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Describing Addiction
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About the lecture
In this lecture, we think about how to describe and define addiction, focusing in particular on: (i) the three descriptors being tolerance, dependence and withdrawal; (ii) tolerance referring to the amount of substance that can be consumed, while the consumer can still perform behaviours normally; (iii) dependence being split into psychological dependence (maintaining a preferred mood state) and physical dependence (avoiding physical withdrawal symptoms); (iv) withdrawal, which is the effect of removing the addicted substance or behaviour, split into psychological and physical.
About the lecturer
Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured
Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).
Hello, I'm Dr Al Sharpton. Sorry,
00:00:06and I'm a cognitive neuropsychologist at Goldsmiths University of London.
00:00:09In this course, we're going to be looking at addiction.
00:00:14And in this first lecture,
00:00:17what I'm going to be talking to you about is how to describe addiction.
00:00:19Because addiction is quite a complicated behaviour.
00:00:24We might think of addiction to do with alcohol or drugs,
00:00:28But those are just chemical dependencies.
00:00:33There are other addictions gambling, gaming, shopping,
00:00:36and as long as it ends up impairing someone's abilities,
00:00:41somehow it can be closed as an addiction.
00:00:46So there's three major descriptors that we can use tolerance, dependence
00:00:49and withdrawal.
00:00:58The tolerance is the amount that someone can take,
00:01:00which allows them to continue a behaviour.
00:01:04So if I like drinking two pints of beer, that's my tolerance.
00:01:07Someone else might have a tolerance of four pints of beer.
00:01:14Now, the reason that that's important is because for each person,
00:01:18that tolerance level is going to have an impact on what becomes too much.
00:01:22What is less etcetera
00:01:26now, addiction is difficult to really define,
00:01:29so it ends up being an issue of what is average and most importantly,
00:01:34when it starts impairing someone so tolerant is an important
00:01:40concept for us to understand how much can someone take,
00:01:45which allows them to continue a particular behaviour
00:01:50or engage in taking a particular substance?
00:01:53The second major descriptor is dependence,
00:01:58so dependence refers to how much we rely on a particular substance.
00:02:01And there's two different aspects of dependence.
00:02:07One is psychological dependence, and the other is physical dependence.
00:02:10Psychological dependence is how much we need to do a particular thing.
00:02:15Gambling, gaming, shopping, et cetera.
00:02:21To make us feel better or to keep us in the mood that we want to.
00:02:24So that's the psychological dependence that this is where
00:02:29I want to be in my emotional state,
00:02:33and I'm dependent on a particular level of activity or drug or
00:02:36substance to allow me to continue to be happy or cheerful,
00:02:42etcetera.
00:02:47So that's a psychological dependence.
00:02:48Physical dependence is about the state that it puts us into
00:02:51now when someone gets physically dependent,
00:02:56the result of that is that when you take
00:03:00away the substance that they're physically dependent on.
00:03:03So, for example,
00:03:06if you take alcohol away from an alcoholic or you take
00:03:07away the ability to go shopping from someone who's shopping,
00:03:12Uh, addict.
00:03:18What happens is that they start feeling physically different.
00:03:20They start feeling nauseous or unwell or low mood, etcetera, etcetera.
00:03:25So this is about the physical dependence on the substance
00:03:33to allow you to stay within a particular emotional state.
00:03:38So those two types of dependence,
00:03:43psychological dependence and physical dependence
00:03:45there would drive people to keep
00:03:49engaging in a particular behaviour or to take particular substance.
00:03:52So the dependence is a really important thing, because that's what is their hook.
00:03:57To make them continue taking the particular behaviour or substance.
00:04:03The third important descriptive for addiction is withdrawal,
00:04:07So withdrawal is the outcome of taking the
00:04:12particular substance away or taking the behaviour away.
00:04:15So not allowing heroin addict to have their heroin
00:04:19or not letting a gambler go and put bets.
00:04:23What happens when you start taking this away
00:04:26is that they go into the state of withdrawal
00:04:30and the withdrawal, just like the dependence has got two different aspects.
00:04:33One of them is the psychological feeling where they might start feeling low mood,
00:04:37anxious, angry, agitated, etcetera.
00:04:44So that's where they've become psychologically addicted to
00:04:49having that particular thing to keep them going.
00:04:52The other is the physical effect,
00:04:57and this is where they might start feeling nauseous.
00:04:59They might get tremors, they start physically feeling unwell.
00:05:03And that's probably because the biological system has got to a point where
00:05:07it's requiring these substances to keep the person going in a particular way.
00:05:13So what we get out of these three descriptors is that we have tolerance,
00:05:19which is how much do I need of a
00:05:24particular substance or behaviour to keep me like this.
00:05:27And each person's tolerance is different,
00:05:32so someone who hardly ever drinks will have a low tolerance for alcohol,
00:05:35where someone who drinks a lot and is dependent on alcohol has got a high tolerance.
00:05:39Then we've got the dependence, which is a physical dependence.
00:05:44They need that physical amount of something to keep going,
00:05:48and then you've got the psychological dependence,
00:05:52which is to keep their mood and their emotional state in a particular range.
00:05:54They need to continue having that behaviour.
00:05:59Then when you take that away, what you get is withdrawal.
00:06:02So withdrawal is the impact of stopping the person having
00:06:06the substance or the behaviour that they become dependent on
00:06:12and again that can have a psychological or physical impact,
00:06:15and these three are general descriptors that we can use for the addictions. Now.
00:06:20Addiction is an extremely complex area,
00:06:27and although there are generalities, there's also a lot of differences.
00:06:31But these three descriptors are very important for
00:06:34allowing us to at least first of all,
00:06:38describe what the behaviour is.
00:06:40So in the next lecture,
00:06:44I'm going to be telling you about the risk
00:06:46factors for someone ending up with an addiction.
00:06:48
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Jansari, A. (2022, June 10). Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) - Describing Addiction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/options/edexcel-a-level-psychology-9ps0?auth=0&lesson=7676&option=149&type=lesson
MLA style
Jansari, A. "Edexcel A Level Psychology (9PS0) – Describing Addiction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 10 Jun 2022, https://massolit.io/options/edexcel-a-level-psychology-9ps0?auth=0&lesson=7676&option=149&type=lesson