Addiction - a stigmatized phenomenon and a special psychological phenomenon

By: Isa Pašalić, psychologist

Addiction, although a stigmatized phenomenon in our society, represents a special phenomenon in psychology.

We view addiction as any excessive attachment and need for certain substances, actions, objects, or people, on which we significantly depend to regulate our internal state or create an illusion of stability.

All these objects of addiction have significant power because they affect our biochemical balance, causing feelings of temporary happiness, calmness, or excitement. While in a normal state we are not capable of experiencing these states, the object of our addiction can artificially produce these feelings, thereby creating addiction.

Happiness, calmness, and excitement are natural feelings that a healthy person possesses and is capable of feeling in circumstances that naturally evoke such feelings. However, traumatized people usually suffer from a condition called anhedonia, which is the inability to feel positive life emotions and causes a lack of motivation.

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Psychologist Isa Pašalić on the state of confusion

By: Psychologist Isa Pašalić Confusion. A state that can simultaneously prompt a search for meaning, but also paralyze our ability to act. The state of confusion arises as a result of several different factors. One of the reasons, on which there is

It is precisely in such circumstances that traumatized people are extremely susceptible to becoming attached to substances, objects, actions, and people who are capable of evoking these feelings in them.

Due to the inability to produce these feelings within themselves, they seek them externally, and with each new dose of the addictive object, they need more to achieve the desired effect.

The problem of addiction, like many problems related to trauma, is solved by the person having to address the emotional problems from the past that primarily caused the problem of feeling a lack of positive emotions. Through practice, we often find that behind this lack of emotions lies a much more difficult and painful emotional state that we have learned to suppress over time to protect ourselves.

The moment we succeed in processing old emotional states, our ability to feel positive emotions returns, and addiction and the need for any substances, actions, or people from whom we received that external, false illusion of emotions that should have always come from within ourselves are eliminated.

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On Reason and Psychology: How to Unleash Intuition?

By: Psychologist Isa Pašalić In the modern world, there is a belief that the only valid way to reach the truth is through intellect. We have begun to view intellect and mind as equivalent to reason. Considering that most of us do not co

In transitional societies, addiction is usually seen as a character weakness, and such people are usually isolated and driven to the margins of society. In Hungary, as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is believed that these people are to blame themselves and that society should not suffer because of their addiction. Although society is partly right in viewing this phenomenon this way, the problem of addiction must be considered from the perspective of somatic psychology and the trauma that could have caused such a problem in a person.

When society is aware that some individual problems can be solved with the help of society, we certainly enable such a society to prosper more easily and have the opportunity to reintegrate its addicts from the margins back into society and enable future generations not to encounter the same or similar problems.

An approach where society takes responsibility for the most vulnerable is a society that allows itself to grow, without excluding the individual responsibility of each person for their own health.

By gaining deeper knowledge about the causes of addiction and our role in preventing it, we give our society the opportunity to free itself from the painful chains that addiction causes, whether in society, the family, or the individual themselves.

*Isa Pašalić is attending the Psychology MA program at the University of Pécs