Addictive personalities

Addictions have been a really common issue in our society for many years.  But now in the 21^TH Century, the misuse of technology, the lifestyle and the lost of society’s good values have created new addictions and strengthened others that have been in society for some time. In this column I will talk about addictive personalities from a personal point of view and how the lifestyle of current society has incremented the number of people that suffer from addictions.

Addiction is defined as “The habit of those who let themselves be dominated by the use of one or more toxic drugs or excessive fondness for certain games”, but for me, this definition taken from El Diccionario de la Real Academia Española does not involve a lot of addictions present in the world. But, how is the personality of an addicted person. I am going to take the example of a video game addict that I know. This person spends a minimum of 12 hours a day playing videogames, but he is wasting not only his time but also his money; he sacrifices his family, his friends, his life… This person was a great musician that renounced to music because of his addiction to videogames.   His friends have told him that he is wasting his life, his abilities and losing all what he loves, the people who love him; but he does not want to get rid of this addiction because he thinks that the situation is not so tragic: When he is out of his house, he feels anxious; he is not focused on anything but videogames; the only topic he talks about is the new game that he bought, the new level that he achieved or something about video games.

Like this guy, there are a lot of people with these afflictions, these symptoms, and these problems. But why does this happen? I personally think that currently people’s lifestyle, at least in the city, causes issues such as stress, trouble, an accelerated lifestyle, and all the bad practices that we have link these phenomena and the addictive behaviors. Here is when we have to start to reflect and think about the lifestyle that we have and if we are falling down into one addictive personality.