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Normalized Addictions: How Many of Us Are Addicts

    When people hear the word "addiction," they often picture things that are extreme and obviously harmful like gambling and drugs. However, addiction does not always come in such dramatic forms--in fact, most people exhibit several if not all of the symptoms of addiction in certain aspects of their lives. 

    According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological disorders, one of the primary distinctions between an impulse and an addictive disorder is the presence of a craving that precedes a relapse or indulgence in the given substance or activity. The discovery that addicted gamblers have physical cravings is what eventually led gambling to being moved from the impulse control disorders category to the addictive disorders category. Impulse control disorders (like pyromania, for example) are also categorized by more sporadic behavior, while addictive behaviors like drinking and smoking often function as coping strategies. 

    It is much more common than many think for people to indulge in different things to cope--shopping, gossiping, and eating, for example. Part of the reason that people don't acknowledge these things as being addictive is because these are all activities that are normalized and ones that a majority of people participate in. On the other hand, drug use is not something that every average person indulges in, making it far easier to identify drug abuse compared to a shopping addiction.

    A 2020 study in Switzerland divided 1,000 participants into different categories of shoppers, including "risky" and "addicted." Around three percent of the sample was classified as "addicted" because they agreed with the statements "I think about shopping/buying things all the time" and "I shop/buy things in order to change my mood" (Marris 7). These compulsions to shop are reminiscent of those to drink and do drugs. 

    Surely everyone reading this article has at least one thing in their life that they compulsively indulge in. Indulging becomes an addiction when you rely on a substance or activity and feel like you can't function without it, resulting in "cravings." What one considers a "bad habit" or guilty pleasure of theirs can turn serious, no matter if they are not necessarily prone to addictive disorders. 

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