Last summer at their annual policy meeting, the American Medical Association considered having "excessive video gaming" formally certified as a psychiatric disorder and listing it in the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of mental diseases to which psychiatrists are addicted.

Official bureaucratic legitimization will accomplish a vital goal of the professional psychotherapy community: enable the condition's victims to get medical coverage so psychotherapists can suck insurance companies dry with their $400-per-hour behavior-modification and rehabilitative-therapy programs.

Used to be we knew what addiction was - the inability to kick booze or cigarettes or drugs. But then a second tier of addictions was identified, and we were introduced to the shocking, secretive world of obsessive gamblers and caffeine freaks and sex addicts and suburban chocoholics

Since those relatively innocent days, our world has exploded with addictive behaviors. Now we are all substance abusers, tormented with bottled water syndromes and new-car-smell obsessions and iPod fixations and ringtone manias and Britney-watching compulsions and reality-show fanaticisms and cutesy-wutesy baby-talking to your poochie-woochie dysfunctions.

This is professional stalking at its worst - the endless cycle of concocting supply to satisfy escalating demand

Not only are new addictions being discovered every day, but new discoverers of new addictions are being discovered as well. Everybody, it seems, knows what addiction is.

What people used to call "food cravings" the American Heart Association now calls "carbohydrate addiction.

AOL did a survey claiming that people are addicted to e-mail. (And, since AOL is a major supplier of e-mail access, doesn't that make them pushers?)

The Web site Switched.com reported on a Harvard Business Review study under the title "Rise of the BlackBerry-Addicted Work Zombie.

Computer-industry professionals, in fact, seem to be exceptionally proficient, and prolific, at identifying addiction. After coining a new discipline, psychotechnology (not to be confused with technopsychology), they quickly identified such human aberrations as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), Internet Behavior Dependence (IBD), Internet/Computer Addiction, Online Addiction, and addiction to Web-surfing.

Even as new addictions are being discovered, all the trusty old dependencies are exploding exponentially. CNN quoted a UN report that used the phrase "runaway train of drug addiction" and followed it with "5 percent of the world's population aged between 15 and 64 used drugs at least once in the previous 12 months.

The implication is that partaking of a governmentally disapproved substance once a year makes one a drug addict. This would be like counting every shopping-cart door ding as an auto accident or declaring every blink, wink, and nod as an instance of sexual abuse.

Funny how neither the UN nor the AMA nor the American Psychiatric Association has ever concluded that any psychiatrist who has psychoanalyzed one person between the ages of 15 and 64 during the past year is afflicted with the runaway train of psychoanalization addiction

Why are hardworking business people called "workaholics" while people who invest thousands of hours raising millions of dollars while telling hundreds of lies just to get elected to public office are never called "powerholics"?

Why is it that people who incessantly use a PDA to communicate with people have their handhelds referred to as "crackberries" while people who incessantly use their rosaries to communicate with the Blessed Virgin never have their handhelds referred to as "bead speed"

Perhaps, then, the definition of "addiction" has more to do with contrived self-serving sociopolitical constructs than with medicine. Addiction is in the eye of the professional beholder, who can charge $400 an hour to "cure" it.

Then again, maybe not all addictions are bad. Case in point: While Republicrats are control freaks hopelessly addicted to taxbucks and world empire, people who call themselves "libertarian" are addicted to a philosophy of maximizing freedom and minimizing coercion.

In the meantime, something has to be done about those delusional sufferers hopelessly addicted to reading opinion articles such as this one.

More of Garry Reed's writing can be found at (http://www.freecannon.com ).

Comments (3)

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written by David K. M. Klaus, January 24, 2008

While it is true that some psychological dysfunctions are being mislabeled as addictions, this commentary does nothing to solve the problem of mislabeling. Claiming that sarcastic or humorous appellations such as "workaholic" or "chocoholic" are terms actually used in medicine is ridiculous, as is the absurd notion that insurance corporations (among the most profitable businesses in the nation) are being sucked dry by doctors.


Further, caffeine is an alkaloid central nervous system stimulant, "the low end of the speed spectrum" as George Carlin once put it, and certainly is physically addictive. If you really want something to be indignant about, how about the fact that this addictive drug, a bitter-tasting drug which requires extra sugar to also be added to make a drink palatable, is commonly and deliberately added to beverages marketed to children.


You want to go on a crusade, there's a legitimate target for you.


>:(

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written by TysonD, January 25, 2008

Is Mr. Reed really complaining about terminology here, when in every article he includes some ridiculous term of his own? (Republicrats, in this case.) There are different types of addiction. Sure, it can get out of hand sometimes, but I for one am very glad our society has come to recognize other addictions.

What is the point of this Guest Commentary spot? I guess I assumed that it was an opportunity to read varying viewpoints from a variety of authors. If the Reader staff wants to express its Libertarian leanings or admiration of crackpot internet columnists, then why not just feature Reed's column weekly - instead of sticking him up in the guest commentary spot whenever they get the chance?

I enjoy reading through the Reader every Wednesday. But, among other relevant, well-written articles with intelligent discussion, Mr. Reed's always stick out as crazed rants that aren't worth the time it takes to read them. Can't the Reader find anything else to fill the Guest Commentary spot that fits in with the rest of their content?

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written by WolfmanMac, January 26, 2008

Great article. Couldn't have said it better myself, and I don't say that often.

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