After Governor Mark Sanford abandoned his state and his family to be with his mistress in Argentina, people applauded his long-suffering wife Jenny for kicking his lying butt to the curb. Yet even as she denounced his affair, she gave him a big gift … she called his cheating “an addiction.” These days, people love characterizing everything as an addiction, from the frivolous to the frightening. In pop culture parlance, you can be a rage-aholic, a shop-aholic, and a choc-aholic. Addictions are serious things, but is cheating seriously an addiction?
Addicted to … Everything
Addiction is the inability to discontinue reckless or harmful behavior. Addicts can’t stop themselves from self-destructing, whatever their choice of poison may be. We don’t fully understand addiction yet, but we do know that there are genetic components, as well as social factors, that can contribute to addiction. When people think about addictions, the most common ones are usually drugs and alcohol. We know that physical addictions to alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes can literally change a person’s brain chemistry, shutting down certain areas of functioning. Physical addictions also alter nerve pathways to the brain’s pleasure centers, causing horrible withdrawal symptoms if people try to quit.
Even though people also claim addictions to the internet, junk food, and sex, the American Psychiatric Association’s chief reference guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), does not officially recognize these as legitimate mental conditions. Mental health experts realize that many people struggle with these issues, so they classify them as impulse control disorders, a category that also contains pyromania (fire starting), kleptomania (compulsive stealing), pathological gambling, and shopping. Impulse control disorders are considered to be part of the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders, and they are marked by sufferers seeking a short-term gain, even at the expense of a long-term loss. For example, pathological gamblers and compulsive shoppers are psychologically attached to the endorphin rush of rolling the dice or making a big purchase, and even though they know that their actions have negative consequences, they can’t help themselves.
