Addiction

8:21 AM

 I had to witness a person succumbing to something toxic. Despite the 'nudge', the accountability partners, the support, yet, the person relapsed. A lot of people were disappointed to say the least. The main question was, "aren't we enough?", so much that you needed someone else to relief yourself off the pain.

Addiction could be anything. Whether it be drugs, or alcohol or that toxic relationship with that person who brings you down or even the french fries that would ruin your healthy eating steak (attacked).

For me, my main addiction is definitely social media. I watched The Social Dilemma the other day, and honestly they were telling me things I already know. Yes, the algorithms will make my explore feed change according to what I've searched. I only searched for Blackpink once after their How You Like That release, and now I am a Blink because their videos keep popping up on my explore feed. Before Blackpink, it was the Myers-Briggs personality type memes keeping me up all night. They capitalise on your addiction, I know, I am a sophisticate for being aware, yet I succumb to it.

This reminds me of the Theory of Addiction I learnt in Behavioural Economics. I drew the illustration on my IG story, so bear with me as I try to explain part of the theory.


Technical explanation:

The y-axis indicates the utility of consuming the addictive good, whereas the x-axis is the level of stock of past consumption. The line A to D is the utility when one does not consume the good wherease B to C is the utility when consuming. So there are two things that oppose one another when it comes to addiction; tolerance and reinforcement. Tolerance is when utility of consuming decreases as you start increasing your consumption, as illustrated in the lines A to D and B to C respectively (apologies my B to C line is not meant to be a flat line, it's meant to go downwards, and yet still have that increment in the marginal utility). Whereas reinforcement is the diverging lines between AD and BC, where I labelled MUc (marginal utility of consumption). This happens because the immediate gain in utility increases as stock of past consumption increases. 

Layman explanation:

Say you are addicted to social media. You start mindlessly scrolling for 30 minutes when you've just started Instagram. The next day, you want to scroll for only 30 minutes, but it just didn't feel right; a notification pops up on the 31st minutes, so you then start scrolling up to one hour, then by the time the pandemic happened, you are on IG for up to 7 hours! (true story lmao why am I exposing myself here). Tolerance is when you start wanting to go on IG for longer hours day by day, because you felt like it wasn't enough to go on it as compared to the last time you used it. You use it so much, then you don't feel any kind of endorphin kick anymore. 

Hence, that's where reinforcement comes in, you know you have an addiction to social media. So you decide to go cold turkey. So you were once in the line BC and now you're on line AD. But damn, you feel left out. FOMO, right? How's everyone coping in this lockdown 2.0? Ahh, I miss talking to my friends/acquaintances. I want to know what are they up to! Withdrawal symptoms kick in so you cave in to the temptation and decide to go back on the BC line, because once you go back on Instagram, ahh, you feel so much better. You get to interact with your friends once again. And every time you go back on your cold turkey once again, the divergence between the lines BC and AD increase; leaving you wanting more.

A very harsh theory, innit? But that's what addiction is all about. So why should I be upset with other people's addiction, when I can't even tackle mine? As a behavioural economist, I should also be more empathetic as I already know the underlying reasons as to why people do what they do, and why people eventually cave in to that one thing they are addicted to most.

But the theory is all that; just a theory. I also do know that there are ways to tackle addiction. One of the ways is to 'nudge', if you're that person looking from the outside, because your friend who suffers from said addiction says they want your help. But you know that eventually, they may go back, sometimes they try so hard to even hide the addiction from you.

But you know what? Give them a break. Be upset all you want, but think about the times you cave in to something bad for you too. We are after all, human. Relapses happen. And that is okay. Because if they are a sophisticate i.e. self-aware, they will know that that thing is bad for them, and it is entirely up to them to change. It takes a strong willpower to get out from an addiction. So celebrate those little milestones if your friends, or even you; are slowly getting out of an addiction. Be proud of yourself. Incentivise yourself with a reward for pulling through. Little things matter. 

One step at a time.

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