Are we hooked on addiction the word addiction

Are
we hooked on addiction?

Неужели
мы
подвержены наркомании?

The
word addict for most people conjures up images of drug users or
alcoholics. But today there is a new breed of addicts.

Неужели
мы подвержены
наркомании?

Слово
«наркоман» для большинства людей
вызывает в воображении образы наркоманов
или алкоголиков. Но сегодня существует
новое поколение наркоманов.

Dr
Mark Collins is the head of the addictions unit at the Priory, an
expensive clinic in Roehampton.

«Over
the last 18 months we have noticed a big rise in the number of
behavioural addictions, so called to distinguish them from substance
dependencies, he says.

Д-р
Марк Коллинз является главой группы
зависимостей в монастырь, дорогая
клиника в Ройхемптоне.

«В
течение последних 18 месяцев мы заметили
большой рост числа поведенческих
зависимостей,
так называемые отличные от вещественных
зависимостей, говорит он.

People
are looking down on smokers, alcoholics and cocaine addicts, but then
go and spend five hours in an internet chatroom,» says Collins.
Behavioural addictions include compulsive attachment to plastic
surgery, the internet, mobile phones and even sunbeds.

Люди
смотрят на курильщиков, алкоголиков и
кокаиновой зависимости, но затем пойти
и потратить пять часов в Интернете чат,»
сказал Коллинз. Поведенческих зависимостей
включают навязчивую привязанность к
пластической хирургии, Интернет,
мобильные телефоны и даже солярий.

It
seems that in
our fast-paced pressurized modern lives, we are increasingly turning
to comfort behaviour,
activities
which temporarily make us feel happier, less stressed and lonely. And
experts warn that these are the very things that can lead us into
dependency, no matter how harmless they may seem at first. And while
behavioural addictions may sound less serious than being hooked on
drink or drugs, according to experts, their potential for wrecking
lives may actually be quite similar. They can lead to obsession, debt
and the breakdown of relationships. 

Похоже,
что в нашем стремительно меняющемся
современной жизни под давлением, мы все
чаще обращаются к комфорту поведение,
деятельность которых временно заставляют
нас чувствовать себя счастливее, меньше
подвержены стрессу и одиноко. И эксперты
предупреждают, что это именно те вещи,
которые не могут привести нас в
зависимость, как бы ни безвредны, они
могут показаться на первый взгляд. И в
то время поведенческих зависимостей
может показаться менее серьезным, чем
время подсел на напиток или наркотиков,
по мнению экспертов, их потенциал для
вредительстве жизни может фактически
быть очень похожи. Они могут привести
к одержимости, задолженности и к разрыву
отношений.

Internet
addiction

Caroline
Harrison 37, a full time mother of three, admits to compulsively
using the internet. «I was surfing to discover something about
my youngest child’s
skin problem when I found this amazing parenting website with lively
message boards, she says. Soon I found I couldn’t go a day without
logging on. I started spending all evening chatting to my new online
friends instead of spending time with my husband. It never crossed my
mind that it could be addictive. But now I feel edgy and tense if I
can’t access my computer. It‘s
as if I can‘t
help myself. The people there seem more real and supportive than my
own family and friends. I often feel depressed and lonely in real
life because my husband works long hours, so being on the site makes
me feel good. Well,
temporarily
good.

Интернет-зависимость

Кэролайн
Харрисон 37, полный рабочий день мать
троих детей, признается, что навязчиво,
используя Интернет. «Я был серфинг
открыть для себя что-то о моем младшего
ребенка? Ы проблемы кожи, когда я нашел
этот удивительный сайт воспитания с
живой досках объявлений, говорит она.
Вскоре я обнаружил, что не может пойти
день без входа в систему. Я начал проводить
весь вечер чате с моими новыми друзьями
в Интернете вместо того, чтобы проводить
время с моим мужем. он никогда не приходила
мне в голову, что это может вызвать
привыкание. Но теперь я чувствую резкий
и напряженной, если я не могу войти в
свой компьютер. это как если бы я не могу
с собой поделать. люди там кажется более
реальным и поддержку, чем мой собственный
семьей и друзьями. Я часто чувствуют
себя подавленными и одинокими в реальной
жизни, потому что мой муж много работает,
поэтому, чтобы быть на месте заставляет
меня чувствовать себя хорошо. Ну,
временно хорошо.

Tanning
obsession.

Even
more worrying for parents is the behaviour of 14-year-old Tracey
Barlow, who is now seeking treatment for an addiction to tanning.

The
teenager has been visiting tanning parlours three times a week, and
at one stage was having treatments five days a week. Her
skin is already prematurely aged, and she has been warned that she
risks developing skin cancer but, despite being warned of the risks,
she says she feels overwhelmingly anxious if she perceives her tan
fading. ‘It’s like an illness with her ‘ says her despairing mother ‘
she hates being pale’.

Одержимость
загаром.

Еще
более тревожным для родителей является
поведение 14-летней Трейси Барлоу, который
в настоящее время, обращающихся за
медицинской пристрастием к загара.

Подросток
посещает салоны солярия три раза в
неделю, и на одном этапе имел лечения
пять дней в неделю. Ее кожа уже досрочно
в возрасте, и она был предупрежден, что
она рискует заболеть раком кожи, но,
несмотря на то, предупредил о рисках,
она говорит, что чувствует себя в
подавляющем большинстве хотелось, если
она воспринимает ее загар замирание.
«Это как болезнь с ней ‘говорит, что
ее отчаяние матери она ненавидит
бледный’.

Shopaholic.

For
26-year-old sales manager Emily Lane, it was her love of shopping
that got dangerously out of hand. Her compulsive spending on designer
clothes , shoes and handbags has left her with 30,000 pounds worth of
debt and destroyed her relationship with her boyfriend James. She
admits that many of the items she bought remained unused, but that
she found it impossible to stop spending.
Coming
home with armfuls of bags gave me an enormous rush, and I needed to
keep buying more clothes, shoes and accessories to keep getting it. I
would shop in my lunch hour, after work, and at the weekends, but I
couldn‘t
see that I had a problem — until James split up with me over it.

Шопоголик.

Для
26-летний менеджер по продажам Эмили
Лейн, это была ее любовь к магазинам,
которые получили опасно из-под контроля.
Ее расходы навязчивый на дизайнерской
одежды, обуви и сумок оставил ее с 30000
фунтов стерлингов долга и уничтожили
ее отношения со своим бойфрендом
Джеймсом. Она признает, что многие из
пунктов она купила остались
неиспользованными, но ей было невозможно
остановить расходов. Придя домой с
охапками мешки дал мне огромный прилив,
и я должен был продолжать покупать
больше одежды, обуви и аксессуаров
продолжать получать его. Я бы магазин
в моем обеденного перерыва, после работы,
и в выходные дни, но я не мог видеть, что
у меня была проблема — пока Джеймс не
распалась со мной над ним.

Dr
Robert Lefever, director of the Promis Recovery Centre, who himself
has overcome addictions to gambling, spending and work, explains,
‘Deep down, sufferers are usually depressed. In that state, you can
become hooked on anything that changes the way you feel and even if
you try to stop the behaviour, you will find it extremely hard, at
least without becoming bad tempered or anxious’.

Д-р
Роберт LeFever,
директор Promis
Центр восстановления, который сам
преодолел наркотическую зависимость
от азартных игр, расходов и работы,
поясняет: «В глубине души, страдающие,
как правило, в депрессии. В этом состоянии,
вы можете стать подсел на все, что
меняется, что вы чувствуете, и даже если
вы пытаетесь остановить поведение, вы
найдете его очень трудно, по крайней
мере, не становясь плохой характер или
тревоги.

Dr
Lefever believes that compulsive behaviour often manifests in
clusters. There is, for example, the Eating Disorders cluster, which
also includes shopping and spending, work, cosmetic surgery and
exercise, the Hedonistic cluster includes alcohol, drugs, caffeine,
sex, and gambling, while the Relationship cluster, which includes
compulsive helping of others and addiction to love and being in love.
‘If you are addicted to one thing in the cluster, you are at risk
of becoming addicted to others
‘,
he says.

Доктор
LeFever
считает, что навязчивый поведение часто
проявляется в кластерах. Существует,
например, расстройств пищевого поведения
кластер, который также включает в себя
магазины и расходы, работа, пластической
хирургии и упражнения, гедонистического
кластер включает в себя алкоголь,
наркотики, кофеин, секс и азартные игры,
в то время как Отношения кластер, который
включает в себя навязчивый порцию другие
и пристрастие к любви и влюбленности.
‘Если вы пристрастились к одному в
кластере, вы подвержены риску стать
зависимым от других », говорит он.

Whatever
your age, Lefever believes that, if you have a serious compulsive
problem that is interfering with your life, then the most effective
treatment is a stay in a clinic or therapy with a psychologist who
understands addiction.
Addiction
is treatable, he says. And I see this every day in myself and in
other people.

Независимо
от вашего возраста, LeFever
считает, что, если у вас есть серьезные
навязчивый проблему, которая мешает
вашей жизни то наиболее эффективным
методом лечения является пребывание в
клинике или терапии с психологом, который
понимает зависимость.

Наркомания
поддается лечению, говорит он. И я каждый
день вижу это в себе и в других людях.

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ARE WE HOOKED ON ADDICTIONS

To conjure up: to make a picture or idea appear in someone’s mind.

Breed: INFORMAL a type of person.  A particular type of animal or plant.

A big rise IN

So-called: used to show that you think a word that is used to describe someone or something is not suitable or not correct.

To look down on: to think that someone is less important than you.

Attachments: a feeling of love or strong connection to someone or something.

Sunbed: a bed-like frame containing a device for producing light, which you lie on in order to make the skin go darker.

Fast-paced: including a lot of different things happening quickly.  

To pressurize: to strongly persuade someone to do something they do not want to do:

Increasingly: more and more.

To turn to: to start to do or use something bad, especially because you are unhappy.

To lead sby INTO sthg

Harmless: not able or not likely to cause harm.

To be hooked ON: unable to stop taking a drug.        enjoying something so much that you are unable to stop having, watching, doing, etc. it.

To wreck:    to destroy or badly damage something. To spoil sthg completely.

Breakdown: a failure to work or be successful.

Lively: having or showing a lot of energy and enthusiasm, or showing interesting and exciting thought.

To log on / in: to connect a computer to a computer system by typing your name, so that you can start working.

To cross one’s mind: If something crosses your mind, you think of it.

Edgy: nervous or anxious.

Tan: the dark colour of your skin when you have spent time in the sun.  

Parlour: a shop which provides a stated type of personal service or sells a stated product:

stage: a part of an activity or a period of development.

To risk + -ing.

To warn sby OF sthg: to make someone aware of a possible danger or problem, especially one in the future.

Overwhelming: difficult to fight against. Very great or very large.

To fade: to (cause to) lose colour, brightness or strength gradually.

To perceive: to see something or someone, or to become aware of something that is obvious.

Despair: the feeling that there is no hope and that you can do nothing to improve a difficult or troubling situation. To despair: to feel despair.

Pale: describes someone’s face or skin if it has less colour than usual, for example when they are ill or frightened, or if it has less colour than people generally have.

Out of hand: Not well controlled. If you refuse something out of hand, you refuse it completely without thinking about or discussing it.

To spend money ON sthg

Unused: not being used at present, or never having been used.

Armful: the amount that a person can carry in one or both arms.

A high: a period of extreme excitement or happiness when you feel full of energy, often caused by a feeling of success, or by drugs or alcohol or a religious experience.

To split up with sby OVER sthg

To overcome: to defeat or succeed in controlling or dealing with something.

To gamble: to bet money, for example in a game or on a horse race.

Deep down: felt strongly and often hidden from other people.

Cluster: a group of similar things that are close together, sometimes surrounding something.

At risk: in a dangerous situation.

a stay: a period of time that you spend in a place.

treatable:  an illness which can be cured with a medical treatment.

Forget the traditional image of the hopeless addict, lying in the gutter clutching a syringe or a bottle of whisky: the new breed of addict is as likely to be an alpha female, wearing Jimmy Choo heels and chatting on her state-of-the-art mobile.

Addictions, it seems, are the new must-have accessory. With designer stores like Paul Smith selling ‘Cold Turkey’ wristbands so you can flaunt your struggle with your demons, it is now officially de-rigeur to claim that you’re hooked on anything and everything from shopping to Green & Black’s chocolate.

What’s your addiction? Tell us by clicking on our reader comments section below!

«Over the last 18 months we have noticed a big rise in the number of behavioural addictions, so called to distinguish them from substance dependencies,” says Dr Mark Collins, the head of the addictions unit at the Priory in Roehampton.

«People are looking down on smokers, alcoholics and cocaine addicts, but then go and spend five hours in an internet chatroom,» says Collins. Behavioural addictions include compulsive attachment to plastic surgery, the internet, mobile phones – and even sunbeds.

In our fast-paced pressurised modern lives, we are increasingly turning to ‘comfort behaviours’ – activities that temporarily make us feel happier, less stressed and lonely. And, warn experts, these are the very things that can lead us into dependency, no matter how harmless they may seem at first.

Therapist Vera Peiffer, author of the forthcoming book Banish Bad Habits Forever – Effective Ways to Take Control of Your Life, explains, “I would describe an addiction as compulsive behaviour that has become a problem in your life and is out of your control.”

And while behavioural addictions may sound less serious than being hooked on drink or drugs, according to experts, their potential for wrecking lives may actually be quite similar.

These are very modern addictions, which can lead to obsession, debt and the breakdown of relationships. Caroline Harrison 37, a full time mother of three, admits to compulsively using the internet.

«I was surfing to discover something about my youngest child’s skin problem when I found this amazing parenting website with lively message boards,” she says. “Soon I found I couldn’t go a day without logging on. I started spending all evening ‘chatting’ to my new online friends instead of spending time with my husband. It never crossed my mind that it could be addictive. But now I feel edgy and tense if I can’t access my computer.

It’s as if I can’t help myself. The people there seem more real and supportive than my own family and friends. I often feel depressed and lonely in real life because my husband works long hours, so being on the site makes me feel good. Well, temporarily good.”

The Government child safety charity Child Alert are receiving more and more calls from parents who are worried that the combination of access to technology, social pressures and easy credit are creating a dependency-prone culture for their children.

“We give our 16-year old daughter Emma £20 pocket money with extra for her school dinners and we learnt recently that all this money is being spent on texting her friends,” one despairing father confided.

“She hasn’t had a meal in school for the past 3 months and worst of all considers no other activity or hobby worthy of her pocket money.”

Perhaps even more worrying for parents is the behaviour of 14-year-old Tracey Barlow, who is now seeking treatment for an additction to tanning.

The teenager, who has been diagnosed by doctors as ‘tanorexic’, visits tanning parlours three times a week, and at one stage was having treatments five days a week.

Her skin is already prematurely aged, and she has been warned that she risks developing skin cancer but, despite being warned of the risks, she says she feels overwhelmingly anxious if she perceives her tan fading. ‘It’s like an illness with her – she hates being pale,’ says her despairing mother.

Dr Robert Lefever, director of the Promis Recovery Centre, who himself has overcome addictions to gambling, spending and work, explains, “Deep down, sufferers are usually depressed. In that state, you can become hooked on anything that changes the way you feel and even if you try to stop the behaviour, you will find it extremely hard, at least without becoming bad tempered or anxious.”

Dr Lefever believes that compulsive behaviour often manifests in ‘clusters’. “You have the Eating Disorders cluster, which also includes shopping and spending, work, cosmetic surgery and exercise, the Hedonistic cluster includes alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sex, and gambling, while the Relationship cluster includes compulsive helping and love addiction.

If you are addicted to one thing in a cluster you are at risk of becoming addicted to the others,” he says. “And you can be addicted to more than one cluster”.

For 26-year-old sales manager Emily Lane, it was her love of shopping that got dangerously out of hand. Her compulsive spending on designer clothes , shoes and handbags has left her with 30,000 pounds worth of debt and destroyed her relationship with her boyfriend James.

She admits that many of the items she bought remained unused, but that she found it impossible to stop spending. “I didn’t need most of the things I bought. Coming home with armfuls of bags gave me an enormous rush, and I needed to keep buying more clothes, shoes and accessories to keep getting that same high.”

“I would shop in my lunch hour, after work, and at the weekends, but I couldn’t see that I had a problem — until James split up with me over it.”

According to Peiffer, the context for many addictions is that the sufferer is sensing a “lack of meaning” in their life. In an increasingly materialistic society, where rates of depression are soaring as communities break down, more and more people are feeling a deep loss of a sense of purpose.

Many of us no longer rely on traditional support structures such as religion. Studies show that without these elements in our lives we are more prone to anxiety and depression. We work punishingly long hours and don’t have time for our friends, so we look for other ways of making ourselves feel better.

Reassuringly, Peiffer says that admitting you have a problem means “you are more than half way to a solution.” She points out that all addictions have a hidden purpose in that they are “trying to do something positive for you by somehow comforting you.

Find out why you can’t stop raiding the fridge after work. Is it because deep down inside you need to reward yourself for being unhappy there?” Peiffer suggests that once you have discovered your need, “you can start thinking about more positive alternatives which will achieve the same benefit.

Rather than emptying the fridge into your stomach, you could let go of pent-up emotions with a workout and then reward yourself with some quality food.”

Both Peiffer and Lefever agree that the best way to help prevent addictions in children is to provide a strong, loving home with firm boundaries around behaviour.

“Reward good behaviour and make them take responsibility for their mistakes,” says Lefever. “Also, it is vital to turn their thinking outwards rather than inwards. Make them think about others rather than themselves, perhaps by joining an organization such as the Scouts.

This will help children learn to become useful and productive members of society but, even more importantly, they will be happy and won’t need to seek out ways to make themselves feel better.”

Whatever your age, however, Lefever believes that, if you have a serious compulsive problem then the most effective treatment is a 12 step programme, a stay in a clinic or therapy with a psychologist who understands addiction.

“Addiction is treatable,” he says. “And I see this every day in myself and in other people.”

Now click on the reader comments box below and tell us your addiction!

‘ When I go to meetings and I introduce myself, I say, «My name is David and I am an addict.’ I go to four groups — AA, NA and SA — because I’ve been addicted to painkillers and alcohol and sex, but my primary addiction is to helping people, so I go to Helpers Anonymous because I’m a compulsive helper… ‘
David, 36, addict

Addiction used to live on the fringes, the periphery of society, but has spent the last 20 years worming its way into the everyday, the commonplace even. In 1980, this country had fewer than 10 residential addiction centres; there are now 150. Never before have the terms addict, addicts and addiction had such common currency; in 1990, newspapers used these words 428 times; by the year 2000, this figure had risen dramatically to 11,707.

And whereas we used to know exactly what we meant by an addict — ‘Exhibit A’ might be the characters in Trainspotting — now we’re not so sure. Along with ‘traditional’ ideas of addictions to drugs and alcohol, there is now a move to include an ever-increasing number of activities, some of which are, frankly, hard to take seriously. The rise of 12-step therapy groups has contributed to a growing acceptance that there is now almost nothing that cannot be talked of in terms of addiction. There are currently 26 UK 12-step fellowships listed in Addiction Today magazine, including Gamblers Anonymous, Helpers Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and Workaholics Anonymous. All ‘behavioural’ addictions and the logical conclusion is out there too: in the US, there is apparently a 12-step group for those who are addicted to going to 12-step groups.

The concept of behavioural addictions like these is nothing new in itself. As Deirdre Boyd, the editor of Addiction Today points out, you could say that the first behavioural addiction was identified in the 50s, 15 years after AA was founded, when Al-Anon started for the relatives and friends of alcoholics — ‘the addiction to the addict, so to speak’. What is new, though, is the sheer range and number of, on the face of it, rather less obviously damaging behaviours and activities that are currently having the language and treatment of addiction applied to them.

There are obvious reasons for the rise in addiction and addicts — the sheer availability of drugs, for one thing. As Boyd says, ‘Alcohol, nicotine and other drugs are currently available on a scale that has never been seen before, and it’s causing problems.’ There is also the fact that more of us have more money. ‘At a very simple and crude level, the rise in addiction relates to the fact that we’re much more affluent nowadays, because most addictions involve expenditure,’ says psychologist Oliver James. ‘Something like the rise of smoking and drinking among young women is certainly partly do to with that.’

‘Alcohol was my passport to another place where none of the negative things in my life mattered any more. I entered an internal world where I could say anything, do everything, be anybody.’
Paul, 55, alcoholic

The rise in addictions also has a lot to do with our new-found willingness to talk about ourselves in terms of our emotional wellbeing, which in turn is part of our new-found willingness to call ourselves addicts. As James says, we use different language to define ourselves nowadays: ‘Instead of talking about our social role in life, we talk about our internal state.’ After a century of psychoanalysis and more than 50 years of peace, our lives tend not to be about mere survival any more. These days, we talk in terms of quality of life and self-realisation.

Addiction — as one of the big three mental-health issues along with depression and anxiety — is part of that landscape. There is also, as Boyd points out, ‘an international media now that communicates all this stuff’. And certainly a day barely goes by without yet another celebrity admitting to an addiction openly and without shame: Naomi goes to Narcotics Anonymous, Geri attends Overeaters Anonymous, Robbie’s an alcoholic, Mel Smith was addicted to painkillers, Michael Douglas to sex. Addiction is well and truly out.

And, of course, there is a way in which this is very healthy and positive, but there is also concern among some specialists, a feeling that we need to engage rather more critically with the concept of addiction. There are worries around the numbers of people who now see themselves as addicts. Not least of all because addiction is such a potent and powerful concept to buy into.

Neil Hunt, a lecturer in addictive behaviours at Kent University, feels that the word addiction is used too variously. ‘The word is misused. There is a place for it, but it’s being misused, and I think that people are genuinely confused. I believe in compulsive habitual behaviours, but I think it is unhelpful to describe them as addictions. In some ways, it’s similar to when people who’ve got a cold tell you they’ve got flu; it’s simply a way of making a grander claim.’

Hand in hand with this lies what Hunt sees as a general trend toward the ‘pathologising’ of any and all discomforts or anxieties. Which he feels in turn can be seen as a knock-on effect of the new and increasing workforce of people ‘who have an interest in understanding problems and their solutions in these terms’.

‘Obviously this isn’t always a bad thing,’ Hunt admits. But when it is, it can be disempowering. ‘I think one of the messages that comes out of that way of thinking is that you can’t sort out your own life — other people, experts, have to do it for you, and that’s undermining.’ There is a sense in which, he feels, we systematically underestimate the extent to which people can sort things out for themselves. ‘I think we are discouraging that by problematising things more and more.’

‘I went to NA and allowed myself the window to experience other people who had been where I had been and who loved me, for want of a better word, when I could not love myself. That is NA. That’s what it’s about. If you’ve got a problem with your teeth ,you go to the dentist. With drugs, you go to NA.’
Kate, 39, drug addict

Having a problem with addiction and going for treatment might mean detox, or therapy, or staying in a residential unit, or indeed all three in the short term, but in the long term it will nearly always involve attending a 12-step group. Attending a 12-step group means seeing yourself as having a disease called addiction that you will have for the rest of your life. Despite not necessarily agreeing with this, practically all professionals who work in addiction recommend 12-step, simply because as crisis intervention and for ongoing support, it works.

Professor Nick Heather, an expert in alcoholism, explains. ‘If someone gives up alcohol, it leaves an enormous vacuum in their life; they have nothing to do with the time they spent in the pub, and life becomes less meaningful because it was so structured around this behaviour. But if you link up with a whole bunch of people who have this problem, you have a new identity.’ A new way of being, if you like, but the point is, first and foremost you are an addict, lots of your friends will be addicts and it will inform everything you do… which is a potent way to define oneself and perhaps just not always appropriate. It’s quite a leap to go from having a behaviour that you use too much to seeing yourself in these terms.

On top of this, Professor John Davies, a psychologist at Strathclyde University and the author of The Myth of Addiction , says that seeing oneself as an addict is an incapacitating belief. ‘Research shows that if someone has a damaging habit, the belief that they are addicted to it makes them less likely to attempt to stop and more likely to fail when they try.’

‘I came to a meeting and said, «My name is Simon and I’m a sex addict.» I found describing myself as an addict incredibly helpful when I first came to recover. Suddenly the reality of what I had become clicked in to focus.’
Simon, 47, sex addict

There is great debate among experts these days about when behaviour should be seen as an addiction. There is little doubt that drugs like alcohol, nicotine and hard drugs are potentially addictive, that is, they have an external pharmacology that acts on our nervous system and their long-term use involves tolerance and withdrawal if we stop using them. They are also clearly damaging to our health in the long term.

But what about behaviours like sex, shopping and surfing the net, even — behaviours which aren’t inherently damaging, that don’t have an external pharmacology, but which are routinely talked about in terms of addiction nowadays?

Even among experts there isn’t one clear line of thought about this. Professor Griffith Edwards at the National Addiction Centre believes, for example, that talking of shopping or exercise addiction in the same way as, say, alcohol or crack-cocaine addiction can be dangerous. ‘You can trivialise the idea of dependency by saying, «What about shopping, what about pinching cars», but it’s playing with words, really; it’s not very like what’s going on with heroin.’

Jim Offord, professor of psychology at Birmingham University and the author of Excessive Appetites , wants us to extend our understanding of addiction so we don’t just see it as being about drugs, but he would only want to include other activities/behaviours that, as he puts it, ‘really are a major problem for people — as with, say, sex addiction, overeating and gambling. These are activities that change one’s mood dramatically. They’re very pleasurable, they can be very reinforcing and therefore it’s not surprising that some people get out of control with them and that they cause people terrible problems on a large scale. The problem is that there is a tendency for people to then rush from that and say, «I’m addicted to shopping», or chocolate, or to talk about «love addiction» or being «a workaholic».’

For Offord, this is extending the concept a little further than he feels comfortable with. ‘There’s a danger of seeing addiction as a pan concept when sometimes what people are really talking about are attachments. Caffeine is quite a good example; people get attached to caffeine to the point where they can’t easily go out without having a cup of coffee or tea, but it doesn’t matter very much.’

So have we been overstating the case for addiction? Leaping to use the term more often than we should and in a way that isn’t always appropriate or healthy? John Davies’s assertion that ‘talking about habits, un- fortunate habits that people persist in, like the internet, shopping or working as addictions, is a totally bogus concept’ may seem a little strong, but at the very least we should acknowledge the dangers of talking oneself into such a loaded position, of calling oneself an addict and buying into all that implies, or of accepting the label unquestioningly.

As Davies points out, ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association says that a hallmark of addiction is that a person continues to do something despite clear knowledge that it is damaging. Well, I climb a bit, and one of my heroes carries on climbing despite incurring lots of injuries, which are clearly damaging. Do we therefore conclude that he needs treatment because he’s sick? I don’t think so.’

Of course the irony is, as Deirdre Boyd says, ‘If you’re not an addict, you’ll probably rush to say you are; if you are, you’ll deny it for a long time.’