency is present. The user comes to need and crave the substance in order to function.
Again, he seems to be spacing the medical definition of addiction itself. He seems blithely unaware of withdrawal sydromes, etc.
By the way, Kissa and anyone else who’s ever been vexed by the popular trend of calling addictions “diseases,” I’ll do a nice blowout feature on this subject in my glossy new, empty forum just 'soon as i… can get away from ILP. Better yet - it’d be GREAT if somebody could beat me to it. Put up a new topic - you’re more than welcome to.
Without getting mired by labels and semantics in the great disease debate, for the most part you and I are in agreement on what constitutes an addiction. It ain’t society. In fact, defining addiction by imposing sociological criteria is to confuse two separate fields altogether: The biology of personal health and sociology. The former is fundamentally medical; the latter, practically political! 