What is an Addiction Center and Why You Need One

Many people who suffer from addiction don’t know what an addiction center is and why they need one. As Uriah Heap singer-songwriter, Ken Hensley said, “It is hard to understand addiction unless you have experienced it. The world of addiction along with what creates and drives it is has long been a mystery to outsiders. It seems that everyone has a definition of addiction but none of them can truly understand what addiction is unless they live through it themselves.

Still, there will never be a true understanding unless people keep trying.

Addiction Center Definition

Since 1806, Merriam-Webster has been the go-to resource for understanding words. Its online version lists addiction as a noun that was first used in the year 1532. Their definition of addiction is, “compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (such as heroin, nicotine, and alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined psychiatric symptoms upon withdrawal.”

Merriam-Webster goes on to list that as a broad definition of addiction and adds this to refine it, “persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful.” This narrowed definition of addiction adds an important aspect to the meaning, harmful.

Addiction is therefore marked by the narrowed terms ‘habit-forming,’ ‘compulsive,’ and ‘harmful.’ Regardless of the rest of the words used in a definition for addiction, these three carry the basic components of addiction.

Harmful, Compulsive, Habit-Forming

If you compulsively use a harmful, habit-forming substance or participate in habit-forming, harmful activities, you have an addiction. Now we have a relatively clear image of what addiction is. You then need to understand the why of addiction. For that, the definition MentalHelp.net offers can be helpful.

“Addiction is the repeated involvement with a substance or activity, despite the substantial harm it now causes, because that involvement was (and may continue to be) pleasurable and/or valuable.” This definition of addiction adds the final component to understanding what addiction is the reason why somebody would allow the addiction to happen.

MentalHelp.net lists four key parts to a definition of addiction.

Both substances and activities are included.
It will lead to considerable harm.
There is habitual involvement regardless of the harm.
It persists because it was, or is, pleasurable and/or valuable to you.

That is the key to the ‘why’ of addiction. People enjoy or value the substance or activity beyond their fear of the harm it will cause them to suffer. The satisfaction of winning the online auction, the rush of the wheel landing on your number, the comfort that is found at the bottom of an ice cream carton, all of these things are fine in moderation. It is only when you go to the extreme and use it in excess that addiction begins.

Addiction Centers Definition

The word ‘addiction’ means different things to different people. The definition of addiction is something that people come up with in their own mind based on their own life experience. A former addict who would rather remain anonymous gives this definition of addiction, “It is a condition brought about by something I take that I cannot get along without, because I get deathly sick without it.”

However you define addiction, remember that nobody is immune to the possibility of developing an addiction. Understanding is the first step to helping end addiction.

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