"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" - Henry Ward Beecher

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Hooked: Why your brain is primed for addiction

"Several studies of the brain and behaviour back the idea that there's very little biological difference between what goes on in the head of a gambling addict and that of a crack addict. A growing number of researchers believe that the same processes lie behind all addictions, behavioural or chemical, whether it's gambling or shopping, computer gaming, love, work, exercise, pornography, eating or sex. “They have more in common than different,” says Sabine Grüsser-Sinopoli, who runs a clinic and research lab for behavioural addictions at the Charité Medical University in Berlin, Germany. “Addiction is all the same.”

That's a controversial claim. There's a common perception that overindulgence in certain behaviours is all down to individual choice. If you are overeating, oversexed, gambling away your earnings or spending all your time online, you are more likely to be considered morally abhorrent than the victim of a disease. Calling these problems “addictions” has triggered debates about whether our society or our biology is to blame, and whether people that fall foul of a behavioural obsession should be offered help and treatment rather than punishment...

The debate about whether behaviour can be considered a true addiction is not an entirely new one. In 1975, psychologist Stanton Peele wrote a book called Love and Addiction, which argued that all kinds of drug and non-drug experiences, including love, could be described as addictions. At the time, this was a term only really used to describe heroin abuse, he says. But look at how we talk about a lost love, and how similar to drug withdrawal it sounds: we are unable to think of anything else or to get out of bed, we're crying and physically in pain. “There really is no way to differentiate the behaviour of gambling, a love affair or pursuing a drug,” he says...

Joanne, 25, doesn't see herself as an addict, though her habit takes up several hours of each day, occupies her thoughts continuously, and has even made her walk out of university exams. She is obsessed with exercise, mostly a type of martial arts, but any form of exercise will do. She describes the buzz as like being on amphetamines. She has developed a tolerance for it, and so has to exercise ever longer for the same effect, working out for several hours a day now just to feel normal. If she can't, she gets anxious and irritable, and suffers headaches and nausea. She spends beyond her means to fund her habit, and has lost friends and her partner to it...

Graham, a 41-year-old computer programmer, had never gambled in his life until he was put on a new medication for Parkinson's disease that boosted his dwindling dopamine levels. Within a month of commencing the treatment he was consumed by the desire to gamble on the internet, losing $5000 within a few months. He also bought many items he didn't need, and was fixated on sex with his wife. When his neurologist reduced the medication, the habits were switched off “like turning off a light”...

One thing that this focus on behavioural addictions highlights is that we all have the potential to be addicts, says Jim Orford of the University of Birmingham, UK, author of a report on behavioural addictions for the UK Office of Science and Technology. “Almost any of us can become behavioural addicts, given the right exposure, the right timing and so on,” he says. “But there are multiple causes: our personalities, genetics – it's not simple.” Why some people develop addictions while others can safely dip into these activities with no ill effects is still unknown...

Whether behavioural addictions, such as playing slot machines, are a gateway to more physically harmful ones is still hotly debated, just as it is with drugs. There are signs that teenage exposure to gambling or gaming seems to predispose the developing brain to more severe problems later, says Griffiths."