Placing MI aside, what’s the cause of an obsession? Is it a survival mechanism from primitive man? There seems to be a path from obsessions that leads to full-blown addictions. Can an addiction exist without the introductory obsession?
An obsession is a fixed way of thinking while an addiction is a fixed way of acting.
yea, you can have addiction without obsession. Obsession is based on survival instincts. As you said fixed way. It is thinking and behavior though. Our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. That greatly depended upon thinking and behavior.
Alcohol, smoking, drugs. Teens and kids start the path without obsessing over anything. Entertainment is the starter for that. You could have an obsessive personality that could make you more susceptible to such addictions. Obsessed tend to be more about how a thing is done, addicts as above, do not care about how they just want their juice.
I still contend that obsessive thought patterns remain the prerequisite to addictions. Alcohol, smoking, drugs, or any addiction based behavior begins with unrelenting focused thought patterns I call obsessions. To alleviate the intensity of the obsession, actions or better yet, distractions are readily accepted. Initially the addictive behaviors act as a refuge from the obsessive thoughts until new obsessive thoughts are tied to the physical addiction. Once the sought out refuge becomes a home of sorts, both thoughts and actions work in unison to the bitter end damning the individual.
Addiction to a psychoactive drug is always the result of seeking alleviation for deep pain. Often, the result is only a matter of what drugs one chose to obsess on. But the obsession is only obsession over health.
Drugs break down reality and force the user to reconstruct it. If taken in the middle of deep crises, the reconstruction can go so deep that many fail and become zombies. Some drugs make it harder, like heroin or meth. They seem to be the ones that most comprehensively attack pain.
The fact that the solution to pain is something that can only be compared to travelling between dimensions is something a clinical, cold outlook may overlook.
The studies where the brain decides before we consciously do, doesn’t take into account, in terms of free will, that we encode those responses of our own volition into our autonomic responses
Obsessive thoughts lead to negative emotions which must be physically enacted into an addiction to alleviate the intensity of the negative emotions tied to those ever-pressing thoughts. Habitual as in poorly inspired actions that grow to be automatic or habitual as in positively inspired actions that grow to be automatic?
Aah not true, obsessive thoughts do not always lead to negative. There are obsessions that are very positive and needed. Parents/grandparents, educators(not teachers), true civil servants.
Obsessiveness is on a spectrum so not all obsessive thoughts will result in the scenario you describe
It is possible to have obsessive thoughts that do not have to be physically enacted into an addiction
There are people from the time they were kids that knew the service they wanted to be in and worked towards that branch of civil service. Firemen, police, EMT, teacher, military, doctor. I would include lawyers and politicians but, welll while as kids they generally truly want to help society by the time they reach their goal power corrupts the good intentions of the child.