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ephion comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong
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Casomorphins in dairy have opioid effects, as does chocolate. Overconsumption of high-sugar high-fat foods alters opioid receptors in the brain. Naloxone, a drug for treating opiate overdose, is effective in reducing binging.
It also seems that food scientists specifically try to make food as addictive as possible, which seems like an expected outcome from a capitalist food market -- whatever encourages the most consumption will win greater market share.
Is it an addiction on par with heroin, alcohol, or tobacco? I doubt it, but using an addiction model might be helpful in treating overeating.
Don't have links handy but my impression is that this was tried, lots of times, and failed badly.
As to the general question of food being addictive, this is mostly an issue of how you define "addictive". I find it useful to draw boundaries so that food (as well as, say, sex or internet) do not fall within them.
On the other hand, I don't see a sharp divide between "food" and "drugs". Eating certain kinds of food clearly has certain biochemical consequences.
What word would you use for people who eat so much they can't move, get HIV from prostitutes, or play WoW with such dedication they die? These people clearly have something in common, and it's definitely more specific than stupidity.
That is not self-evident to me.
Sick (in the medical sense, I bet their hormonal system is completely screwed up).
Regular guys with bad judgement and worse luck.
Guys who do not know their limits.
An unlucky choice of examples, I guess. Switch the question to "could brains that can't seem to be able to regulate their behaviour to the point they're severely damaged by it have something in common in their basic physiology that predisposes them to dysregulation when exposed to certain sensory stimuli?" This is still vague enough there's room for evasion, so if you want to continue that way, I suppose it's better we forget about this.
Well, as I have said several times it's a matter of definition and how wide you want to define "addiction" is arbitrary.
Sure, you can define it as positive-feedback loops that subvert conscious control over behavior or something like that -- but recall that all definitions must serve a purpose and without one there is no reason to prefer one over another. What's the purpose here?
Note that the purpose cannot be "Can we call eating disorders addictions?" because that's a pure definition question -- however you define "addiction" will be the answer.
The purpose is to recognize harmful behaviours that people could benefit from fixing and that those behaviours might have similarities that can be exploited. If you browse porn 12 hours a day, it's quite probable you realize you have a problem, but have significant difficulty in changing your behaviour. If you want to browse porn 12 hours a day, then that's fine too, and nobody should try to fix you without your permission.
I don't care what you call them, it suffices that the above purposes are fulfilled and that people understand each other.
I am highly suspicious of calling a variety of behaviors "addiction" as it implies both the lack of responsibility on the part of the subject and the justification of imposing external rules/constraints on him.
I don't know of any successful attempts to treat obesity as if it were a true-addiction kind of disorder. One of the problems is that the classic approach to treating addiction is to isolate the addict from the addictive substance. Hard to do that with food and hard to avoid yummy stuff outside of a clinic.
Taboo responsibility.
What does this mean? That some people need bariatric surgeries to limit their eating is a pretty clear indicator they can't control their eating. The kind of isolation rehab you're talking about is an extreme measure even when treating drug addictions, and comprises a marginal proportion of addiction treatment.
Think nicotine replacement and varenicline for tobacco addiction or naltrexone and disulfiram for alcoholism and we'll start to be on the same page. Note that I'm not implying these are hugely successful either. All addictions are difficult to treat.
Also certain addiction vocabulary and self awareness techniques like identifying triggers could be relevant for treating compulsive behaviour.