The term addiction is used to indicate repeated and continuous use of a substance/drug leading to physiological dependence, regardless of the social, financial, and health costs; the definition of addicts was earlier restricted to people who were helplessly dependent on substances such as nicotine, alcohol, heroin or other drugs. Recently, medical researchers and psychologists have come round to the view that addiction need not be limited to substances but can also include activities. Rehabilitation Centre in New Delhi This kind of addiction is also called behavioral or process addiction.

 

 Medical researchers believe that behavioral dependencies can be classified as addictions because these exhibits the same core components that identify chemical or substance abuse. These core identifiers are mood modifications, tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse. Behavioral addictions bring on mood changes by creating a high feeling. The tolerance factor means that the amount of time spent in the indulgence has to continued increase to result in mood modification; the withdrawal syndrome refers to the extremely negative physical and emotional reactions displayed by the addict when the behavior is discontinued; and, finally, the relapse symptom indicates the addict's failure to reduce or stop indulging in the activity.

 

Research has now established that in substance addiction, what the body gets addicted to is not the abused chemical as much as the neurochemistry that the addiction triggers. The actual triggers of addictive disease are the modifications created in the body's neurochemistry by the abused substance/drug and this is true of behavioral addictions as well. The expanded definition of addiction is based on the observation that when the addict indulges in an addiction, the brain is seeking a reward and this reward can be a chemical substance or an experience.Best Rehabilitation Centre in New Delhi The need to repeatedly go through the experience results in the person becoming trapped in compulsive behavior.

 

Behavioral addiction includes indulgence in gambling, shopping, the internet, television, or even food. All these activities are part of life and do not have any negative impact on the normal course. For example, an occasional visit to a casino cannot cause any harm, maybe the loss of some money; but if a person engages in casino or online gambling very often and does so at the cost of his regular work, then there is cause for concern. When such a person is unable to desist from gambling, that habit can ruin his life, he is a behavioral addict. Television can be another source of addiction, making a person lazy, to the neglecting of all other routine activities.

 

Very often such a person knows that his indulgence is misplaced, wants to quit, but is unable to do so; in some cases, the television addict has just flipped channels and does not watch anything in particular, but cannot bring himself to switch off and leave. It is this utter helplessness that is most characteristic of behavioral addiction. Other activities such as work, shopping, eating, which are all necessary for a healthy life, take on the characteristics of addiction if indulged in excessively and without control; terms such as workaholic and shopaholic are used to indicate such addictions. All these addictions ruin not only personal health or finances, but also have very adverse impacts on family, social and professional life.

 

If you or someone you know is going through any kind of addiction, ask them to get themselves into proper treatment so that they can live a normal life too. Get yourself enrolled in our rehabilitation centre to get the best treatment for any kind of addiction in New Delhi.