Recognize Addiction

Addiction is often not recognized by family and friends. The true cause of addiction is found in the fact that people close to the person do not wish to recognize or admit the dangers luring the person into a negative spiral. Most people know and see what is going on but deny the situation, ignore the signs, and even stimulate the addiction. We all can become addicted. But only a few develop a real addiction. How is that possible?

Transcript

How can we recognize addiction?

Addiction is often not recognized by the family and friends.

The true cause of addiction is found in the fact that people close to the person do not wish to recognize or admit the dangers luring the person into a negative spiral.

Most people know and see what is going on,

But deny the situation,

Ignore the signs and even stimulate the addiction.

We all can become addicted.

But few develop a real addiction.

How is that possible?

Addiction is a state of mind.

In general we can say that the mind goes from a so called broad vision into a canal vision.

The person who used to be so nice and open minded becomes an extremely focused and single interest person.

You see that he,

She is changing but accept the reasons given for the changes.

Often you unconsciously stimulate the development to an addiction.

I give you a sample.

Most of us go out and like to have a drink.

Some get drunk more often than others.

A few get drunk every weekend.

Many of us think that this is normal.

And at parties and birthday we buy drinks for that special person.

Slowly that person becomes dependent on the drinks as he,

She has a reputation amongst friends for its drinking behaviour.

When he,

She gets more alcohol offered in the weekend,

Some is left for during the week.

He,

She starts to drink during weekdays and after a while she will drink every day.

From just drinking every day a habit develops to drink more and even be drunk during the weekdays.

After a while the same person is so much dependent on the alcohol that living without seems not possible anymore.

A common start place is hard to mention for every addict.

But it is thought that a person becomes addicted over time.

It takes a period of time to develop from getting to know how to use,

Become a habit and then become an addict.

Every person has its first step toward an addiction by the introduction of others.

Most persons are introducted to a product,

A game,

A behaviour under certain circumstances.

Especially for a sensitive person the combination of the moment,

The environment,

The people around and the product create a click in the brain.

It is like a chain is closed at that moment.

All parts are in place and nobody is realising it at that very moment.

After the initial starting the future addict gets into an adjustment place.

During this phase new tactics are created to get the product of need without creating too much attention from others.

In other words the hiding,

Lying and cheating starts here.

Most will go to develop an alternative personality that fits with the new situation.

It is a kind of split personality which will develop more and more during the addiction.

At a certain moment the person loses control and starts to be dependent.

The habit changes into a need.

The need into a dependence and he she will be more and no longer be able to live without it.

Dependency is rather easy to trace.

Take the person away from the common daily surrounding into a complete different environment and see how the reaction is.

When he she starts to develop neurotic noises,

Moves and behaviour you can be sure that there is already a clear dependency.

Provoking more changes will lead to an aggressive response and often flight behaviour,

A return home.

When the dependency phase slowly moves into a full addiction it is harder to reach the person.

Communication is harder because the ability and wish for communication is completely different.

The addicts communication is only target direction.

The target is to fulfil the desire for that product or habit.

It is hard to near impossible to take the person out of the environment in free will.

There are only few chances that the addict realizes his or her position.

One of these moments is that they are losing contact with family and often with friends.

They become isolated and lonely.

Taking a product,

Doing a game or becoming addicted cause behavioural changes.

These changes can be recognized and are important trackers.

Next I describe a different phase as can be found in every growing addiction.

When listening to these phases keep in mind there is no sharp border between each phase.

And many are overlapping or even it is possible that they are happening at the same time.

First is a searching phase.

The addictive person is looking around to be supplied by the best product,

The best price,

Easy access,

Fast game,

Easy to reach area and so on.

This orientation of going get is important to assure continuity for the product or otherwise.

The person starts planning and rooting out the supply first at the short term and later at the long term.

Fixation phase.

When behaviour has become a habit and the supply is arranged it is time to focus on the needs.

The addict gets a tunnel vision and is only interested in getting the product.

During this period the addict starts to close the influences of the environment,

Family and friends.

Nothing else then this true supply is important and all distractions are irritating and annoying the person.

The lie and denial phase.

The obsessive behaviour must be covered according to the thoughts of the addict as they instinctively know what they are doing wrong.

It is a strange but clear effect of tunnel vision that the addict wishes to spend as much time as possible with the desired subject of addiction.

They start to create reasons,

Invent opportunities and stimulate events.

It is a phase they become real liars and cheaters.

But each thing they say they honestly believe in themselves.

It is awfully hard to distinguish truth and lie with them anymore.

Telling them what is going on not only delivers you a quarrel as they are in complete denial that something is wrong with them.

They think you are cheating them and want to take their object of desire away from them.

Some even consider you as competition or worse.

In this phase many friends are lost and some become even enemy in the mind of the addict.

The cheating and corruption phase.

The step from lying and cheating themselves is turning into a more severe phase of cheating others to get a product of desire.

In some all barriers will go away and turn into criminality,

Prostitution or worse.

Breaking and destruction phase.

After they decided to take all barriers away and entering the last stage of the addiction they start to be very destructed to oneself.

The body is no longer of use and the mind is irritating them.

The target is scoring the needed every day if possible the whole day.

The addicts become an alien to their own body and soul.

They no longer associate themselves with their body and start to consider them as tools of use and feel no responsible toward their body and mind at all anymore.

The state of mind is complete denial of being human.

If an addict comes to this stage a sudden death is near the horizon.

Now you have an impression of the state of addiction and being prepared for that possibilities to come.

Intervention is possible in all stages but often with professional help.

Let me go back to the beginning to get a deeper understanding of how addiction starts and how it develops.

When does addiction start?

Addiction starts at all ages.

Most people get it in their teens but in my work I find addicts from as young as 8 years old.

In most cases the environment dictates the level of addiction and the adaption to it.

At young age we can distinguish some typical behaviour that can lead to addiction at later stage.

Also here I ask you to keep in mind that it is possibly and likely the different elements are mixed.

So I'm going to give you some ideas of groups that we selected through the years and they are not fixed groups and they are not limited only to these groups.

There are many more and these are just to give you an idea what is going on and what are the possibilities.

The first group we call them the collectors.

Some people are very addictive collectors.

They collect cards,

Toys or any other product.

Children are focused on series and often under the influence of media such as TV.

Many commercials try to convince the children to collect certain items.

It is good to teach children the right behaviour of correct collecting series.

Collection teaches logical thinking,

Being careful,

Exchanging of products to make right series and most of all its social skills to talk and convince people.

But at the same time we should be aware that the collectors desire to complete a collection and the need to protect it.

Being a focused and heavy collector has all the contents of becoming an addictive collector.

An often ignored group are the copycats.

Copycats are persons who look at each other as their samples.

They consider the behaviour of their hero as a standard.

This happens many times with top artists in music or arts.

The information that reaches the copycats is limited.

Most are even not their friends.

The distance between both persons is often even large.

A lifestyle is built on stories,

Imaginations and gossip that they read in magazines,

Internet or in a fan club.

This form of addiction often turns into stalking.

Another form of copycat is more general.

Some people want to belong to a group.

This group has specific image and often style.

But this group will not allow the use of their image by non-members of the group.

They protect this image often by force.

The copycat needs to join the group and will do everything to become a member.

These copycats are easy toys for gangs,

For groups,

Motorbikers and often become victim to the addiction in many different forms.

A difficult to distinguish group of addicts are the genetic desire addicts.

Some people have a desire to watch something for unknown reason.

They feel attracted to it already at a young age.

It is graving without unknown background.

The first step to consider the reason for the graving is to find it in the family.

It is important to look back to the parents and even grandparents to explore the possibility of addiction during those generations.

It is not easy to control any addiction that is caused by a genetic desire.

The most important way to conquer this problem is to change the direction of the desire into a broad field of positive activities.

Often the best way is working sports with problem children and anything that occupies as much time as possible for the person.

For a person with a genetic desire it is always a problem to get and keep personal relationships for a long time.

To most people the adolescent period is the most vulnerable.

Between 11 and 18 the puberty changes the vision of a person.

The brain and body are developed under the force of hormones.

These hormones have a strong influence on behavior and mood.

Child slowly grows to become an adult.

But by doing so he,

She opens itself for many influences.

When in the wrong environment with friends who have a specific influence on their vulnerability of the growing up it is very very high.

It is important to understand the differences and the reasons why.

I will show some of the most interesting characteristics which might lead to an addictive personality.

A well-known personality is the rebellion.

Entering puberty is entering a new life.

Hormones are controlling the growing child.

Most children can cope with it and they hardly show a radical behavior.

But children with an addictive tendency show a different pattern.

When the person had developed an addiction at a young age during puberty a rebellious behavior occurs.

This behavior is shown by disobedience,

Going against the rules,

Looking for conflicts,

Lying and most negative changes.

Most of all these children try to slip away from parental control.

Without parental control the probability of the addiction is highly likely.

The leaders and the explorers.

Some persons are considered leaders.

In this case we do not intend them to be a leader in the positive sense of the word.

This kind of leaders are persons who are searching for new products,

More excitement,

Stranger events and so on.

They search for the extreme things.

Most of them demand respect by showing off what they can do.

Others just do and will lead others to follow their way.

It is considered that only a small person is considered a leader.

But those who are often become a danger to other people in case of addiction.

Some become criminal leaders.

And the largest group is the followers.

Over 90% of the people are followers.

Addiction is a copy process for these people.

On the table they drink because the leader is drinking.

They get drunk because the leader wants them to drink.

Most followers have no real reason and no real control of their own life.

They feel that they lack the courage to fight against the leaders and escape from their own conscious by following more or less to the extreme.

Often they call this loyalty to the leader but in fact it is hiding their own weakness.

Now we come to the more present time.

For the different age groups we are seeing that there is more and more addiction coming.

Especially in current situations.

Let me give you some ideas.

There are a lot of desperate and depressed people who easily can turn into addicts.

These people do have a mental problem and they search for a solution.

When the direct solution does not come in a short time they start to look for other ways.

Often they start to try chemical products such as medicines,

Alcohol or drugs.

The more depressed the more the desperate they are heavier into the product search.

These cases are hard to control and only professional solutions can cure them.

A rare group is the chemical needed addicts.

That is the smallest group.

We discovered that some people have a chemical misbalance or disbalance in their body and they are in need of a certain chemical.

So they are looking for a chemical gap.

When we started to study the group which was constantly experimenting with all kinds of drugs,

Medicines,

Herbal extracts and all other available things we discovered that they were not looking for a specific mental state of satisfaction but a feeling of peace in mind and balance in their body.

They did not use any product for a long time and they keep on changing.

This was considered a very strange behaviour as for addicts they stay usually with one product and they go there for a long time.

This group did not.

After a while we did blood and other tests and found that they had a disbalance in their blood chemical structure.

Some even did show a different body composition.

This group was searching for a product to get a long term balance and did not know that this was the reason of their behaviour.

Some of the group were willing to cooperate in the research states finding the right composition of chemicals,

Food or other things.

And after a long time of searching many of them found their balance and then they changed completely of personality.

When we enter say the 30s,

The 40s until 40 there is an important change in your life,

Your group,

Your mentally and your physically.

You start,

Everybody comes and pass that barrier and you start that change,

You start thinking,

Experiencing life in a different way.

After 30 our hormone level is changing,

The chemical composition is preparing for ageing process and many functions will slow down after this age.

Most people start gaining weight,

Losing their flexible body constructions,

Start a feeling that they changed their mood,

A discovery that it is changing perceptions towards relationships.

A lot is changing and it is not a midlife crisis,

It is just the change between 30 and 40.

Most people start to question the use of life itself.

In the beginning we consider the possessions are very important part of our life,

We try to collect goods to make life more comfortable.

At a certain moment we realise that life is not what we expect from it.

We start searching for the meaning of life.

Many people start to understand that the work they do is not the target but it is the tool for their life.

Some even understand that the efforts they put in life do not pay back.

After 30 we discover a change from physic to mental.

All these discoveries make us vulnerable for addiction of substances which are fellow things like sex,

Gambling,

Gaming and more.

Observing yourself,

Your partners and others is a good start to realise and when and where it is needed to search help,

Find help or realise that you need it.

Most experts around the world have concentrated themselves on the effort of helping the young people who are addicted.

But the world is confronted with an explosive amount of older age addicts.

One of the main problems in this group is the addiction to medicines.

Before the introduction of western medicines there was hardly anybody in the world addicted to medicines.

Maybe opium,

Morphine but that was it.

Currently we consider millions of addictive users of sleep,

Pain,

Stress medications.

The terrible thing in this case is the defencelessness of the group of elderly in the care homes who are in a very dependent position and they are forcefully addicted.

In my work I came across many difficult cases in families that suffered from the consequences of these legal but very destructive addictions.

And now we are entering an age that people get more lonely.

And this hidden group of loneliness,

Lonely,

Thingles and so on.

Loneliness is a real growing problem.

Not only for the elderly but for many people and an increasing economical oriented society like we are living in now.

While the elderly grow up in a social oriented society the younger generations are confronted with an ever increasing competitive world in which the speed and extreme gathering of possessions is a rule.

The elderly cannot cope with these chances and feel isolated,

Lonely and neglected.

If often they search each other's company but in bigger cities the society is more privatized and individualized.

The older,

Familiar places have gone and to be replaced by commercial enterprises with non-personal touch.

A city is no longer their own hometown.

Addiction becomes an open gate to this group to escape from reality.

During this podcast I show many examples of where and how addiction occurs.

As the severity of addictive elements is so large it is not possible to give a general guideline how to recover from an addiction.

The given knowledge is to recognize one before it becomes too serious to treat.

So I ask you,

Stay alert,

Keep defending our humanity and your friends and do so with dignity and sincerity.

And you will be a good person.

And that's what you want,

Right?

Reviews

Thanks, this was very interesting. It made me reflect about how deep work addiction is embodied in our our society .