Millions of Americans live with a substance use disorder, and the impact of that disorder extends beyond the individual to countless families and communities. Dr. Anna Lembke, medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University, explains how a variety of risk factors, from biology to bad luck, make anyone susceptible to addiction.
Video Transcript
People can become addicted to behaviors just as they can become addicted to drugs.
More and more people are suffering from severe, life-threatening addictions to pornography, video games, social media, and the internet in general, and they report symptoms identical to those seen in drug and alcohol addictions: uncontrollable use, compulsive use, cravings, and continued use.
Even though this can result in relationship problems, physical health problems, mental health problems, work problems, and more.
So for people who are in the early stages of compulsive overdose, they may not have reached full-blown addiction yet.
One thing I often recommend is a self-intervention of four weeks abstinence.
The first 10 to 14 days will be very difficult and you will experience some degree of withdrawal symptoms, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, discomfort and cravings.
But if we can get through it for a week, three weeks, four weeks, we often feel better and, more importantly, we have a clearer understanding of the true impact that behavior has on our lives. That's what keeps us going and motivates us to want to change that behavior. This is very hard in a world that constantly encourages overconsumption, but it's very worthwhile as we try to find a middle ground between healthy adaptive use and unhealthy maladaptive use that leans towards addictive use.
