Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways as addictive substances?

Because "addiction" is a very loaded term (with a specific clinical definition when it's not being used colloquially), and the sources you cited used "attachment" instead.

I think the answer here is a bit subtle and hard to explain, because it contradicts a lot of common assumptions about addiction and drugs.

In short, many addictive substances create a chemical dependence that often has awful, even potentially fatal chemical withdrawal symptoms. Behavioral addictions don't cause this, which makes people assume they are entirely something different, and categorically less serious and damaging.

This is wrong- because those withdrawal symptoms, while they do make it harder to quit by making going cold turkey difficult and sometimes impossible, they are not the underlying reason why these drugs are being abused in the first place, nor the reason they destroy peoples lives. The reason is that they stimulate the reward system and/or allow one to escape negative emotions and trauma. Behavioral addictions also do that, and can just as easily ruin ones life, by completely overcoming someones mind and will, such that they no longer are able to live their life, and are unable to escape or quit with willpower, just as much so as with drugs that cause withdrawal. They can still completely ruin your life and drive you to suicide, etc.

Moreover, people also often emphasize that many addictive substances can directly cause serious health problems, or even death. This is also not central to their harmfulness, nor always the case. In fact, for a drug to have substantial abuse potential it must be relatively free from serious adverse health effects, at least in the short term, or else it would become impossible to abuse- the most damaging substances are the ones where people can take higher doses for longer with less adverse effects, because this more strongly emphasizes its ability to be used to strongly stimulate the reward system and escape negative emotions and trauma for longer periods of time - cementing the addiction-, without causing a new negative experience on its own. Methamphetamine for example is unique among stimulants in how benign it is- allowing people to take massive doses over really long periods of time, and not face immediate health issues. Counter-intuitively, this is actually what makes it have so much abuse potential and cause so much harm, compared to other stimulants which quickly make you sick or feel awful at high doses. From this perspective, you can see that the fact that behavioral addictions are also able to be repeated in "large doses" for long periods of time without immediate short term health consequences can make them have a high potential for harm in the long term.

Fair point. Some other studies use addiction too, though, and there is a distinction between both addiction and attachment and the links between them is a bit nebulous. You can check out the results on Google Scholar if interested.

I couldn't agree more. Using the term addiction in contexts where it is not medically valid is very dangerous (like yelling "fire" in a theater) and leads to the use of violent force against those one falsely claims are "addicted".

Audio-visual stimuli from screens and speakers has never been shown to be able to have the same effects as a dopaminergic drug which is to say, completely turning up incentive salience regardless of reward or lack of it. That is why drugs are dangerous.

Technology can only be habit forming (in some contexts, maybe) if it continues to be rewarding in some way. Psychological dependence, maybe, but never addiction, and not even physiological dependence. Addictive drugs do not have to be rewarding or pleasurable. They just hijack wanting.

They are not the same and definitely should not be legislated the same. Enjoying something that is actually fun is not the same as wanting something because it chemically turned on wanting.

Explain why MDMA isn't a huge addiction problem like meth (or all that popular any more).

MDMA has little addiction potential- for one it isn’t really just an unhealthy escape from negative feelings, but helps people process traumatic experiences and negative emotions by temporarily lowering anxiety and fear, and may be close to being FDA approved for that therapeutic purpose.

I have only tried it once, and it permanently eliminated my crippling social anxiety, by temporarily eliminating it, and allowing me to experience and remember what that was like. I felt no desire to use it again, because the (life changing positive) effect was permanent.

Second, it seems to have rapidly diminishing effects that make it self limiting- if sometime takes MDMA too much or too frequently, it stops having the desired effect.

I'm not really sure how the behavioural addiction here is harming the person. You're talking about an external harm with the behavioural addiction being symptom treatment due to feeling trapped.

It ends up consuming all of a persons time and energy, and they stop doing everything else that is important or essential- maintaining their own career, friendships, family obligations, and health. They lose the ability to feel joy or engage positively in anything but the addiction. This causes a downward spiral of physical and mental health, that destroys quality of like and can in some cases be ultimately fatal.

Some corollaries, that might not be obvious for those not deeply familiar with drug policy:

1. Statements like "we can't legalize a drug until we have proven that it's not harmful" are nonsensical given that it's easier to become habituated to drugs that are less harmful. The standard should be, "when measured holistically, does legalization and regulation increase or decrease harm relative to banning and criminalization?"

2. Lumping habitual use and sporadic use together as "abuse" is counter-productive.

3. A humane and just drug policy would focus on removing the causes of people wanting to escape negative emotions rather than on removing the tools they use to escape those emotions.

There is no reason to assume that a behavior that activates the reward system is categorically less harmful than a molecule that activates it directly. In both cases it can completely overcome someones will such that it destroys their life and they can’t escape it. Both are addiction. You’re making a distinction without a difference- a fire only needs to be hot enough to kill, it does not become “invalid” just because you can think of other types of fire, or hotter fires.

You are using the word “medical” to emphasize your point incorrectly- behavioral addictions are included in the modern medical concept of addiction, and the idea that they should be considered categorically separate from substances is an outdated concept. The DSM-5 for example has a diagnostic criteria for gambling addiction.

> Does compulsive technology use trigger the same neural pathways as addictive substances?

Absolutely yes: the dopamine circuit.

MDMA can be addictive, though usually on people who are dealing various issues that, like alcohol, can mask or suppress "bad" feelings. It pumps up the serotonin levels and people can definitely get addicted to that (the same way shopaholics are addicted to the temporary dopamine hits they get when they buy something new).

MDMA (and other drugs that fall under the psychedelic umbrella like magic mushrooms or LSD) has has shown some clinical success in dealing with trauma and other mental health issues, but only supervised and combined with professional help. Most people I know that have used MDMA/Ecstasy usually only stopped because the crash sucks as they didn't want to deal with it after. That's the main reason it was used for social gatherings like raves; it really helps eliminate social anxiety.

Yes we know :)

Every time there's talk of drugs people will just shuffle and repackage some random facts they know about whatever drug in question and preach it like it's something they just discovered.

>no reason to assume that a behavior that activates the reward system is categorically less harmful than a molecule that activates it directly.

There are mountains of papers, books and all sorts of evidence that drugs that directly act as agonists for populations of dopaminergic neurons the VTA that mediate incentive salience (methamphetamine, cocaine, etc) are incredibly addictive (wanting, not liking, not reward. reward prediction). This is very different than an experience that is naturally rewarding like sex (liking, and maybe wanting later remembering the liking). Anticipation of sex may activate VTA dopaminergic populations but the reward of sexual activity itself does not. And certainly not things like viewing audio-visual media on screens.

I use medical to emphasize that when you try to reason about these things without fine grained understanding you come to false general conclusions.

I do agree that with drugs that just activate reward directly (like opioids with glutamergic populations in the shell of the nucleus accumbens) can rapidly become addictive. But these too are different than expriences that happen to activate reward through sensation. For example, sexual activity is a behavior that activates reward yet very few people become addicted to it.

Triggering the same neural pathways is also a flawed way to look at things. Dopamine exists without the presence of drugs despite the dysfunctional state of discourse demonizing literally anything which releases dopamine. A true dopamine detox would in fact be very bad for your health, physical and mental. The point being, drugs exploit existing pathways and biochemical interactions, they don't create them de novo. The set isn't just "compulsive technology | drugs" it is "compulsive technology | drugs | eating | running | mental stimulation | sexual activity | etc."