What Does Having An Addictive Personality Mean

Wrapping Up What Does Having An Addictive Personality Mean

In our experience, those with addictive personalities exhibit a number of the traits weve outlined in this article.

Each of them, especially in conjunction with one another, make people more prone to sampling destructive habits and less likely to be able to take on experiences in moderation.

If you feel that you have an addictive personality, its important to lean on friends, family, and medical professionals to help you solve your underlying issues and help mitigate the risk of future substance abuse.

If youre struggling with addiction now, the sooner you get help the sooner youll be able to get your life back on track.

To that end, our team can help.

At Recovery Resource Center, we help people get the assistance they need to navigate through drug addiction, alcohol addiction and more. Let us take our expertise and help you.

Learn more about the addiction youre struggling with and find out how you can get the support you need today

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Recovery Resource Center provides information on the best evidence-based treatment centers for people struggling with addiction and mental health.

Dont Use Marijuana To Relax

If you are tense or anxious at the end of a long day, you might have found that some marijuana can help you relax. But it has a rebound effect when it wears off. Anxiety actually increases. It can also harm your motivation or trigger psychological problems.

Do: Look for safer methods of stress management and relaxation

Contact 12 Keys Rehab

If you or someone you know is exhibiting addictive personality traits, dont despair. You are not alone. With understanding, you can overcome any present addictions. Beyond this, you can also prevent new ones from forming.

With the help of compassionate professionals, you can learn to channel the traits that go along with an addictive personality into positive results. An addictive personality does not mean you are doomed to addiction. With awareness and support, you can live a healthy and fulfilling life that is separate from addiction.

Understanding the signs of an addictive personality can help you better understand how you may deal with potential addictions. It can help you identify why you or someone you know may be more susceptible to addictions than others. Understanding is the first step to living an addiction-free life.

If you are struggling with addiction, contact 12 Keys Rehab to get treatment and help today. The professionals at 12 Keys will help you learn how to live a healthy and productive life, regardless of your addictive personality. They can help you cope with the stresses of life and channel your personality traits into positive behaviors.

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What Does It Mean To Have An Addictive Personality

Many of us living with addictions also identify as having addictive personalities. What does this mean, and how do you know if this applies to you? When we have healthy ways of coping with lifes challenges, we can handle our emotions in productive ways. We have emotional independence, and we feel strong in our ability to rely on ourselves to get through difficulty. When we have an addictive personality, on the other hand, we find we form addictive relationships and dependencies in multiple areas of our lives. We form attachments pretty quickly and easily to substances, relationships and behaviors.

Our addictive personality can make us become easily attached to habits that arent healthy or constructive. These can range from relatively harmless habits to more compulsive habits that contribute to our anxiety and can form the basis of disorders like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We can find ourselves attached to multiple habits, enough so that we feel that this tendency towards attachment is part of our personality, part of who we are as people.

At the root of our addictive personalities is the belief that we need something or someone outside of ourselves to feel happy, whole and complete. We might use these things and people, often without realizing it, to cope with our feelings of sadness and anxiety, and our fears of inadequacy and unworthiness.

We understand recovery. Many of us have lived it firsthand. Call 871-5440 for more information.

Benefits Of An Addictive Personality

An addictive personality isnt necessarily a bad trait. An awareness of the possibilities of negative consequences and troubling behaviors can actually be very positive. In fact, the personality traits of an addict can be challenged into positive activities and results. Some of the personality traits that make you more prone to having an addictive personality can also make you shine in the workplace and in your personal life.

Addiction can result from the repetition of pleasure-causing activities, such as drugs or alcohol. The ability to identify productive pleasure-causing activities could lead to positive results.Identifying these activities is a key way to channel an addictive personality into a positive direction. Again, this does not mean you should substitute one vice for another. A work or exercise addiction can negatively impact your health and personal life as well.

But you can channel compulsivity, impulsiveness and sensation seeking into positive results. Doing so can help you work harder, get in shape, make friendships and more.

An addictive personality can help you achieve your goals as long as youre able to monitor your life for potential negative impacts. In fact, some experts say that the personality traits of an addict also make for great leaders and business people.

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Experiencing Other Mental Health Disorders

Along with the genetic connection, another individual health trait that can correspond with a higher risk of addiction is the presence of pre-existing mental health disorders. People who struggle with various mental health conditions can be more likely to abuse and become dependent on substances. These conditions include but are not limited to:

• Depression, bipolar disorder, or other mood disorders
• Anxiety or panic disorder

• Antisocial personality disorder

For example, as explained by Brain Facts, multiple studies over the last decades have demonstrated a strong link between schizophrenia and addiction to nicotine. In fact, it has been shown that nicotine can even temporarily lessen some of the symptoms of schizophrenia. The use of cigarettes to manage these symptoms is a phenomenon known as self-medication, which is a common source of substance abuse that later becomes addiction.

What Makes A Person Become Addicted To An Addiction

This seemed to make sense, as a person would have the same lifelong predispositions to an addiction: genetic makeup, childhood traumas, diagnoses of anxiety or depression all of which could plausibly set them up to become addicted to, say, alcohol, once they have put in the hard work to get their heroin addiction under control.

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Addictive Personality Traits: Can They Predict Addiction

Your personality is unique to youit makes you who you are and illustrates your passions, likes, and dislikes. But did you know that your personality could also leave you at risk for developing addictive qualities? These characteristics are known as addictive personality traits, which we will examine in closer detail below. But how reliable are signs of addictive personality traits? Keep reading for answers.

Contents

• FAQs Regarding Addictive Personality Traits

Dont Wait To Get Help

It is a myth that a person has to hit rock-bottom before you can get help for your addictions. You may have a personality that craves excess but it doesnt have to be unhealthy. A healthy enthusiasm adds to life, while an addiction takes away from it.

Unity Behavioral Health can help you find balance in your life. Our addiction specialists are experienced in treating dual diagnosis situations, the most common cause of addictions. We have inpatient and outpatient programs so you can begin your rehab at the right intensity and step down to lower levels as needed.

Of course, Unity has an aftercare program, the final step. We are devoted to helping you have a successful outcome from your treatment, and continue to long-term recovery. Waiting wont help you in any way. Contact us now. We are available to answer your questions at any time.

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Related To Others With Addiction

There is no question that genetic makeup has at least some effect on a persons risk of developing addiction. As described by many studies, including one from the journal Psychiatry, having a close family member who is struggling with an addiction can make it more likely that an individual will develop an addiction as well.

In fact, certain portions of the human genome have even been identified as having a direct connection to specific addictions, according to a study in Nature. With this knowledge, it may be possible in the future to more accurately identify just how likely a person is to develop addiction. Still, genetic potential is no guarantee that an individual will develop addiction. Other complex, environmental factors also contribute to the potential that a genetic predisposition will become a true substance use disorder.

What Makes A Person An Addictive Personality Disorder

Other factors, such as environment and a support system, play a role. What Is an Addictive Personality? An addictive personality is a colloquial or informal term based on the belief that certain people have a particular set of personality traits that predisposes them to addiction and other problematic behaviors, such as drug abuse or gambling.

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The Obsessive Compulsive Trait

Addiction sometimes has to do with a lack of impulse control, but this is not exclusively the inability to resist impulses. In fact, people who are too rigid with managing their impulses may also end up using substances as a manifestation of an obsessive-compulsive behavior pattern. In fact, addiction often becomes a compulsion to use the substance based on a habit that has formed over time rather than a single impulse to try something new.

In this way, people with intense focus and habitual behaviors may be as likely to develop addiction as those who are unable to control impulses. The obsession with using psychoactive drugs is a main symptom of the disorder, and it can exist both separate from and in concert with a lack of impulse control that can also be a hallmark of addiction.

Personality Traits Of An Addictive Personality

Simply because you fit the description of several traits of an addictive personality does not necessarily mean that you have one. However, it may mean that you should watch your relationship with harmful substances and activities because you may be more prone to addiction. The following personality traits may be indicative of someone with an addictive personality.

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The Disconnected Cautious Trait

According to the Scientific American article, the bold, risk-taker type who develops addiction is more likely to be male. On the other hand, cautious people who have difficulty with social relationships and who at the same time may suffer from depression, anxiety, or both can also develop addiction these personality types are more often women.

Considering the self-medication idea mentioned above, people with these personality traits may be more likely to try to manage symptoms of anxiety or painful feelings of loneliness, disconnection, and depression by using alcohol or drugs that dull those feelings. This may then lead to the person becoming dependent on the substance to feel good in general, which in turn can lead to tolerance and addiction.

Believing Quitting Is Too Hard

If you have an addictive personality, you may feel that quitting everything addictive is just too difficult. You may have bounced from drink to drugs, from drugs to sex, from sex to overeating, from overeating to overexercise. Some people just feel life in moderation is too empty, too boring, too normal. They need excess.

This is denial. Even people with long-term, ingrained addictions can quit. Many of them discover this later in life, after losing friends, family, jobs and everything but their addictions. Once they find that recovery is possible, life opens up again and they grieve the lost years.

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Treatment For Addiction At Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital

At Baton Rouge Behavioral Hospital, we believe that, with the right treatment approaches, you can recover from the harmful parts of having addictive personality traits while still staying true to yourself. Addiction recovery can help you to feel creative, build meaningful relationships with your peers, and learn how to use healthy coping mechanisms to heal your mental health.

Here, you have the opportunity to safely detox from alcohol and/or drug use to keep yourself on track toward physical, emotional, and mental recovery. After this process, you will have access to additional treatments such as:

Is Addictive Personality A Myth

While “addictive personality” is a common phrase in public discourse, it’s not actually a medical or scientific term. The scientific community has not yet identified an exact personality type that corresponds with heightened addiction risksalthough scientific research has shown that there are a variety of personality traits and genetic combinations that can lead to a higher risk for developing addictions. Those factors are different for individual people.

“There are definitely individuals who are prone to become addicted in various ways,” Boyd says, noting that addiction is often a combination of both genetics and the environment. “Some of this is based on personal history, but much of it is determined by having a family history of addiction.”

In her book Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, health journalist Maia Szalavitz reports that no single personality profile has been linked to addiction, despite decades of research on the subject. If you think you’re addicted to something because of who you are or because of your personality, you’ve been led astray.

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How To Spot An Addictive Personality

Do you have an addictive personality?

Can you spot an addictive personality? If youre like most people, probably not. While many people imagine all addicts as rail-thin heroin addicts leaning against the side of buildings in the poorer parts of town, the reality is that many people whom you may not suspect might have traits that could make them more susceptible to potential addictions. What are the signs of an addictive personality disorder? What can you do if you or someone you love exhibits such traits?

The Debate over Addictive Personality Disorder

First off, it is important to acknowledge that there is no clinical diagnosis known as addictive personality disorder. While there are several known personality disorders that can result in a clinical diagnosis, addictive personality is not one of them.

That leads some to believe that what is known in the common vernacular as addictive personality disorder does not really exist. However, for those who subscribe to the theory that there is such a thing as addictive personality disorder, the evidence seems to point to the fact that some people appear to be more prone to developing an addiction than others. This, then, is what most people mean when they refer to addictive personality disorder.

Common Traits that Indicate an Addictive Personality

Addressing the Addictive Personality through Drug and Alcohol Rehab

Were Here to Help

Examples Of Addictive Personality In A Sentence

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How Can You Tell If Someone Has An Addiction

Theres no medical test to determine who may develop an addiction, but there are certain personality traits that are more common among people who have addictions: A love of excitement: Driving fast, taking risks, having sexual flings, and doing drugs all provide a rush of dopamine, a chemical in the brain that makes you feel pleasure.

What Makes Someone Predisposed To Develop An Addiction

But historically, a number of personality traits have been associated with developing an addiction. However, just because someone is predisposed to develop an addiction through genetics or personality traits does not necessarily mean they will become addicted. Other factors, such as environment and a support system, play a role.

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Healthy Ways To Overcome Addictive Personalities

Whether its compulsive comfort eating or an obsession with social media, any addiction can be used to mask a deep, underlying need. Instead of feeding your addictive tendencies, you can take certain actions to feel healthier and more at peace:

• Practice restorative activities, like mindfulness meditation, yoga, relaxation in a hot bath, exercise or a good nights sleep.
• Connect with others through shared interests and activities that you enjoy.
• Limit your non-work screen time as well as how much time you spend streaming TV or movies.
• Avoid using shopping, sex or other substitutes to bolster your self-esteem.
• Try seeking excitement through healthy avenues, like trying a new activity, traveling or setting a goal for yourself.
• Get professional help if you develop a Drug or Alcohol Addiction.

Addictive Personality Symptoms In Adolescents

Common traits found in adolescents who abuse drugs and alcohol and exhibit problematic gambling include: 7,8

• High impulsivity.
• Anxiety.
• Neuroticism.

Some of these traits show up in early childhood, while others may develop later in adolescence. Although not every adolescent who exhibits these traits will develop an addiction, its important to know the predictors so that drug abuse education and early intervention can be provided.

Additional adolescent traits that are associated with computer gaming addiction include: 7

• Low self-esteem.

• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder .

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