Root word in Latin, ‘Addicere’ meant ‘to devote’ or ‘sacrifice’ or ‘assign’. The meaning evolved into ‘Enslavement’ during Roman Republic. In late 16th century, Addiction denoted ‘inclination’ or ‘proclivity’.
Diction means ‘Choice’ which evolved from Latin word ‘Dicere’ which meant ‘to say’. Ad (prefix) meant ‘toward’ indicating direction, tendency or addition. Interpreted as ‘toward Choice‘.
Words have a history of Meandering, Stumbling, Rescue and Rehabilitation. The Rehab meaning does not match the Original (Root) sense ever. Does it!!
Addiction is now defined as chronic, compulsive, biological or psychological need for a Habit-forming substance, behavior or activity which produces physical, psychological, or social effects with clearly correlated symptoms of withdrawal.
Are there Models for Addiction?
Biological (Brain disease) model: Brain and Body cells get adapted to the presence of substances which are not part of their original environment or nature. With continued accumulation of Alien substances in the brain and body cells, they get conditioned to behave unnaturally. In the absence of the alien hosts, the cells react by craving and confused metabolism, which produces the withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal symptoms are an effort to re-establish Non-Dependent functioning.
Can we find a co-relation between the above narrative and our Relationship Heartbreaks?
Mind (Psyche’s disease) behaves the similar way as our Brain and Body does. Conscious Mind imbibes the experience of altered states. Repeated experiences create impressions of relief, loosening of social or interpersonal anxieties, disinhibition of motivations, free floating behaviors and euphoria. Continuous use translates into influence on processes of subconscious mind, like alteration of temper, mood, affection, and desires. Conditioned mind undergoes withdrawal, to re-establish Non-Dependent functioning.
Social (Relational disease): Interpersonal interactions and behaviors impact Sociability. Sociability is limited by rigid attitudes. Sociability is enhanced by our Range of flexible behaviors. Freaky fun, identifying with the social crowd, becoming one among the herd, belonging to the social Trend are some of the motivations for this Realm of Society. Most often, Imitation tendency takes over Experimentation.
Initial Rewards are escapades from stress, bubbles of euphoria, foreclosure of anxieties, flight of social chicanery (trickery). These Rewards ignore the consequences that follow.
Fun does give me the trips; Does the trips short my Fuse? ‘I’ Self Slander!!
The way out of this Conditioned state is CHOICE to Decondition. Three steps of this Choice are Locus, Focus and Volus.
To be Continued…
The euphoric experience created by the substance and need to experience the same euphoria again and again vid substance leads to the dependency and craving for the substance. The state of well being/ peace being inherent quality of the spirit , the truant mind wants to play the sense of false wellbeing,the euphoric state and reinforces the need for substance even going to extent of availing it at any cost, even though it is harmful to the person. Perhaps mind’s influences on the nervous system and faulty signalling pathways create errant physiology in the form of withdrawal symptoms.
In Artificial Intelligence, more precisely in the branch of Reinforcement Learning, the agent’s objective is to formulate a policy to maximize the rewards by interacting with the environment. Just drawing a parallel line with the article, I guess our brain follows a greedy approach, as it receives better rewards for the time being and in the long run suffers due to its previous actions. A holistic approach would be to analyse the future before taking an action that returns high reward. This allows us to explore life rather than exploiting life.
Sometimes I feel so awed by the similarity between human brain and AI. After all, we engineered the techniques.
Awesome analogy !
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