How do the results of this article impact your understanding of addiction?
Addiction is a state in which a person is involved in ingesting a substance (e.g. cocaine, nicotine alcohol) or includes a physical activity like gambling or shopping, etc. Addiction is often pleasurable, but it has many drawbacks. It starts interfering with life’s responsibilities and concerns. It affects your health, work, and relations with others. An Addict person might not be able to aware of his behavior with others, and his behaviors become out of control and cause problems for him and others. The damage an addict causes to the relationship is very deeper, and they require a long time to repair. The addict lives a double life. The Consequences of the addiction motivate him to recover
Addiction can be defined in different ways. Physical addiction is a biological state which makes the body adopt the presence of a drug in such a way that the person has no same effect on using the substance. It is also called tolerance. Another Physical addiction is the overreaction of the brain to the use of drugs. Most of the additive’s behavior is not just related to physical tolerance but also due to the stress they take. These stresses make them addicted. It is needed to take certain types of actions under this kind of stress. The Treatment of this sort of addiction is essential to make sure that psychology will work.
While treating any addiction, it is needed first to identify the cause of the addiction. It could be for pleasure or as the result of some stress. The recovery from addiction is a very time taking and painful process. It is often expert debates that if addiction is a disease or a mental illness. Such discussions will not be ended soon. People usually don’t think of the physical, psychological, and economic consequences of addiction.
How can you improve your skills as a counselor by understanding this information?
As a counselor, I use these skills to treat addicts. The Treatment will help the patient to stop using drugs and to stay away from drugs for the whole life and become productive at work, in society, and in the family. The basic principles of an effective treatment program as I have learned include:
- A Single treatment should not be given to all the patients.
- Effective Treatment should address the patient’s needs not only his drug use
- Staying in treatment for a long time could be dangerous
- The treatment Plan should be reviewed according to the patient’s changing needs
- The mental disorder should make treatment
- Drugs that are used in treatment should be monitored continuously
- Behavioral therapies and counseling should be the part of treatment
The ability to stop using drugs and abuse them is a very time taking and complicated recovery process. When people come for treatment, addiction has already made their life. The urge to take the drugs and experience their effects dominates their daily lives. After stopping the use of drugs, the patient can experience many emotional, mental, and physical symptoms that could include depression, mood disorder, anxiety, sleeplessness, or rest. These are certain treatment medications that are designed to reduce these symptoms and make it easy to stop using them.
Behavioral therapies can convince people to get treatment for addiction. Teaching different ways to avoid drugs helps people improve communication in society and built good relations. Some treatment also includes group therapies. It can assist in providing social reinforcement and helping by enforcing behavioral contingencies that encourage non-drug life. Group therapies could also be dangerous for some team members as they could start using drugs and derail the primary purpose of the treatment so I as a counselor should be aware of all these effects and monitor these effects efficiently.
How does the information presented in this study align with the research on the causes of addiction presented in the text?
According to this study, Psychologist has explained several reasons that could be the cause of addiction. People may involve in harmful behaviors due to the abnormality that is considered a mental illness. The environment could also be a factor in which people learned unhealthy behavior. Environmental factors could include the behavior and attitude of the family towards the individual and exposure of the individual to the group that uses and encourage drug. For Children, poor parental supervision can increase the risk of addiction. Living in poverty or the presence of drugs in the home or school/workspace can also increase the possibility of addiction. Other environmental factors include physical abuse, Verbal Abuse, Violence, and having a family member who is addicted can also be the causes of addiction according to this study.
The mental disorder can include mood disturbance and cognitive difficulties; about half of the people who are seeking addiction treatment have a significant mental disorder.
Every Person has a unique physiology and genetics that could also be a cause of addiction (According to the biological model). Everyone has a different degree of belief whether they like or dislike a particular substance or activity. Some people enjoy a particular habit or substance so much that it’s hard for them to resist it and makes them addicted to the substance or thing. The other person may not find it difficult to resist because it is not enjoyable for him as much. Some people also have less capacity to withstand a particular substance or activity.
Causes of drug addiction could also be due to the high-stress level or if the parents also have a history of using drugs, particularly mental illness including anxiety and depression or the loss of a loved one. The excessive use of drugs changes the way the brain feels pleasure. Drugs cause physical changes in the neurons of the brain. These changes remain longer even after stopping the drugs
