Self-destructive behavior and addiction
Self-destructive behavior and addiction encompass a range of unhealthy responses often stemming from feelings of shame and powerlessness. These behaviors can manifest as substance abuse, which is influenced by both chemical changes in the brain from drug use and psychological trauma experienced throughout a person's life. Factors contributing to these behaviors may include early exposure to violence, bullying, parental unemployment, and significant life events such as parental substance abuse or separation.
Research indicates that self-destructive tendencies may be ingrained from birth, as certain obstetric factors have been linked to later life addiction and suicidal behavior. Low self-esteem can perpetuate a cycle of addiction, and negative emotions such as shame and guilt are common during recovery. Suicidal ideation can develop along a continuum, with substance abuse being one of the major risk factors for suicide. Moreover, human drives, like emotional and physical cravings, can overpower a person's intentions, leading to behaviors such as binge eating and substance misuse.
Understanding the interplay of genetic predispositions and environmental trauma is critical, as those with family histories of addiction may be at higher risk. Successful recovery often involves addressing these psychological factors, building self-esteem, and developing healthy coping mechanisms.
Self-destructive behavior and addiction
DEFINITION: Self-destructive behaviors are unhealthy responses to feelings of shame and powerlessness. Substance abuse is a self-destructive behavior caused by chemical changes in the brain from drug use. Self-destructive behaviors can arise from psychological trauma that can range from birth complications to child sexual abuse to loss of self-esteem from factors such as parental unemployment or addiction, being bullied, or experiencing violence in the home.
Programmed Behavior?
The tendency toward negative thinking and self-destructive behavior might be psychologically programmed at birth. In 1987, researchers in Stockholm studied the records of 412 individuals addicted to alcohol and drugs, as well as persons who committed suicide, to investigate if obstetric procedures were linked to harmful events later in life, as data from the United States seemed to indicate.
The results of the study also showed that people who committed suicide by asphyxiation had close association with asphyxia at birth; those who died by violent mechanical means had experienced a mechanical birth trauma; and people who later developed addictions were born to women who had been given opiates or barbiturates during labor. The research team concluded that obstetric procedures should be reexamined in light of a possible imprint for self-destructive behavior that manifests later in a person’s life.
Self-Esteem
Birth is only the first opportunity for the kind of psychic trauma that can put a person on a self-destructive spiral toward substance abuse or suicide. Early exposure to sexual abuse has been found to cause profound dissociation and lead to alcohol and drug abuse.
Other notable factors, such as parental unemployment, exposure to violence in the home, or being bullied at school, all can drain self-esteem, according to researchers. Being separated from parents, either physically by protective services or emotionally because of parental substance abuse, significantly increases the risk of self-destructive behavior.
While low self-esteem can lead to addiction, it also plays a role in recovery. Shame, guilt, and anxiety are common among individuals working to overcome their addiction, and negative emotions and thoughts can lead to drug or alcohol cravings, a feeling of inadequacy, or a belief that sobriety is too difficult. Finding a support system to talk about these feelings and being aware of the powerful impact of negative self-thought as a self-destructive behavior can help individuals gain and retain positive self-esteem in recovery.
Suicidal Ideation
Self-destructive thoughts can lead to dangerous actions. Suicidal thoughts build along a continuum from mild self-criticism to angry self-attacks and thoughts of suicide. Self-destructive behaviors exist in parallel, on a continuum that ranges from accident proneness to drug abuse, alcoholism, and other compulsions to premature death.
Substance abuse is considered the third major risk factor for suicide, behind previous suicide attempts and depression. Substance abuse is a slow form of suicide. Research has shown that people who drink heavily and use drugs die several years earlier on average than the general population.
Some research suggests that individuals who use illicit opioids are twice as likely to attempt suicide than those who do not use them. However, the number of overdose deaths makes this data difficult to validate because some deaths deemed a suicide may have been accidental. Additionally, acute alcohol use may increase an individual's suicide inclination seven times.
Human Drives
Research suggests that visceral influences—drive states such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, emotions, physical pain, and addictive cravings—can “crowd out” a person’s better intentions with the sole mission of mitigating the visceral urge. All focus turns to the moment and the drive. During binges, the thoughts of individuals addicted to cocaine, for example, are focused solely on the drug; sleep, money, survival, loved ones, and other responsibilities lose significance.
This change in focus also is evident in binge eating. Binge eaters have high standards and expectations of themselves and are acutely sensitive to the demands of others. When they feel they have fallen short of expectations, they become negatively self-conscious, resulting in emotional distress, anxiety, and depression. To escape from this painful state of being, binge eaters narrow their attention to immediate stimuli and avoid thinking on a broader level, researchers say.
Genetic Factors and Environmental Trauma
People who suffer the sorts of trauma mentioned above and who are genetically predisposed to addiction are at the highest risk for substance abuse. Some people are more prone to substance abuse through the inheritance of gene mutations such as D2A1, the dopamine receptor found in 69 percent of individuals with a severe addiction to alcohol, 40 to 55 percent of persons with post-traumatic stress disorder, and 20 percent of nonalcoholics. Other so-called addiction genes include HIST1H2BD, which is associated with cocaine use, and the A1 form of the DRD2 gene, which is associated with alcohol, cocaine, and opioid addiction.
Dopamine works with serotonin in areas of the brain responsible for emotion and attention. Abnormal serotonin levels in individuals with substance use disorders’ brains are linked to a mutation of the enzyme tryptophan oxygenase, which breaks down tryptophan.
Teenagers who receive important social support, such as family counseling after traumatic events, fare better than those who are left to cope alone, whether they have the gene mutations or not. Recovery from substance abuse requires finding new pleasure-inducing activities, coping mechanisms, relaxation methods, and relapse prevention.
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