What is addictive personality disorder

Overview Drug addiction, also called substance use disorder, is a disease that affects a person's brain and behavior and leads to an inability to control the use of a legal or illegal drug or medicine. Substances such as alcohol, marijuana and nicotine also are considered drugs. When you're addicted, you may continue using the drug despite the harm it causes. Drug addiction can start with experimental use of a recreational drug in social situations, and, for some people, the drug use becomes more frequent. For others, particularly with opioids, drug addiction begins when they take prescribed medicines or receive them from others who have prescriptions. The risk of addiction and how fast you become addicted varies by drug. Some drugs, such as opioid painkillers, have a higher risk and cause addiction more quickly than others. As time passes, you may need larger doses of the drug to get high. Soon you may need the drug just to feel good. As your drug use increases, you may find that it's increasingly difficult to go without the drug. Attempts to stop drug use may cause intense cravings and make you feel physically ill. These are called withdrawal symptoms. Help from your health care provider, family, friends, support groups or an organized treatment program can help you overcome your drug addiction and stay drug-free. Symptoms Drug addiction symptoms or behaviors include, among others: • Feeling that you have to use the drug regularly — daily or even several times a day • Ha...

Diagnosis If your doctor suspects you have a personality disorder, a diagnosis may be determined by: • Physical exam. The doctor may do a physical exam and ask in-depth questions about your health. In some cases, your symptoms may be linked to an underlying physical health problem. Your evaluation may include lab tests and a screening test for alcohol and drugs. • Psychiatric evaluation. This includes a discussion about your thoughts, feelings and behavior and may include a questionnaire to help pinpoint a diagnosis. With your permission, information from family members or others may be helpful. • Diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5. Your doctor may compare your symptoms to the criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic criteria Each personality disorder has its own set of diagnostic criteria. However, according to the DSM-5, generally the diagnosis of a personality disorder includes long-term marked deviation from cultural expectations that leads to significant distress or impairment in at least two of these areas: • The way you perceive and interpret yourself, other people and events • The appropriateness of your emotional responses • How well you function when dealing with other people and in relationships • Whether you can control your impulses Sometimes it can be difficult to determine the type of personality disorder, as some personality disorders share similar symptoms and...

addictive personality Dealing with a problem of drug addiction, more often than not, is a matter that boils down to correctly identifying certain factors and looking into various details. Whether it’s in the context of a heroin problem or a As you delve deeper into the various elements concerning drug addiction, a topic that will stand out above all else is the idea that some people have a natural tendency to pick up the problem more severely than others. And this is where the concept of an addictive personality comes to light. What Is An Addictive Personality? Often, the concept of an “addictive personality” is one that’s associated with the topic of drug dependency problems. Due to popular culture and mainstream media, many people view both concepts as one and the same. Nowadays, this particular idea has propagated to the point where individuals suffering from an addictive personality are considered destined to develop a substance addiction. An addictive personality, to best put it, is a type of behavior wherein one is more likely to become addicted to something. This eventually results in someone becoming extremely passionate about a specific subject and developing an obsession or fixation over it. Generally, the underlying factors for getting carried away and eventually cultivating an addictive personality are tied to overindulging in activities such as video games, food, gambling, or sex. Drugs are the most common “magnet” for this type of fixation. In terms of intrin...

During the Vietnam War, drug use was endemic among troops serving in Southeast Asia. And yet, returning veterans suffered addiction rates that were no higher than those found in the general population. It would be difficult to think of a more perfectly designed experiment to show, once and for all, that dependence is mostly a matter of personality. And yet, when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the War in Vietnam was as nothing when compared to the War on Drugs. Although this second battle has completely failed in reducing illegal drug use, it has succeeded brilliantly in convincing Americans that they need to be saved from themselves. It's a belief that was sold so well that hardly anyone noticed that Drug Czar Bill Bennett was an addictive personality hooked on both food and gambling. Look At It This Way The problem with the War on Drugs is that it creates far more harm than it eliminates. If drugs can't be kept out of prisons, how can you possibly keep them out of a mostly free society? The "War" won't go away because by now it's become a major industry. It creates jobs on one side of the law and provides the opportunity for huge financial rewards on the other. But, like Prohibition before, making a law that can't be enforced does little more than erode the public's respect for the law. When alcohol was illegal, the upper classes had theirs imported while the common folk drank it from bathtubs. No one so inclined went without. And nothing has changed. Bush turned (...