Addiction to Drugs Physical or Mental?

Question by Omar: addiction to drugs physical or mental?
Is addiction to stimulant drugs a physical or mental addiction?

Best answer:

Answer by .
Depends. And is probably a mixture of both. With a drug like cocaine, if you have been taking it a lot, and then you don’t have any, you get a itchy desperate feeling like you’ve got to have some more. Same with cigarettes or alcohol, your body gets used to having it and when it doesn’t, it starts to withdraw and you want mor to stop the feeling of discomfort. But then I’d say that the onset of the addiction comes from a mental perspective. Say with a drug like weed, the physical withdraw isn’t uncomfortable, you just rely on it mentally.

Answer by Mel
Addiction can be physical or mental and most often both. Drugs like heroin and alcohol that create serious physical dependency also cause intense psychological addiction – this is the reason why some alcoholic dependent people can go into hospital after having an alcohol related seizure, detox completely and when they are discharged, despite what they have been through, go and have a drink. Whilst detoxing can be medically complicated, it is relatively easy to achieve compared to the psychological recovery – the emphasis in almost all addiction is psychological. This is the reason that a detox alone is unlike to address addiction in it’s entirety – it only looks at the physical side, not the mental addiction.

More over, you can get addicted to a huge variety of things – some of the most popular drugs in the UK do not have any physically addictive properties (e.g. cannabis) and sex and gambling are purely psychological addictions (although it is true that the sensations of enacting some behaviours causing the release of brain chemicals – this alone does not constitutes a physical addiction as the chemicals are naturally produced in the brain).

For more info about addiction and it’s foundation in physical and psychological motivators check out www.steps2rehab.com. There is info about abuse and dependency and how substance abuse can establish itself.

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