ADDICTION: INTOXICATION
Intoxication is characterized by maladaptive behaviour and a substance specific syndrome. The most common changes are disturbances of perception, attention, thinking, judgement, emotional control and psychomotor behaviour such as movement and speech. Wakefulness can also be a problem. Social drinking of alcohol would not be included here unless it led to the above features. How rapidly a person becomes intoxicated depends on a variety of factors including, gender, the amount consumed, the size of the individual, the speed of consumption and the individual's tolerance.
When an individual ceases to take a substance to which he is addicted he will experience symptoms of withdrawal. Indeed addiction, by definition, is characterized by withdrawal. Withdrawal, depending on the substance, can give rise to a variety of disturbing feelings. There may be nausea and vomiting, changes in mood and sleep patterns and even convulsions. Very often there is an overwhelming desire to take the substance which in many cases is done to allay the unpleasant features of withdrawal. In general a further feature of addiction is that over time larger quantities of the substance are required in order to obtain the same effect. If there are no untoward effects when a person stops taking a substance, that person is not addicted. This is not to say that there may be no untoward consequences, the individual who becomes intoxicated with alcohol on only one occasion may suffer from a hangover or behave in a reprehensible manner, but he is not necessarily addicted. There are many mood changing drugs which are not characterized by withdrawal effects and are therefore not addictive, these include LSD, a well known hallucinogen. However, this is not to say that such substances do not cause concern, the amount of effort expended by Governments all over the world to control their use, certainly suggests otherwise.
There have been changing fashions in the terminology associated with addiction. For example the individual who consumes excessive alcohol on frequent occasions may be given the label of 'alcoholic', but others prefer the more cumbersome label of 'someone who abuses alcohol'. One of the reasons for this change is that the term 'alcoholic' implies the presence of a disease process and that the individual has entered the 'sick role'. It is assumed that the person is not responsible for her situation but rather that she is the unfortunate victim of circumstance, rather like someone who catches the 'flu, and that she should be sympathetically treated and given appropriate medical attention. On the other hand, the label 'alcohol abuse' implies that the individual has a choice, that she has chosen to become dependent on the substance and that she can choose to break the habit if she so wishes.
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General health
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