Addiction Interaction Disorder

It is important to first acknowledge addiction as a brain disease where individuals wired for addiction lay tracks as neuropathways deep rooted in the brain system.  These “tracks” and their connection with the pleasure and reward circuitry is where addiction is active.  It is important to note how deep rooted these “tracks” are and the times of which they are formed.  For example, smoking, often engaged at a very young age, leaves individuals with such deep rooted tracks that it is said smoking is one of the most difficult “habits” to quit.  This is simply due to how deep and the duration of time of which these “tracks” have been formulated and active.  This brings us to the concept of Addiction Interaction Disorder, an addiction phenomenon where multiple addictions combine to overwhelm a person by their complexity and power. The phenomenon is so strong; no specific focus is strong enough to escape from it.  It is important to acknowledge that the “tracks” that are laid in the brain containing multiple addictions, for example cocaine use coupled with sex create complexity within the neuropathway that addicts often can not engage in one without the other.  The two in the example, sex and cocaine, become packaged together.  This being said, another way to formulate addiction interaction disorder is that addictions more than coexist, they interact, reinforce, become part of one another. They become packages deep rooted in the brain.  Another example is smoking and coffee drinking; it is very difficult for those that have combined the two behaviors over duration of time to engage in one without engagement with the other.  Simply while sipping a coffee the brain is looking for the nicotine and vice versa.  This creates many complications for addicts and addiction interaction is a way for addicts to mediate addictive behaviors.  The various ways addicts engage in addiction interaction behaviors are as follows:

Cross Tolerance

• Simultaneous increase in addictive behavior in two or more addictions.  Transfer of a high level of addictive activity with little or no developmental sequence.

Withdrawal Mediation

• One addiction serves to moderate, relieve, or avoid withdrawal from another.

Replacement

• One addiction replaces another with majority of emotional and behavioral features.

Alternating Addiction Cycles

• Addictions cycle back and forth in a patterned systemic way.

Masking

• Addict uses one addiction to cover up for another, perhaps more substantive addiction.

Ritualizing

• Addictive behavior of one addiction serves as a ritual pattern to engage another.

Intensification

• Fusion dependence: neither addiction separately is sufficient; only simultaneous use is sufficient.
• Partial Fusion: Addict combines addictions in such a fashion to be more potent than each addiction separately; addictions are used independently part of the time.

Numbing

• Addiction is used to medicate shame or pain caused by other addiction or addictive bingeing.

Disinhibiting

• One addiction is used to lower inhibitions for other addictive acting out.

Combining

• Mixing addictive experiences to moderate responses due to neuropathway interaction.

The cause of such high relapse percentages in addiction stems simply from the idea that these addiction interactions, packages that the brain recalls when in its addiction system and only one aspects of the interaction is treated and not the other.  Simply, when you treat an individual for their cocaine use yet you do not explore the fact that this individual also uses prostitutes often coupled with his cocaine use, you have an individual susceptible to relapse in the fact that if he continues to use prostitutes his brain is going to be “screaming” for cocaine or simply the package of which he has put these two behaviors together into from a neuropathway perspective will need to be activated.  When treating addiction interaction disorder, it is important to treat both behaviors separately and also how they interact with one another in order to allow for the addict to have increased probability of sustaining recovery.

Mike Quarress CSAT