An Addict's Flight: Addiction Everlasting

By Megan Johnson McCullough

Addiction is chaotic, messy, and nothing anyone would ever wish upon themselves. The truth is that this disease can happen to anyone, in any form. Anyone can become addicted to anything. An Addict's Flight is the story of ten different types of addicts sharing their personal experiences. Included is the research behind each form of addi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781649900029

Megan Johnson McCullough

Megan Johnson McCullough owns Every BODY's Fit fitness studio in Oceanside, California. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Health and Human Performance. She is ranked 2nd and 3rd in the world in natural bodybuilding, enjoys fitness modeling and writing, and her mission is to help every BODY spread their wings to become the best versions of themselves. She's a woman with biceps and brains she attributes to her mother's surrounding monarch spirit. Be sure to read her previous books Biceps and Butterflies, An Addict's Flight, and Working Out of My Cocoon.

Book preview

Introduction

Credit Derek Whytsell

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on’t hate the addict. Hate the disease. Don’t hate the person. Hate the behavior. If it’s hard to watch, imagine how hard it is to live it.

When want becomes NEED. When NEED becomes MUST. When MUST becomes NOW. Addiction is an invasive, life-controlling, type of behavior that fills a deep, never-satisfied void that keeps begging for more. The compulsion for MORE and MORE produces a prioritizing purpose that starts, consumes, and finishes the day. The brain has convinced the mind of this dependence, and the body won’t let this over dependence stop. Deemed a disorder of choice (Branch 2011) by some, the reality is that addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disease (NIDA 2008).

The term addiction comes from a Latin word meaning enslaved by or bound to, and nearly one in ten people are addicted to something (Harvard Health Publishing 2010).

Addicts are not persons who lack morals. Addicts are not persons with zero willpower. They can say no. They’re persons who lead normal lives but have a complex disease that has changed their brain. They’re persons who can no longer make voluntary decisions concerning their addiction. The compulsion has led to a loss of control, no matter the consequence or constant interference in their lives. Repetition becomes more and more frequent, despite the interruption to one’s physical and mental well-being (NIDA 2018). Too much is not enough. Tolerance continues to build.

The nature of addiction is that nothing else can provide the same reward compared to what the vice can stimulate. When a person’s whole life changes and the center of attention revolves around their habit, why would anyone choose to live this way? Why would anyone choose to be an addict?

CHAPTER 1

Risk Factors for Risky Behavior

Credit Derek Whytsell

When you can stop, you don’t want to. When you want to stop, you can’t. That’s addiction.

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o one enters this life ever imagining or predicting that they are destined to become an addict. Life’s influences create a recipe of ingredients that when put together brew a powerful storm. Among these ingredients, the most important pieces include genetics and environmental factors. Studies performed on families, twins, and adoptees have shown that the risk for becoming an addict is proportional to the degree of the genetic relationship. This means the closer in line the person is to the addicted relative, the higher the heritability. Shared genetic factors include aggression, impulsivity, vulnerability, resiliency, disinhibition, and response to stress and/or reward (Bevilacqua and Goldman 2009).

Complexity builds when one’s environment lays the groundwork for the development of addictive behaviors. The environment can create and/or maintain the dictating factors of the behavior. Ultimately, what one considers normal amid their surroundings constitutes the influences and their roles (Jaffe 2018). Just like children, an addict can repeat what they see or mimic behaviors.

Environmental factors include the following (in no particular order):

Family: Adolescence is when we learn how to react to stress. The types of parenting styles we experienced often influence our stress behaviors. If someone had a lack of parenting, for example, this could lead to a survival mode mentality. On the other hand, if someone had over-authoritarian parents, they could develop an inability to make judgment calls. Experiencing divorce and/or abuse from parents are, of course, problem factors too.

Culture: What cultural activities are considered acceptable to participate in can influence response to the exposure of the trigger or substance that becomes the addiction. Differences in female and male gender acceptances, religious beliefs, celebration associations, and what activities are considered normal can all be adopted and direct our actions. We learn habits and model the behaviors of those who surround us.

Media: Oftentimes unrealistic advertising and characters on TV or in movies, fantasies, and on social media literally show us glorification of practically anything. The mind also absorbs the visuals from the media, and our desire to replicate what we have seen increases, filtered or not; attainable or not; monkey-see, monkey-do mentality.

Friends: Acceptance and belonging are feelings all humans have. Our friends are typically like-minded and share common interests. Exposure and pressure to stay connected to others can lead to behaviors one wouldn’t normally participate in on their own. Peer pressure, or the desire to be cool or popular, can begin the habit.

BUT these risks are what the experts and researchers are saying, not necessarily what lead the addicts to their behaviors. In some sense, there are similar steps to becoming an addict, but addiction is an individualized phenomenon, not one-size-fits-all. What I do and what you do have a WHY behind them. WHY we become an addict is not a clear, black-or-white or direct cause-and-effect relationship. However, investigating the source, pinpointing the possibilities, and discovering that WHY can help with recovery and treatment.

CHAPTER 2

Pleasure Principle

Credit Derek Whytsell

Once an addict, always an addict.

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o matter what is put in front of us, the brain recognizes and activates our reward system in the same way. The neurotransmitter dopamine is released into the pleasure center of the brain. An addict feels a surge of dopamine, and the person wants to keep seeking this feeling. Next, dopamine’s companion, glutamate, teaches the brain what it needs for survival. Once learned, glutamate is the link that connects what is needed for survival to what is rewarding or pleasurable to the