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waterfield
I thought you were writing that if a person is addicted to something that by itself contains no addictive quality that cannot be an "addiction". (i.e. an addiction to key lime pie). My point is it doesn't matter if for whatever reason a person cannot rid himself of a habit that substantially impacts his life in a negative way he needs to be treated for the "addiction". So even assuming for argument that pot by itself is not addictive -if a person for whatever reason cannot stop consuming it notwithstanding his desire to do so and that is affecting his life then its important for that person to get treatment. I think we can agree on that-right?
I really think the term addiction is not helpful in this context and muddies the discussion. It is some kind of compulsion. And those kinds of compulsory behaviors do indeed exist. And yeah they do follow this pattern:
for whatever reason a person cannot rid himself of a habit that substantially impacts his life in a negative wayTo quote a source:
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Activities such as gambling, eating, pornography viewing, and playing video games are particularly conducive to addiction because they provide the opportunity for immediate reward. The fast feedback that occurs in a gambling setting can quickly turn a pastime into a compulsive pursuit of reward, where one can't voluntarily disengage from the activity and harmful consequences occur-from losing large amounts of money to disruption of relationships.
BUT, notice, there is no evidence that the activity or substance in this case CAUSES the behavior. And look at the list I just provided (which is by no means complete): gambling, eating, pornography viewing, and playing video games. In each case MANY people do those things (and in the case of eating all do it). Yet
only a few develop the compulsive habit version of doing those things.
This tells me that the compulsive behavior involved here has to do with the psychology of the individual.
THAT means that for THAT kind of individual, if it's not one thing it's another. They WILL get compulsively hooked on SOMETHING.
Therefore with marijuana, to me the far more likely version is not that smoking dope causes (the low percentage of) compulsive habits, it's the person who was prone to compulsive habits of one form or another who just happened to live out their compulsive habit forming tendencies with marijuana.
Therefore, there's no such thing as "psychological addiction to marijuana" with the drug as the cause. RATHER, there's people who are prone to compulsively habitual psychologies who HAPPEN to get hooked on...gambling OR eating OR marijuana.
It follows to me that it doesn't make any sense to talk about "psychological addiction to marijuana." It's more like "compulsive habit types who in this case just happened to live out that part of their psychology with marijuana as opposed to something else."
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2016 10:00PM by zn.
