How Does Pleasure Seeking Fit into Addiction?

The question, “why do people use drugs,” often comes up when you or someone you love is addicted to a substance. The answer to this question is not always obvious. Some of the usual answers are stress, anxiety, mental illness, and depression, but this is not the whole answer. There is a commonality in most addictive behaviors and this commonality is pleasure seeking behavior.

What is Pleasure Seeking Behavior?

Drugs are a quick and easy way for pleasure seekers to achieve the good feelings they’re looking for.

Technically pleasure seeking behavior is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain. When examining pleasure the fact that pleasure and happiness are not the same thing. Pleasure is a sensation that you feel when you experience something that is enjoyable. Happiness is a lasting feeling that comforts you even when you are not directly feeling pleasure.

Pleasure is usually a relatively brief sensation but true happiness lasts until something interrupts it. The pleasure is usually fleeting.

Pleasure seeking behavior happens when people do certain things to receive pleasure. These things might be something as simple as exercising or watching a favorite TV show. Unfortunately, there is another side to pleasure seeking behavior. The other side is happens when a chemical or another agent gives pleasure and the person begins to use that instead of the more natural forms.

Humans are hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It is little wonder that some turn to an artificial means of receiving it. This is where prescription and illegal drugs come in.

What Does that Have to Do with Addiction?

Pleasure seeking and addiction often go hand in hand. Since the drugs give an immediate dose of pleasure, many people will turn to them to ward off an unhappiness or stressor in their life. It is natural considering the instinct to avoid pain.

When someone becomes addicted to a drug, often they start out addicted to the pleasure that the drug gives them rather than the physical changes the drug makes. Out of the hundreds of former users questioned during the study, many of them said that they missed the drug and would do it again if it did not hold the negative consequences that damaged their lives.

With drugs that are not physically addictive, the addiction is almost always to the pleasurable feeling that that drug provides. It sometimes takes years of counseling to recover from what is now known as a psychological addiction. Many scientists believe that the principle of a psychological addiction is in fact an addiction to pleasure. Unfortunately, addiction to pleasure is one of the easiest addiction traps to fall into and accounts for beginning of much of the physical addictions to drugs.

How to Find Help

Regardless of the cause of addiction, it is still important to seek help when the addiction is damaging your life. If you are addicted to pleasure or a drug that creates a false sense of pleasure call us at 800-996-6135(Who Answers?) . There are treatment centers that help both physical and psychological addictions. Let us help you find one.