Process Addiction Essay

The word “addiction” conjures images of alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs. However, this is a limited view of addiction. People also become enslaved to behaviors such as gambling, overeating, sex, video games, shopping, and even work in what is known as process addiction (PA), and mental health professionals should understand how it compares with substance-use disorder (SUD). Here follows a brief discussion of PA, including a working definition and a comparison with SUD.

Many summations are strewn throughout mental health literature and websites, but there is currently no universal standard definition of process addiction in the field. In fact, there are varied opinions among professionals as to whether PA is actually addiction or more

PA is solely behavioral; i.e. an activity – or perhaps a certain result of an activity or even the anticipation of that result – rather than a chemical is the stimulus which activates reward processes in the brain (Alavi, Ferdosi, Jannatifard, Eslami, Alaghemandan, & Setare; 2012). There is no interaction between external chemicals and neurotransmitters. No physical withdrawal symptoms appear after cessation of the behavior. A benefit of this is that PA does not inflict potentially permanent damage to the brain as can SUD. There are sociological differences, as well. While most people agree that excessive use of alcohol is inappropriate, and that recreational use of drugs is usually illegal, most process addictions are viewed merely as extreme cases of fundamentally acceptable behavior (GCU, 2013). Everyone must eat, and most people need to shop and work. Recreational gambling is not intrinsically a bad thing, and many consider sex to be essential to health. As difficult as it is for society to subscribe wholly to the disease model of SUD, it is even more difficult to think that a person can really be addicted to commonplace activities. Indeed, PA seems to be more a question of morality than of mental health in the eyes of the