This is bunk. An actual chemical addiction is not the same as feeling an urge to drink 8 cans of coke a day, or being unable to not buy a bag of chips at the gas station.
Your entire body and brain is a complex and messy chemical reaction.
The opening sentence of the wikipedia article on addiction currently reads: "Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences."
The page then lists "eating or food addiction" as examples, with food addiction being its own entire page.
These are all things that we acknowledge are possible to be addicted to to that are not substances. Not to mention that coke has caffeine which is a chemical substance just as much as anything.
You can pin addiction to anything as a personal weakness, including drugs. Why are some people able to smoke a few cigarettes or do a little bit of cocaine without ever getting addicted, when others are hooked on day one?
If there's one thing that's been fun to see as the outcome of GLP-1 drugs, it's that a lot of people seem to have a real problem seeing people better themselves the "easy way".
A good way to frame addiction is via perceived rewards. You can be addicted to many things if you look at it as “the person expects a reward for an activity, often errantly”. The worse addictions get into “the reward isn’t even expected with a moment’s clarity, but you do it anyway” territory.
It doesn’t matter what the actual addiction is, the reward circuitry in the brain is pretty much similar.
Addiction is basically highjacking our brain wiring that’s meant to help us expend energy chasing things that we need for survival (food, reproduction), and using it to chase other things
I find this attitude strange. I am a very physically fit man, I do not know what it is like to walk in the shoes of someone who has an addiction to food, but I do know people eat themselves to death. People deal with debilitating diseases that are directly linked to the amount they are eating. People literally destroy their body and live in the wreckage, and you think that it's not an addiction? If not an addiction what exactly is going on?
Addiction is this really scary thing I saw on tv about downtown Philadelphia and fentanyl killing people buy that's far away and couldn't happen here. Sure, I have friends who are fat and are unable to stop themselves from drinking 8 cans of coke a day but they're not shooting up with needles and I know them so they can't be this scary kind of person called an addict. Also I know this one girl who's glued to her phone all day and can't do anything else and she's also definitely not an addict.
Addiction hits the same part of the brain, no matter if it's chemical, physical, or digital. Just because our culture sees them differently doesn't make it the same underlying problem.
Seed oils (used in almost everything these days) contain a lot of linoleic acid, which is a precursor to endocannabinoids, potentially giving you the munchies. If eating gives you the munchies, making you want to eat more, I'd call that a chemical addiction.
I think avoiding bad foods is a better solution than reaching for drugs, but if the drugs help break the cycle, it could be beneficial.
>Seed oils (used in almost everything these days) contain a lot of linoleic acid, which is a precursor to endocannabinoids, potentially giving you the munchies. If eating gives you the munchies, making you want to eat more, I'd call that a chemical addiction.
If you listen to nutrition gurus, you'll hear claims like "food X contains chemical Y and chemical Y is either itself toxic or metabolizes to something toxic, therefore you shouldn't eat X". I promise you I can find videos where somebody has found something bad about spinach and will try to convince you not to eat it. It's a bad way to reason.
Identifying individual biological pathways isn't enough to make (dietary) prescriptions. Often, the metabolites of the food aren't produced in high enough quantities to make a measurable effect (on health, or this case behavior). This kind of thing has to be studied at the level of behavior.
As much as we pretend otherwise and rationalize stuff because the greatest sin for our generation is being judgemental, I am pretty sure this is the case in a lot of instances.
Shaming people is fantastic at making me feel self-righteous, though, which is the best metric by which I can evaluate treatments and interventions for other people.
(When I feel charitable, I can instead wring my hands and hemm and haww about the unknown consequences of people using medication to solve their health problems. I can't outline what exactly those consequences are, but I can certainly hemm and haww.)
This is the example I'm shocked more people don't invoke in these discussions. Gambling addiction is indisputably real, and slot machines (or craps tables or the ponies down at the track) don't even have stick a needle in you to get you hooked. Actions and reactions are more than enough.
Compulsive overeating relies on the same behavioral/reward mechanisms, with the added bonus of food being something you do physically ingest in the process.
Gambling addiction also has the highest suicide rate among addictions, so definitely serious.
The Atlantic had an article recently arguing that allowing sport gambling in the USA was a mistake, imposing huge costs on the most vulnerable.
It’s also popular in other forms these days. Wallstreetbets options gambling, most of crypto, the way many people are “trading” these is purely gambling with some bro-astrology.
When I was a poor teenager I was gambling online and it is an incredible way to lose money unlike anything. With the click of a button you can throw $100 or $1000 into the void- and you often follow it up until your account is empty. Hard to do with many other substances.
It’s the same thing. Obviously withdrawals and such are different but the core mechanism of disregulated reward processing leading to compulsive behavior engagement is exactly the same.
Your entire body and brain is a complex and messy chemical reaction.
The opening sentence of the wikipedia article on addiction currently reads: "Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behavior that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences."
The page then lists "eating or food addiction" as examples, with food addiction being its own entire page.