Addictive Behavior

March 02, 2012

Week 9: A. Interview someone with an addiction. This can be to drugs, alcohol, food, prescriptions, gambling, etc. Determine what occurred in their lives that made them vulnerable to this behavior. Use terms like psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, and epigenetic. Do you agree with their given diagnosis? How do you see their prognosis and why? 8 pages minimum.

Addictive Behavior

AR is a very fat and lethargic man being shorter than I and still rounder. He is a father of four, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and a retiree. Scars on his face and arms where the skin has simply died tell me that his nutrition is bad and his smell tells me that he has trouble bathing. AR has been confined to a wheelchair for the last five years after a car accident as a result of drinking.

Alcohol and drug use began for AR in high school. “I’d go down to my dad’s with some friends, drink beer, and watch (pornographic) reels.” He was referring to pornographic media on an eight millimeter projector that his father had owned. Apparently this was the thing to have at the time. He said his father had commented that it was good for him to know what sex looked like at that age. AR stated that this started when he was fourteen or fifteen.

We can see from this that a number of things in behaviorist theory come into play. Firstly, his father and mother were still married but not living together. They lived close enough to one another for him to gain common access to either parent. This must have caused anxiety and alcohol would have removed that anxiety. We would refer to this as negative reinforcement or the removal of a negative condition. ‘Drinking makes the pain go away.’ 

In terms of positive reinforcement when AR drank he felt good, spent time with his friends and father, watch pornography, and ate fatty foods. All these things would be positive reinforcement. Everything in his life pushes him towards becoming an addict.

At the time tobacco had fewer taboos about it and THC was a simpler drug. Much like sex these things have changed drastically over the last few decades in the public mentality. AR was a user of both of these substances in high school, but had more ready access to alcohol and so it was his drug of choice.

We may also note that drinking gained him approval from his father and friends. We can extrapolate that in Freudian terms this had an impact on the judgment of the Superego. The Id wants gratification by eating, drinking, and watching pornography. The Ego will only work against these things if it feels that there are consequences.  The Superego interprets the expectance of AR’s friends and family as Alcohol being good. Ego is then given pressure from both sides to drink. AR did mention that his father had taught him to drink slowly so as not to induce vomiting.

AR commented that he had once been to a party where he and two other men mad a pyramid out of empty beer cans. There were only the three men there at the time indicating that AR felt a party was friend and Alcohol. I asked if he had done anything else that night and he replied “what more do you need.” I question him on the volume of alcohol he drank that evening but he commented that he lost track.

It is also important to note that at age fourteen through eighteen AR was entering the Genital stage of his Psychosexual Development. AR would have associated alcohol with sexuality and those two things would have a strong connection for the rest of his life. I did not ask, but AR like gratified himself when drunk strengthening his connection between sex and alcohol. It is entry possible that AR had a preexisting oral fixation which could now transfer.

In addition some time must be spent commenting that the father had a connection between sex, food, and Alcohol. This would lend to an oral or anal fixation as the more one eats the more one will have stimulation for the anus. AR’s disheveled appearance, dirty shirt, and noted hair may be a sign that he has trouble looking after himself or that he has an expulsive personality.

As it would have been rude to question AR on his own habits I asked him about his father. “I guess he had dirty shirts, I mean, my sister did his laundry until he died.” I can kind of guess that AR is one of a long line of expulsive personalities. It is possible that AR’s problems are a result of nature but nurture is the larger factor here.

I began to question AR about his alcohol abuse later in life. It was a surprise to me that he went to college before being drafted, but I have learned that many veterans fall into this category. He noted that drinking lost some of its appeal when he turned twenty one. “I liked it more when it was illegal,” he commented. This would also indicate that the Superego felt that breaking the law was a form of social expected practice. The Superego reacted to what his social group did and thus led him along these lines.  

“In college I had to back off a bit, well, you see, I went to this party and had this thing called a sneaky peach. I must have had a lot of them because I woke up the next morning like somebody knifed me.” This drink he explained tasted as if it had very little in it but packed a big kick after the fact.  AR are reported that after the sneaky peach party. He did not drink for six months.  This is consistent with punishment from behaviorist theory. AR got himself alcohol poisoning and paid for it rather dearly.

To place this under Freud Superego got a wakeup call and made an effort to persuade Ego to stay away for drinking. Biology is a very important part of any personality and the fact that the body has said ‘no more’ has an impact. Pain can be very motivating. Superego made a stronger case than Id until societal pressure began to weigh on Superego.

AR noted that he couldn’t be around his father when he was drinking because of the smell and he dreaded going out with friends who vomited from drinking because of the scent. What got him back in the habit was spending time with friends. “I went to a party and everyone asked where I had been. I told um I didn’t feel like partying much. Then someone put a beer in my hand. It was like I had run into all my old high school friends.” Society once again told Superego that it agreed with ego. He may be noted that there was a limit to his drinking at this time and that he “kept it down,” but that he did binge drink from time to time.

It may also be noted that drinking may have brought about negative conditions like bad grades. This would have meant that the removal of alcohol from AR’s life was given some negative reinforcements. The removal of the bad conditions like negative grades, little spending money, and so forth would have changed AR’s life greatly without societal pressure.

AR stated that he kept drinking moderately until he was drafted. “In the Army you drank what you could get your hands on.”  He noted that he drank the alcohols that he referred to as piss. It was at this point that he got into harder drugs and because “that’s what we all did.” AR took pills, smoked all kind of things, and snorted cocaine in the army and was under the influence as much as possible. All of these things he said he had ready access to at the time because the other solders had them.

I asked if he took any of that when he returned to the United States. “I smoked May in high school but I wouldn’t get the hard shit when I came back. I didn’t want to go to jail and didn’t know the people for that.” He kept drinking until the accident and said he never missed the hard drugs.

We can note here that Superego has been told by society that drugs are not acceptable but the alcohol is still part of life. It is likely that if AR still had friends who did hard drugs he would still be doing them or have died from them. The fact that he now has a social circle that prohibits drug use gives Superego all it needs to regulate the behavior.

“Where you a heavy drinker until the accident?” I asked.

“Na, I got piss drunk every now and then but I just like beer.”  He said that he had been drinking whisky that night because he was feeling low and he drank more than he thought he had.

He said that he was done drinking because of what had happened and that it was hard for him to get out of the chair to use the restroom. AR is not paralyzed but his legs a not strong enough to lift him.