Have you ever wondered why video games are so addictive to some people?
Have you thought about the comfort that the success rate brings to the person playing the game that is based solely on their brain’s capacity to figure out the algorithm of the game and not on external forces? The capacity to figure it out (which is simply to follow a mathematical formula) as the only predictor of success AND not having to negotiate with external and uncontrollable forces (such as what you may encounter in relationships), may lead to the experience of complete control which is as worthy as gold.
I think that the same may be true for other addictions as well. When you are on a chemical or a behavior that you can fully control and this, and only this, absolute level of control will predict your subjective wellbeing and do so with absolute certainty, then you’d want to go back to it over and over. You’d develop full dependence on this thing as the motivation for living.
In the parlor of philosophy I may say that addiction happens when the chemical or behavior is both the necessary and sufficient condition of one’s wellbeing. If this thing is not necessary – there are other things that can get the person “high” such as gardening, a good book or a dinner with loved ones; or not sufficient – one also needs a good job and/or good relationships on an equal level to be happy (other things mitigate the power of one’s choice of drug, that is) then addiction won’t or is less likely to happen.
It’s just food for thought.
When and how did relationships become so out of control and so painfully unpredictable in their ability to please you that you decided to give up trying and to start demanding absolute control over your happiness elsewhere?
You can’t stand the hit-or-miss success rate, or a natural fluctuation of the probability of success for pleasure, of any relationship so you turn to absolute predictability, a form of eternal self-administered bliss.
Is the price you pay worth it?
Would you, will you, fight the battle to get your brain back to balance and your mind back to your Self?
