‘Addiction’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life

If pleasure is the only guide, then any addict with enough money to get what they want is our model.

A couple of the most common desires are losing weight and giving up smoking. People genuinely want to do these things and for what they see as sensible and rational reasons. And yet they often don’t. If they had more energy to do these things, surely they would. Isn’t this a motivation problem?

How does catching our own errors and correcting them protect us from stress? Can doing so also protect us from addiction?

An article by Connie Miller defines the concept of co-dependency beautifully, as “an absence of relationship with the self”. By looking outside to others for confirmation of who we are, and that we are OK, we lose contact with ourselves.

The American Medical Association decided this week not to press ahead with a recommendation to the American Psychiatric Association that video game addiction be labelled as a formal mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The association also decided against urging parents to limit children to a total of two hours per day of playing video games, watching television and surfing the Internet.