The National Hi-fi Show ' 10

You can get a psychological addiction to anything, including posting on forums, it is not the point.

 

That depends how long the period is over which it's drunk. I usually don't drink more than 3 pints if I'm out with friends at the pub. More than that and I start to be come drunk, not just pleasantly relaxed. At home I'd normally just have 2, but I've been limiting myself to 1 a night for the past 2 months. Rob will probably say I drink more than that when I visit him, but it's usually over the whole evening, with a nice meal too

 

This just proves my point, because I hardly drink if I drink 1 pint of beer I would be drunk (but within the legal driving limits). All addictive drugs behave like this, you require more for the same effect as you get used to it. And that is the point, drinkers can shrug it off with "I am used to it, it just relaxes me" and get away with it because it is a legal addictive drug, where as if heroin user used the same excuse how would you react, but it is the same thing just a difference in scale and legality.

If you want to know if you are an addict just don't drink at all for a week and see how your body and mind reacts. If you have need and desire and your body feels sick or you cannot relax then you are addicted.

 

does the addiction for drink is the same as addiction to love or hi-fi?

 

well I could live for nearly a months (or was that a few weeks only?) without turning on my Hifi or having the necessity to do that.

Nice to know I'm not addicted.

Now I listen again more hours per day... even if I haven't bought anything new.
Actually it's time that the grand foo-master (definition of Chris) buys some nice stuff so I don't get boared.
Oh I forgot! I just did order something: the Elektra power supply for my Kalista (http://www.metronome-technologie.com/).

 

You can get addicted to any sort of behaviour, look at people who bite their nails, or even pick their nose. Those are called habits, so where does habit end and addiction begin. In my opinion psychological addictions are habits, you get into them! Where as substance addiction is a completely different thing, the body requires it or else it makes you feel bad.

The food and drink business world feeds off this and the likes of McDonalds are the worlds biggest drug pushers in these terms. You can get a body addiction to some fats and sugars and salt. In our biological state from our ancestors these things were so hard to find they were not a problem, but we needed them so we searched them out. We still search them out but now we can eat nothing but them, so a need becomes an addiction. The medical world is only just beginning to understand this.

 

Which is precisely what I was saying - actual physical addiction is relatively short - psychological or habitual addiction is far harder to break. Hence the ability to become addicted to cannabis etc.

philip

 

Physical and habitual addiction can both have a physiological root. Ligands that bind to cell receptors can be either a drug that you take, or a peptide released by your body when you perform a certain behaviour (sex for example). There is a rather crazy scene in the movie 'What the bleep do we know?' what shows this well.

 

Medicaly that is the point, a physical or psychology addiction can have detrimental effects on the health.