I have ordered a book recently by the name of ‘Biology of desire’. The interesting idea discussed is that addiction is not any kind of disease but rather all positive outcomes just being focussed on one thing. I’m not sure if I’ve ever thought of addiction as being a disease anyway but I often saw it as behaviour related to codependency.

The idea of the book is that to take the example of video games you could possibly play them with the feeling that there is some kind of achievement, growth, trying again and again which can then be taken to other areas. There are therefore dopamine releases taking place which are then potentially taken to another area of life. This is all fine.

However in the case of being addicted the problem is that all the dopamine releases and purely any thought around achievement etc and growth are all centred purely on the game, not anything else. This is where there is more of a withdrawal from daily life and the person can be said to be addicted.

There was an example of this on an interview where it was reported someone playing a game numerous hours a day and spoke about it from a place of brokenness of how good they were at making money on the game.

On another hand too you could say that Mark Zuckerberg was addicted to Facebook with this not really being any kind of issue since it was taking a big idea forward.

I wonder therefore if when someone has a level of dysfunction in the form of codependence if therefore due to trying to avoid the painful feelings there is then a level of focus which can take place in a space of seeming safety on the object eg the video games with all dopamine releases taking place within that and an avoidance of reality. With this not in any sense being related to any kind of ‘disease’.

The key here seems to just be emotional wellbeing then being either addicted to the right thing which takes your life forward or hobbies which could potentially take all your attention (should you have these kind of addictive tendencies) being used with goal outcomes of their applicability to life outside that.

I am looking forward to reading the book to study this idea further.