Are People Who Have Addictions Self-Destructive?

One of many misunderstandings about addiction is that it is self-destructive. People suffering from addictions, however, are neither intending to harm themselves nor uncaring about their well-being.

Addictive behavior is a compulsion: a powerful urge driven by readily understandable psychological factors, as I’ve described in earlier articles and my books. Like all emotional symptoms, it exists to solve an emotional problem, not to cause self-harm. Its bad results are a very unfortunate side effect, not the psychological purpose or drive behind the behavior.

The very same psychological factors that drive addiction regularly lead to similar symptoms that are not self-destructive. A compulsion to wash hands, or compulsively clean the house, can have the same emotional basis, and be understood in the same way, as a compulsion to drink alcohol or to gamble. If we eliminate self-destructiveness as a criterion for judging any behavior then it becomes easier to see that these compulsively driven symptoms are at heart all the same.

The unimportance of self-destruction in addiction is especially clear if one understands addictive behavior as I’ve described: an effort to reverse feelings of overwhelming helplessness. It does this by taking an action that restores a sense of being in control. Seen this way, the apparently irrational behavior is seen to be psychologically sensible. It would also be harmless, except for one fact: this reversal of helplessness occurs in displacement. Instead of expressing the normal drive to reverse feelings of overwhelming helplessness by taking direct action, this drive is shifted—displaced—to a new behavior.

This new displaced behavior is now driven by that powerful urge, which appears simply irrational, on the surface. We call this new, intensely driven behavior, an addiction.

Indeed, this is exactly how we name addictions, by where the drive is displaced. If the drive to reverse overwhelming helplessness is expressed through (displaced to) drinking alcohol, then we call the resulting behavior alcoholism. If it’s displaced to gambling, then we change the diagnostic label to compulsive gambling. What’s important is that all addictions are fundamentally the same, only directed toward different displacements.

This also explains why people can switch from one addictive behavior, like drug use, to compulsive gambling, compulsive sex, or another driven activity. And, since this same emotional mechanism also applies to most compulsions (except those that are part of OCD), which are usually not dangerous at all (like compulsively cleaning the house), this again emphasizes that self-destructiveness is simply not part of the nature of addiction.

The good news is that, since addictions are neither more nor less than common psychological symptoms, they can be readily treated once they are understood.

Facebook/LinkedIn image: KieferPix/Shutterstock