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by squidgedcricket 604 days ago
Can you elaborate on what medications impact gambling behaviors?

I have some addictive/compulsive behaviors that have been hard to shake. GLP-1 agonists look promising, but I'm not sure how to get a prescription since I'm not overweight.
1 comments
austin-cheney 604 days ago
This article explains it well: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9825131/

My suggestion, and I am not doctor or providing medical advise, is to make the addictive stimulus inconvenient. Each iteration must include more steps to increase labor of effort and each iteration must also take much longer to complete. This will re-balance the brain from prior established condition. The more painful, disconnected, or costly (in time and not money) an activity becomes the more dedicated you must become about achieving that activity before addiction can set in.

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matheusmoreira 604 days ago
> make the addictive stimulus inconvenient

Assumes there is a limit to the amount of effort addicts are willing to put into getting their next dose. Easily disproved by the experience of caring for opioid addicts. Lesser drugs, even. Once upon a time, a seemingly rational benzodiazepine addict got so frustrated with my attempts to get him off of it he rose up from his seat ready to punch me in the face.

There are addicts out there who would sell their own mother for a dose. And I'm not just saying that. One of my former neighbours turned into one of these guys. People wouldn't believe the stories if I told them.

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austin-cheney 604 days ago
There is always a limit. The realistic constraints of physical and social opportunities available to a given person are limitations irrespective of the person's quantity of motivation, which speaks to asset availability and social enabling. But none of this is relevant. The person to whom I replied is self-motivated to terminate their addictive patterns.
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squidgedcricket 604 days ago
> The person to whom I replied is self-motivated to terminate their addictive patterns.

Kind of. The captain of the ship is motivated, but the helmsman needs to get his shit together.

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