Addiction Flashcards
What is addiction
A mental health problem were people feel like they need to do something regularly in order to avoid negative feelings
What is withdrawal
A set of unpleasant physical or psychological symptoms someone gets when they are trying to quit
Symptoms of dependence addiction (Addiction to a substance)
- A feeling that the person needs to take the substance.
- Ignoring evidence that the substance is bad for you.
- Stopping or reducing the substance is very difficult.
- Physical withdrawal symptoms such as shaking, sweating or vomiting.
- Replacing normal, fun activities with time spent using the substance.
Symptoms of behavioural addiction
- Need to do the activity regularly
- Ignore arguments that the activity is unhealthy
- Reducing the activity is very difficult
- Spending more time doing the activity than things they used to enjoy
- They feel like they need to do the activity more often or something more risky
How does addiction affect individuals and societies
Individuals
- A person with an addiction will ignore their family and things they regularly did, such as going out for work and school
- They may spend more money on their addiction than things they would have normally used for food and accommodation
- This means their quality have life and their health have worsened because they are not able to invest in looking after themselves
Society: (Impacts on the workplace)
People with addiction may develop health problems due to lack of self care and substance misuse which means they need time away from work , which will result in costs for the company in covering the workload for the individual
(Healthcare services)
Due to increasing number of substance misuse since substances like alcohol, heroin and cigarettes became cheaper and easier to access, which will result in increasing healthcare costs such as treatments for lung damage from smoking
What are some studies that prove the genetic and environmental explanation of addiction
Dorit carmelli et al. (1992) - Twin study: Identical (Monozygotic) If one of the twins was a smoker there would be a higher chance of the other one smoking than if the twins were not identical (Dizygotic). Since the identical shared more genes than the non identical twins. This suggests that addiction to smoking could be genetics
Donald Goodwin et al. (1973) - Adoption: Adopted children who had at least one biological parent with alcohol addiction were highly likely to show signs of an alcohol addiction. This would suggest that may have inherited a gene from their biological parent which makes them an addict.
Remi Cadoret al. (1987) - Adoption study. Biological and adoptive family : Adopted children who shared a biological link with someone with alcohol problems were more likely to have an alcohol problem themselves. They also found out that if there was an alcohol misuse in an adoptive family then the adoptive child had a greater risk of developing an addiction to alcohol. So while there is a strong relationship between genes and alcoholism, there also appears to be an environmental influence.
Diana Martinez et al. (2004) - Cocaine addicts had fewer D2 Receptors: Heavy users of cocaine were more likely to have a particular version of the dopamine receptor gene. This means there were a fewer receptors (D2 receptors are receptors for dopamine) This suggests that some people are prone to developing cocaine addiction.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the genetic explanation
Strengths:
- Lots of scientific studies that support the genetic explanation for addiction such as the twin studies and adoption studies
- It explains why some people are more prone to becoming addicts than others
Weaknesses:
- It fails to take social factors making it reductionist. For example, many of the the identical twins in the Dorit carmelli et al (1992) The twins would have shared the same home environment, which might have been an environmental factor in their smoking addiction
- Researchers have not been able to find a single gene that explains where being addiction comes from. This makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s causing addiction
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