Recently someone said again how the internet and computers can be addicting. So I asked a friend of mine who is a doctor (MD) and who specializes in Addiction Consulting. Here's what he wrote to me...
"For something to be considered an addiction it needs to:
- Take control of the person's life
- Result in harm to that person or others and be continued despite the harm that it is doing
- Be carried out at inappropriate times and to the exclusion of other important activities
- Be associated with craving (withdrawal) when in a state of early abstinence
- Result in excitation of the reward cascade (dopamine and endorphin) in the mesolimbic system of the brain
With these points in mind, I leave it to you to decide if this or any other activity contitutes a true addiction, or just something that takes up a lot of a person's time and energy. Just because a person devotes time and energy to a pursuit doesn't mean that the pursuit is addictive behavior."
So who's an addict? You tell me.