It's disconnection, not drugs that leads to addiction...

[kalibex]

...according to writer Johann Hari in this short but cogent Huffington Post article...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

...which in my opinion dovetails nicely with Gabor Mate's writings about addiction.

 

[Sinapi]

Thanks for sharing! It's a great article, aside from the usual anti-smoking propaganda. I've had fleeting thoughts about how any addiction could be the result of emotional detachment, but this piece makes a great argument for that idea. I think this is the first time I've realized that I've been engaging in doublethink: I knew that morphine is a common painkiller, but it never occurred to me that most hospital patients don't turn to street drugs after finishing their treatment. I've never been addicted to hard drugs, but the idea helps explain an underlying cause of other addictions in my life, prior and present. For example, I used to play video games for hours every day when I was growing up. My immediate family was (and still is, to an extent) emotionally disconnected, and my social anxiety kept me from making friends, so I preferred make imaginary connections through fantasy. Though I rarely play them anymore, I still daydream a lot to make up for my lack of socializing. But the more I daydream, the less I want to talk to others in person, or be productive in general. Perhaps if I made more of an effort to connect with people, it'd help with preventing daydreaming and other poor habits in my life.

 

[A Jay]

Thanks for sharing! It's a great article, aside from the usual anti-smoking propaganda. I've had fleeting thoughts about how any addiction could be the result of emotional detachment, but this piece makes a great argument for that idea. I think this is the first time I've realized that I've been engaging in doublethink: I knew that morphine is a common painkiller, but it never occurred to me that most hospital patients don't turn to street drugs after finishing their treatment. I've never been addicted to hard drugs, but the idea helps explain an underlying cause of other addictions in my life, prior and present. For example, I used to play video games for hours every day when I was growing up. My immediate family was (and still is, to an extent) emotionally disconnected, and my social anxiety kept me from making friends, so I preferred make imaginary connections through fantasy. Though I rarely play them anymore, I still daydream a lot to make up for my lack of socializing. But the more I daydream, the less I want to talk to others in person, or be productive in general. Perhaps if I made more of an effort to connect with people, it'd help with preventing daydreaming and other poor habits in my life.

That's what you're doing by posting on the forum! It's a way to connect with others and yourself that can lead to very positive and sometimes unexpected changes in your life. :)

Great article, Kalibex!

 

[Sinapi]

That's what you're doing by posting on the forum! It's a way to connect with others and yourself that can lead to very positive and sometimes unexpected changes in your life. :)

Great article, Kalibex!

Very true. :) It's hard when the Predator's Mind discourages me ("Nobody cares," "You have nothing worth saying," etc.), but that only starts going away after not doing what It wants. I guess that's all part of rewiring the brain to be more social.

 

[unkl brws]

Johann Hari has a new book coming out in January, 2022, titled "STOLEN FOCUS: Why You Can’t Pay Attention."

This is from his "Chasing the Scream" FB page -

I have just spent three years deeply researching 2 questions: why are so many of us struggling to focus and pay attention, and how do we get it back?
I am haunted by what a lot of the experts I interviewed showed me. “There’s no way we can have a normal brain today,” Professor Barbara Demeneix said. Professor Joel Nigg said we may be developing an “attentional pathogenic culture” - one that systematically undermines focus.
I learned that this struggle to focus isn’t an individual flaw in you or your kid. It is a structural crisis with big causes - in the design of our tech, & far beyond it. There are real solutions. But to get to them, we need to go beyond simplistic debates about breaking up with phones and grasp these real causes.
The journey to understand what is really happening to us took me all over the world, from a favela in Rio where attention had gone haywire, to an office in New Zealand that found a striking way to restore attention. I learned there are 12 larger forces currently corroding our attention - a big one is in our tech, but that’s only one. We need to deal with all of them.
The book I have written about this is called ‘STOLEN FOCUS: Why You Can’t Pay Attention.’ You can find out what Stephen Fry, Naomi Klein, Hillary Clinton, Rutger Bregman, Gabor Mate and many leading doctors have said about the book at www.stolenfocusbook.com
It’s out Jan 6th in UK & Jan 25th in the US.