[size=+1]The people who are addicted to addiction[/size]
Food addicts who undergo gastric bypass surgery often end up hooked on something else entirely. The reason could hold important clues to the nature of all addiction
"GREG" was only 36 when the scales hit 180 kilograms. "I was an eater," he says. "I ate all day, every day because if I didn't feel full, I didn't feel right." As a result, Greg, a computer programmer, had a long list of ailments atypical of a man his age, including hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnea and back pain caused by his large belly pulling his pelvis forward, forcing him to walk with a cane. His doctor told him he might die at any moment.
So he underwent weight-loss surgery. Just a year later, he had lost half his body weight. Gone were diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and the cane. But something else had taken their place. Greg was addicted to painkillers. "It was an all day, every day obsession," he says, and just like before, "if I wasn't feeling the meds, I didn't feel right."
Greg is not the only person to have experienced such a switch after weight-loss surgery. Before her operation, "Molly" was a social drinker. Just over a year later, she now starts and ends each day with a tall glass of whiskey. "Stacy" can't stop buying scrapbooking materials. "Rose", in an otherwise happy 16-year marriage, cannot seem to stop having sex with strangers, meeting them in hotel rooms and parking lots between meetings at work. "I know this could ruin my marriage," she says, "but I can't get myself to stop. I don't know what my problem is."
It's a textbook sentence familiar to addiction counsellors all over the world: "I can't stop and I don't know why." After gastric bypass surgery, some people find themselves in the grip of addiction. Their existence lends strong support to a long-standing and controversial theory that could shake the foundations of addiction science. But it would also carry distinctly good news for a group of people who historically have been marginalised.
May 2013 will see the release of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a tool used to define, identify and diagnose psychiatric illnesses. One of the most contentious battles that has raged between its authors is over what types of addictions to include and whether they are about the substance or the behaviour.
This argument is almost as old as addiction research itself. From the field's beginnings in the early 20th century, two factions have been at war: those convinced that addiction is about an uncontrollable physiological response to a substance, a "disease" that needs to be treated under a medical model, and those who think it is simply a sign of weak moral character.
A host of experiments soon cast substance addiction into a medical light: it would have been hard to explain certain behaviours otherwise. "You see animals running across an electrified floor in order to get cocaine or you see people neglecting eating, sleeping and caring for their kids to stick a needle in their arm," says Keith Humphreys, a psychiatrist at Stanford University in California, and former senior White House drug-policy adviser. How else could you explain the neglect of one's own young in favour of a substance? "Evolutionarily, that doesn't make sense," he says. And so, most acute-addiction treatment hospitals use a disease model to treat patients.
Full article (Subscrition required): http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528810.200-the-people-who-are-addicted-to-addiction.html?
Food addicts who undergo gastric bypass surgery often end up hooked on something else entirely. The reason could hold important clues to the nature of all addiction
"GREG" was only 36 when the scales hit 180 kilograms. "I was an eater," he says. "I ate all day, every day because if I didn't feel full, I didn't feel right." As a result, Greg, a computer programmer, had a long list of ailments atypical of a man his age, including hypertension, diabetes, sleep apnea and back pain caused by his large belly pulling his pelvis forward, forcing him to walk with a cane. His doctor told him he might die at any moment.
So he underwent weight-loss surgery. Just a year later, he had lost half his body weight. Gone were diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea and the cane. But something else had taken their place. Greg was addicted to painkillers. "It was an all day, every day obsession," he says, and just like before, "if I wasn't feeling the meds, I didn't feel right."
Greg is not the only person to have experienced such a switch after weight-loss surgery. Before her operation, "Molly" was a social drinker. Just over a year later, she now starts and ends each day with a tall glass of whiskey. "Stacy" can't stop buying scrapbooking materials. "Rose", in an otherwise happy 16-year marriage, cannot seem to stop having sex with strangers, meeting them in hotel rooms and parking lots between meetings at work. "I know this could ruin my marriage," she says, "but I can't get myself to stop. I don't know what my problem is."
It's a textbook sentence familiar to addiction counsellors all over the world: "I can't stop and I don't know why." After gastric bypass surgery, some people find themselves in the grip of addiction. Their existence lends strong support to a long-standing and controversial theory that could shake the foundations of addiction science. But it would also carry distinctly good news for a group of people who historically have been marginalised.
May 2013 will see the release of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a tool used to define, identify and diagnose psychiatric illnesses. One of the most contentious battles that has raged between its authors is over what types of addictions to include and whether they are about the substance or the behaviour.
This argument is almost as old as addiction research itself. From the field's beginnings in the early 20th century, two factions have been at war: those convinced that addiction is about an uncontrollable physiological response to a substance, a "disease" that needs to be treated under a medical model, and those who think it is simply a sign of weak moral character.
A host of experiments soon cast substance addiction into a medical light: it would have been hard to explain certain behaviours otherwise. "You see animals running across an electrified floor in order to get cocaine or you see people neglecting eating, sleeping and caring for their kids to stick a needle in their arm," says Keith Humphreys, a psychiatrist at Stanford University in California, and former senior White House drug-policy adviser. How else could you explain the neglect of one's own young in favour of a substance? "Evolutionarily, that doesn't make sense," he says. And so, most acute-addiction treatment hospitals use a disease model to treat patients.
Full article (Subscrition required): http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528810.200-the-people-who-are-addicted-to-addiction.html?
