Fvaisey wrote: »

Short Definition of Addiction:

Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.

Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment or engagement in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death.

This is from the American Society of Addiction Medicine. It seems like a pretty fair statement and I think what Ang is describing has a lot of these elements. So I'll chime in on the yes side.

Thanks for posting the definition. I tend to stay away from the sugar/carb addiction threads as they can become rather heated and nasty.

I do believe that people have different criteria for what qualifies as an addiction. Based on their own personal experiences. I personally have never seen first hand individuals dependant on drugs or alcohol so other than what I've seen on Intervention i don't really know what people go through. I can only imagine how awful it must actually be.

What I dont like seeing is others who have faced addictions to drugs/alcohol telling someone else that their addiction to carbs/sugar doesn't qualify as an actual addiction based on their own beliefs on the subject. Also i don't feel that brushing it of as someone 'making excuses' for their behavior, does anything other than insult the individual struggling with it. I would argue that the same could be said about any addiction, I've heard of people quitting drugs/alcohol cold turkey, so if some can make the decision to do that, then are others that haven't just making excuses for their behavior?

Based on the above definition of addiction, one does not have to be selling their body, etc to obtain a substance to be an addict. Therefore addiction can come in many forms and mean different things to different people.

Chemical dependency may be the term many are looking for when arguing that carb addiction does not meet the standards.

I believe carbs can be addictive. There is a lot of research that indicates this may be the case. Based on my experience, I think the research is correct. The more of certain carbs I have (anything with added sugar is the absolute worst, but bread or wheat in general has a similar though slightly weaker effect on me) the more I want.

People talk about moderation, but it isn't realistic with carbs for me. I can moderate any other food with no problem...cheese, dairy in general, almonds, any meat, etc. But once sugar enters the equation, it sets off massive cravings that are extremely difficult to resist. It often results not only in finishing the sugary food (the entire pint of ice cream or entire bag of cookies) but then looking around for anything else I can binge on.

It is MUCH easier and sustainable for me to just not buy that stuff. Every month or two, when out in a social situation, I might have a small sugary something...but that is it. Anything more is asking for trouble.

I tried over and over to taper off of carbs and did not make it happen so I finally went off cold turkey. It was a hellish two weeks.

I appreciate and respect the differing ideas here and appreciate that conversations like this don't suddenly "disappear" from the post list as others I have contributed to elsewhere have.
Having an open mind is important. As we have all figured out already when we decided to eat lots of fat! Lol

I think a lot of the disagreement concerning this topic is because the word addiction is interpreted as something extremely compulsive, almost involuntary, enslaved, which is based mostly on a subjective experience. From my view across the pond, americans of the USA are very quick to politicize words...making them more normative. This drive to turn behaviors into disease, isn't doing anything good, IMO.

Avoidance. So, is addiction purely a psychological phenomenon or does it also have physiological processes ?
IMO, addiction does come in many forms and shapes. I was quite obsessed by videogaming for years. I'm also prone to bingeing on food and shopping. All of this is for ME a distraction. A way to avoid myself. Someone (slimzandra ?) said something like this: "Wherever I go, there I am." This is cut to the core about any addictive behavior. One is ultimately forced to face oneself if the core reason for "treating myself", "celebrating stuff", "bad day comforting"...is not addressed in the first place. I can choose different strategies to varying degrees, abstaining, moderating, occasional treat etc...but merely cutting down the supply will NOT remove why I have addictive behavior. I think this is one of the reasons why yo-yo dieters find themselves starting over. Ignoring the emotional component of destructive behavior patterns is like trying to fill a bag of grains with a hole in the bottom.

Birth defect. I think any addictive behavior has mostly a psychological component and it can have a physiological component. After watching Rob Sapolsky's lecture series on Human Behavioral Biology from Stanford, I think that some people do come at an disadvantage from birth. Poor frontal lobe function (low impulse control) paired with traumatic events/neglect amp up the difficulty to say "no" to oneself. It comes as no surprise that prisons are full of people who scores high on aggression paired with low impulse control. (Hare: Without Conscience) A bit more surprising to me was that people who scored high on aggressiveness, but also high in impulse control often were good leaders, Fortune 500-esque people. Some people are also more sensitive to the dopamine and other hormones that flush when experiencing pleasure. Making the emotional loop even more seductive. However, low impulse control does NOT mean that we as individuals can't say no to ourselves. It means it's harder. "No fate" to paraphrase Terminator 2.

Repeating patterns. We all know or have met that one person who in casual settings, the company xmas party, the old friends get together, always end up getting hammered, repeating the same old jokes. Or they reek alc on the bus or they drink themselves to stupor most nights. I know this, cause I grew up with it in my family. There are still family members who are seldom sober, addicted to pills. They do have the ability to say no. It's just executed very seldom.

YMMV. I don't like the labelling of trying to define which addictions are worse or "easier". In my case I've chosen to be addicted to lesser aggravating stuff. I'm still addicted to the act of eating. Keto is not the fix for this for ME, it just makes it easier to not go totally overboard stay within reasonable calorie limits with less negative effects.

What are your triggers ? I still have some "organic yummy candy" somewhere from last year. No trouble. Gimme a bag of onion rings and they're gone within 5 mins. Go figure. I'm working on the moderation part. The last bag of potato chips (fried in peanut oil) has been in my cupboard for a couple of months, but when I first started eating it, it was gone in 2 days. We all have our different triggers.

You're not alone. And if there is any consolation. You are not alone. One of the most profound and harrowing authors in world literature wrote an "autobiography" about his gambling addiction:

And I believed in my system ... within a quarter of an hour I won 600 francs. This whetted my appetite. Suddenly I started to lose, couldn't control myself and lost everything. After that I ... took my last money, and went to play ... I was carried away by this unusual good fortune and I risked all 35 napoleons and lost them all. I had 6 napoleons d'or left to pay the landlady and for the journey. In Geneva I pawned my watch.

He describes how he moves from city to city in order to avoid paying his piling debts. He describes the despair, the hopelessness of being sucked back in. The feelings and reactions are classic, although the setting is from the 1860's. Who is he ? None other than Fyodor Dostoevsky, the author of Crime and Punishment, The Idiot etc. The book is called The Gambler.

Another book is Novel with Cocaine, author unknown. IMO, both books were pioneers in describing addictive behavior.

So it doesn't matter whether the hero in the story has to hail horsecarriages in St. Petersburg or secretly makes stashes of candy in the innermost closet in modern day life. The reaction patterns are the same. I have pondered a lot about this topic. I think the common denominator is inability to handle, accept feelings or never learnt how to healthily cope with having bad/conflicting/ambiguous feelings. Sometimes cognitive dissonance is an emotionally easier solution than facing the uncomfortable truth. Because, by logic, if you consciously admit to something, you'll have to act on it. Excuses are run out. Change is hard.

But it's possible. Work hard. Forgive yourself mistakes. Work hard again. No excuses.

Do you wonder who you are? BBC Child of Our Time - The Big Personality Test 2010
A docu series about a bunch of kids, Nature vs. Nurture. Interestingly enough, people who have experienced trauma in some form, often get to be extroverted with low conscientiousness = more impulsive, more led by validation. People who are high earners: extroverted, high conscientiousness, slightly less agreeable. Most successful in corporate ladder: Medium range. Happy/content people: rated higher agreeable by others. See for yourself it only takes 10 mins!

...now I need a drink...of water.

Edit: put in a book reference and inserted more info in that paragraph, plus some minor changes.

Oh, forgot to mention I quit smoking (slow process), quit my love affair with gaming cold turkey.

I'll leave it up to the experts to make the final call but as a layperson? I can't tell the difference between a drug addict and someone who abuses food. I have them all in my family: drug addicts, alcoholics and sick people who can't stop eating junk. They all know how bad it is, they all really, truly desperately want to change and almost all of them still abuse their substance of choice.

I think we've made a huge mistake putting an emphasis on the emotional aspects of overeating and ignoring the role the food itself plays.

ETA: From my own experience eating junk food (aka carbs) and smoking were exactly the same. I'd have the same feeling of well being while smoking/eating and then a gradual build up of needing/wanting to smoke/eat again for my next "fix". Over the years I needed ever increasing amounts to be satisfied and I worked my way up to a 2+ pack a day smoking habit and ever increasing, insane amounts of junk food and morbid obesity.

When enough was enough and I resolved to quit that was the same too. The same cravings, panicky feelings and anxiety. With cigarettes it became easier and easier over time. With junk food it got harder. I struggled every. single. day. for six months with cravings, food obsession and compulsions to eat and keep eating while eating a moderate carb, no junk food diet.

Within a month of eating a low carb diet all of that food obsession was just gone -- like someone flipped an off switch in my brain. It wasn't the only thing I need to do to gain control over my eating and come out the other side -- eating anytime, anywhere, anything habits needed to be changed as well -- but low carb plays a crucial role. And every time I indulge and eat high carb (holidays, special occasions) I'm prepared for the cravings and insatiable appetite that almost always follows so I don't relapse into old, bad habits.

I don't know if I'm an addict or not -- I don't think I am but I use some of the same strategies that addicts use to prevent me from abusing food.

When a drop in blood sugar creates a hormonal surge to eat (carbs specifically) I'd say yes, it's an addiction. Retraining your body to settle for lowcarb foods, burning keytones, and having high carb food unavailable (not stocking it in your kitchen) are all reasons LCHF works.

I agree with the poster who said eating low carb over time lowers the background noise of carbs. It's all about habits, and humans are very habit driven, but reaching for the right foods and for food that don't cause more cravings when the insulin rush from storing excess sugar as fat floods your body, so yes, it's physiological too!

It's not just a mental or emotional thing when you consider the blood sugar/insulin responses in your body and then the high sugar drop and desire for more quick energy. Keeping blood sugar low and stable all day are vital. Eat carbs, raise blood sugar. It's logic.

AlabasterVerve wrote: »

Within a month of eating a low carb diet all of that food obsession was just gone -- like someone flipped an off switch in my brain.

I think it took longer than a month for me, but I also feel like a switch has been flipped. Some of my triggers have lost their power, which I frankly find amazing. But I don't push my luck.

I did a little experiment recently. I was full. No desire at all for food. Then I intentionally ate something that I found mildly addictive (cocoa-dusted almonds). I went back for seconds. So the fullness was enough to prevent cravings, but eating the addictive food was enough to trigger a craving for MORE.

But I was able to stop with almost no effort. For me, I think the problem is that some foods are just a quick and easy source of pleasure. A distraction from less pleasant tasks. The path of least resistance. And a path that makes you fat if you take it too often.

wabmester wrote: »

AlabasterVerve wrote: »

Within a month of eating a low carb diet all of that food obsession was just gone -- like someone flipped an off switch in my brain.

I think it took longer than a month for me, but I also feel like a switch has been flipped. Some of my triggers have lost their power, which I frankly find amazing. But I don't push my luck.

I did a little experiment recently. I was full. No desire at all for food. Then I intentionally ate something that I found mildly addictive (cocoa-dusted almonds). I went back for seconds. So the fullness was enough to prevent cravings, but eating the addictive food was enough to trigger a craving for MORE.

But I was able to stop with almost no effort. For me, I think the problem is that some foods are just a quick and easy source of pleasure. A distraction from less pleasant tasks. The path of least resistance. And a path that makes you fat if you take it too often.

The 30 day flipping an off switch effect sums up my experience when I finally got fed up and quit carbs cold turkey that my physical cravings for carbs stopped. It was like another 90 days before my mental addiction like cravings started to fade. Like I could remember what a lemon icebox pie tasted like and I want some. 6 months later I do not typically have a physical or mental craving for food that is going to cause me joint pain.

I have what I imagine to be a mild addictive type of relationship with carbs. When I had some, I wanted more within a pretty short order of time. If I couldn't get any I got migraines, the shakes, cranky and lightheaded. I had to eat every 2-3 hours, right up to bed time or I felt poorly. When I went lower carb (150g/day), I had the initial poor feelings, but the headache and fatigue lasted longer, and then I switched to keto and it got more intense for a few days. It may just have been the switch to ketosis but I don't think that is it.

I'm a celiac and I gave up gluten a few years ago. When I went GF I had a huge migraine for well over a week, was tired, cranky and week... the same as what I experienced when I went vLCHF. I was anything BUT low carb back when I went GF because I was proving to myself that I wasn't missing out; candies, pop, baked goods, and pretzels were daily foods for me.

Withdrawal from gluten is not at all unusual. It's known among well read celiacs that giving up something (a food) that is not good for you can cause a withdrawal, so I wasn't surprised when it happened again when I cut my sugars down to almost nothing, and my carbs pretty low.

I'm not sure if my carb issue is an addiction, chemical withdrawal, prediabetic blood sugar madness, or whatever, but it was definitely something - for me. And I know it was more than a craving. I still crave a cola sometimes but being many weeks away from having one it is not hard to ignore that craving unlike when I hadn't had my carbs for 3 hours. KWIM?

Kudos to you Angie for owning it and moving one. That's pretty impressive.

I feel like I have a very bad relationship with carbs.

I don't tell many people this as it's embarrassing, but for the first 5 weeks of using MFP I made lunch for my kids and locked all the food in the garage and made my partner take the key with him to work. I would shake and sweat and and tried to break in a few times.

Definitely disordered eating. I don't know about addiction.

Very interesting! I recently had an "addicting" experience myself. I allowed myself to indulge in chips and cookies once night, after being "good" for many weeks. THe next day I was totally craving again --- I wanted to stuff my face with more chips and cookies, it was nuts! I managed to stay on track after 24 hours but it was difficult. Couldn't believe how little it took.