Addiction Recovery

Before we can understand addiction recovery, we should try and figure out what addictions actually are. Addictions can be complicated to understand, but they can be described as some or all of they following. They may be obsessions, compulsions or excessive psychological dependences.

Common examples of addictions include; alcohol addiction, drug addictions (on both recreational and medical drugs), tobacco/nicotine addiction, gambling addiction. There are also addictions that have come to be identified as such recently by the medical communities for example porn addiction, Internet addiction and eating addiction.

Medical practice tends to recognize addictions as a form of neurobiological disorder. That is; they pertain to the functioning of the central nervous system. This means that "drug tolerance" and "physical dependence" are not the only measures of addiction, although they could be part of the cause for addictions.

Drug tolerance means one needs an increase in dose to maintain the effect of the drug, this is the case with some pain killers like morphine. In this case the line between addiction and tolerance is blurred by the fact that if the tolerance is not managed properly, it can lead to an addiction long after the person needs the drug.

Physical dependence in itself is also not an addiction but can be a symptom of an addiction. Physical dependence means that withdrawing a drug leads to withdraw symptoms. Of course it should be noted that most drug addictions come withdraw symptoms when the sufferers try to quit, but in this case the symptoms are only a part of a large picture which includes psychological factors.

Psychological dependence is perhaps the most common denominator in most addictions, and may be the only factor causing the addiction in a number of cases for example in gambling and Internet addictions.

Addiction recovery programs are wide and varied, many of them tailored to the specific types of addictions that they are targeted towards. For example many drug addiction recovery programs have a form of detoxification where the presence of the drug in the body is flushed out. This step is usually among the first steps of the whole process before they go on to methods that deal with withdrawal and cravings. Recovery programs also consider healthier ways to find satisfaction.