When our intelligent and necessary emotion – ANGER – becomes unhealthy and damaging

Abstract

Addiction is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon that has been described variously as a disease, disorder, syndrome, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, learned behaviour, or spiritual malady. Modern scientific understanding emphasises addiction as a chronic brain disorder shaped by neurobiological changes, learning, and social context. This article examines each conceptualisation and presents an integrated definition that aligns with current neuroscience, psychological, and public health evidence.

Conceptualising Addiction: Labels and Their Accuracy

No single label fully captures addiction’s complexity; each highlights certain truths while overlooking others.

Disease

From a medical perspective, disease is the closest match. Addiction involves persistent neurobiological changes in reward, stress, and self-control circuits, increases relapse risk over years, and shows substantial genetic vulnerability (~50–60%) (NIDA, 2018; Heilig et al., 2021). Treatments improve outcomes but rarely “cure” the condition. This framing is used by the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), NIDA, WHO ICD-11, and DSM-5-TR (as “Substance Use Disorder”) (NIDA, 2018).

Disorder

Disorder is also scientifically accurate and slightly less medicalised. DSM-5’s “Substance Use Disorder” captures behavioural, psychological, and biological criteria and recognises functioning and harm rather than framing addiction strictly as a lifelong disease (Heather, n.d.; Heilig et al., 2021).

Syndrome

Addiction may be described as a syndrome because it is a cluster of symptoms with behavioural and physiological manifestations, without a single causative factor. However, the term is too generic for practical use outside clinical texts (Blithikioti et al., 2025).

Obsessive and Compulsive Learned Behaviour

Addiction involves learning, habit formation, and compulsion through reinforcement of rewarding behaviours (Hyman, 2005; Hausotter, 2013). Yet describing it solely as learned behaviour ignores genetic predisposition, neuroadaptation, withdrawal, and social factors.

Spiritual Malady

Some mutual-aid traditions characterise addiction as a spiritual malady. While this may be meaningful for individuals, it is not scientifically explanatory: addiction can be adequately explained via biological, psychological, and social mechanisms (Lewis, 2017).

Modern Integrative Definition

The most accurate contemporary description of addiction is:
“A chronic, relapsing disorder of brain circuits involved in reward, stress, and self-control, shaped by learning, environment, and social context”.

This definition encompasses:

• Disease/disorder: medical accuracy
• Learned behaviour and compulsion: neuroscience and behavioural accuracy
• Social determinants: public health relevance
• Flexibility for personal or spiritual interpretations

In short, addiction is best understood as a bio-psycho-social condition that is treatable and sometimes reversible, rather than a deterministic, lifelong curse.

Neurobiology: Why Addiction Is Considered a Brain Disorder

Repeated substance use alters structural and functional brain circuits involved in reward, stress, motivation, memory, and self-control (Nwonu et al., 2022; NIDA, 2018). These changes can persist long after use stops, explaining why addiction is more than a matter of “bad habits” or weak will (NIDA, 2025).

Chronicity and Relapse

Addiction is often chronic and relapsing. Even after long periods of abstinence, cues and stressors can trigger relapse (Meurk et al., 2014; SAMHSA, 2023). Key regions implicated include the basal ganglia (habit formation), extended amygdala (stress), and prefrontal cortex (decision-making) (Kirby et al., 2024). Nevertheless, many individuals achieve stable remission, highlighting heterogeneity in clinical outcomes (Heilig et al., 2021).

Learning, Memory, and Habit Formation

Addiction exploits neural mechanisms of learning and memory: rewarding behaviours are repeated and consolidated into habits, with cues triggering compulsive responses even when the substance’s reward diminishes (Hausotter, 2013; Lewis, 2017). This intertwines biological disorder and learned behaviour.

Critiques and Limitations

Some scientists caution that framing addiction strictly as a brain disease is simplistic:

• Brain changes may resemble those from other motivated behaviours (Lewis, 2017).
• Many recover without formal treatment (Heilig et al., 2021).
• Social, environmental, and psychological factors are crucial to understanding addiction (Blithikioti et al., 2025).

Thus, while the disease model is powerful, it does not fully represent addiction’s heterogeneity or socio-psychological dimensions.

Implications for Treatment

Addiction is treatable, not simply curable. Interventions combining pharmacological and behavioural approaches, alongside social support, can foster long-term recovery (Liu & Li, 2018; Heilig et al., 2021). Like other chronic conditions, management — rather than elimination — is often the realistic goal (NIDA, 2018). Neural circuits can gradually readjust, particularly when environmental and personal factors support recovery.

Conclusion

Addiction is a learned, compulsive brain disorder with chronic potential, shaped by neurobiological, psychological, social, and environmental factors. Recognising addiction as both a disorder and a behavioural learning condition avoids extremes: it is neither an unchangeable fate nor merely a moral failing. This integrated perspective supports nuanced understanding, compassionate care, and effective treatment strategies.

References

Blithikioti, C., Fried, E. I., Albanese, E., Field, M., & Cristea, I. A. (2025). Reevaluating the brain disease model of addiction. The Lancet Psychiatry, 12(6), 469–474. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(25)00060-4

Hausotter, W. (2013). Neuroscience and understanding addiction. Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) Network. https://attcnetwork.org/neuroscience-and-understanding-addiction

Heather, N. (n.d.). What’s wrong with the brain disease model of addiction (BDMA)? Addiction Theory Network. https://addictiontheorynetwork.org/brain-disease-model-of-addiction

Heilig, M., MacKillop, J., Martinez, D., Rehm, J., Leggio, L., & Vanderschuren, L. J. M. J. (2021). Addiction as a brain disease revised: Why it still matters, and the need for consilience. Neuropsychopharmacology, 46(10), 1715–1723. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-020-00950-y

Hyman, S. E. (2005). Addiction: A disease of learning and memory. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(8), 1414–1422. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.8.1414

Kirby, E. D., Glenn, M. J., Sandstrom, N. J., & Williams, C. L. (2024). Neurobiology of addiction (Section 14.5). In Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience. OpenStax. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/…/14.05:_Neurobiology_of_Addiction

Leshner, A. I. (1997). Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters. Science, 278(5335), 45–47. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.278.5335.45

Lewis, M. (2017). Addiction and the brain: Development, not disease. Neuroethics, 10(1), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-016-9293-4

Liu, J. F., & Li, J. X. (2018). Drug addiction: A curable mental disorder? Acta Pharmacologica Sinica, 39(12), 1823–1829. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41401-018-0180-x

Meurk, C., Carter, A., Partridge, B., Lucke, J., & Hall, W. (2014). How is acceptance of the brain disease model of addiction related to Australians’ attitudes towards addicted individuals and treatments for addiction? BMC Psychiatry, 14, 373. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-014-0373-x

National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2018). Drugs, brains, and behavior: The science of addiction (Rev. ed.). https://irp.nida.nih.gov/…/NIDA_DrugsBrainsAddiction

Nwonu, C. N. S., Nwonu, P. C., & Ude, R. A. (2022). Neurobiological underpinnings in drug addiction. West African Journal of Medicine, 39(6), 874–884. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36063103

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023). What is substance use disorder? U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.samhsa.gov/substance-use/what-is-sud

Not long ago, words like “triggered,” “gaslighting,” “narcissist,” and “neurodivergent” belonged almost exclusively to therapists’ offices and psychology textbooks. Now they’re everywhere; in workplace training sessions, community organisations, TikTok comment sections, and casual conversation between friends over coffee. That shift has brought some genuinely important changes. But it’s also introduced some problems worth taking seriously.

The real wins

It would be unfair to dismiss this cultural shift outright. There are meaningful gains. More people today can identify manipulation, coercive dynamics, and emotional harm than any previous generation. Mental health conversations have been destigmatised in ways that would have been hard to imagine twenty years ago. People who were historically silenced, particularly those from marginalised communities, finally have language that validates their experiences and gives them permission to leave harmful situations. That’s progress

But then there’s “concept creep” (pathologising the ordinary or “diagnostic inflation”)

Psychologists use the term “concept creep” to describe what happens when a word originally defined by strict clinical boundaries starts expanding to cover increasingly ordinary experiences. And that’s precisely what happened with “trauma.”

Clinically, trauma refers to experiences that overwhelm the nervous system i.e., genuine threats to safety, severe harm, events that exceed a person’s capacity to cope. These days, the same word is regularly applied to being disagreed with, having a relationship end, receiving criticism, or simply feeling uncomfortable. Events like relationship breakdowns, job loss, or failure can be genuinely devastating, and for some people, under some circumstances, they absolutely do meet the clinical threshold for trauma. The distinction isn’t really about the type of event. It’s about the impact on the nervous system and the person’s capacity to integrate the experience.

When everything qualifies as trauma, the word stops doing useful work. Worse, it can actually undermine the resilience people need to navigate a genuinely difficult world.

The nervous system problem

Here’s where it gets important. In actual “clinical” trauma, the brain’s threat-response systems activate intensely. Memory processing is disrupted. The body mobilises for survival in ways that can leave lasting marks.

Discomfort is different. It involves real emotional activation, it’s not pleasant, but cognitive flexibility remains available. The capacity to think, reflect, and choose a response is still intact.

When people learn to label ordinary emotional discomfort as trauma activation, the consequences compound. If discomfort feels equivalent to harm, avoidance becomes a logical response. But avoidance prevents the gradual building of tolerance. And without tolerance, the world gets smaller.

Trauma as identity and social currency

In some online communities, there’s an uncomfortable dynamic worth naming: being “highly traumatised,” “chronically triggered,” or “deeply misunderstood” can confer real social benefits — belonging, validation, moral authority, and attention.

This doesn’t mean the experiences aren’t real. But when distress becomes central to someone’s identity, letting go of that distress can start to feel like losing themselves. Recovery, paradoxically, becomes threatening.

The fragility trap

In certain environments, fragility functions as a kind of protection. If I am highly sensitive, others must accommodate me. Challenge becomes inappropriate. Accountability becomes unsafe. The person is shielded, but the cost is enormous.

Resilience, both psychologically and biologically, develops through graded exposure to stress. We become capable through encountering difficulty, not by avoiding it. Systems that never face adaptive pressure weaken over time. This is simply how human development works.

Why this moment matters

Several things are converging right now. Social media algorithms reward extreme emotional narratives. Identity formation increasingly happens in digital spaces that amplify distress. Institutions have frequently overcorrected towards protective language in ways that, whatever their intentions, can inadvertently signal that discomfort is dangerous. And while there’s been important growth in awareness of systemic injustice, the corresponding emphasis on individual agency has sometimes been lost.

We’ve swung from “suppress your emotions entirely” to “your emotions define reality.” Neither extreme serves people well.

Holding the middle ground

What good support actually looks like isn’t dismissing people’s experiences, it’s deepening them. The distinction that matters is between trauma-informed practice and what might be called trauma-indulgent practice.

Trauma-informed means understanding that harm genuinely impacts nervous systems, avoiding shame, recognising power imbalances, and creating safety. It’s grounded and necessary.

Trauma-indulgent means treating all discomfort as harm, reinforcing avoidance, allowing emotional reasoning to override reality, and quietly removing personal responsibility from the picture. It feels compassionate in the moment but tends to leave people worse off over time.

In practice, holding the middle ground means validating what someone feels while gently asking whether something was truly unsafe or simply hard. It means acknowledging difficulty while also reinforcing capacity. It means introducing a reality that doesn’t get much airtime in online spaces — that we can’t always control how those around us speak or behave, but we can build our own tolerance and capacity to regulate.

The question underneath everything

There’s a deeper ethical question running through all of this: are we reducing suffering in the long run, or just distress in the short term?

Protecting people from discomfort today, if it increases fragility tomorrow, is not a kindness. But exposing people to challenge without adequate safety and support risks re-traumatising those with genuine wounds.

The balance isn’t complicated to describe, even if it’s genuinely difficult to hold: safety, combined with graduated exposure, combined with a genuine sense of agency.

Anyone supporting others through difficulty needs a calm nervous system, a high personal tolerance for distress, and the capacity to sit with being perceived as insensitive when holding a difficult but necessary line. Clear values and genuine boundaries aren’t optional extras — they’re the model.

The world remains economically uncertain, socially polarised, and digitally relentless. People will encounter disagreement, rejection, imperfect institutions, and others who handle things badly. Preparing people for a world where everyone is perfectly considerate is not just unrealistic — it’s a disservice.

I want to preface this post by stating that the concepts and suggestions I’ve made below are my own thoughts, opinions, and suggestions based on my own experience working in the mental health sector and lived experience. There may also be numerous grammatical and logical errors. I know that you’re intuitive enough to understand what I’m attempting to describe and explain. Therefore, there will be no references section at the end. This is merely an expression of thoughts, a stream of consciousness (William James coined the term Stream of Consciousness).

Episodic, acute, and chronic anxiety can be miserable and debilitating. Individuals living with anxiety have generally experimented with many techniques to cope with anxiety symptoms, and they have often been practicing these techniques for months, years, or decades. Anxiety is life changing. Current treatment can be efficacious at reducing the intensity or frequency of symptoms for the vast majority of people living with anxiety, but only at best. I, myself, have tried the deep breathing technique commonly advised by mental health professionals, and it can be about as useful as taking a sugar pill. There is credible science that supports deep breathing exercises can improve symptoms and recovery rates for stress, anxiety and depression levels – but what about for an anxiety attack or a panic attack or intense chronic symptoms of anxiety?

Sometimes nothing is effective enough for immediate relief. It is my contention that building a relationship with a trained psychiatrist, specialised in this domain, is an essential first step. Your treating specialist(s) will need to have extensive experience and a comprehensive understanding of the debilitating impacts of anxiety, anxiety attacks, and/or panic attacks. I recommend psychiatry because you will need someone who can prescribe short-term medication, schedule 4 or greater, to alleviate the pain rapidly. All symptoms a person may experience from any condition in the anxiety family present a risk for searching for any immediate relief. This is true for you or me or anyone. Without prompt and effective medical care readily available, many people who do not have a plan for managing anxiety will potentially search for an unhealthy substitute to acquire relief.

These substitutes are often unhelpful long term but effective short term. We all know what they are: alcohol and other drugs, sexual promiscuity or sex addiction, love addiction, gambling, excessive or unhealthy eating habits, self-injury, addictive forms of gaming, impulse spending, co-dependent or dependent behaviours on people, people pleasing, running away (avoiding reality), raging, reckless driving and other criminal behaviour, and relying on pharmaceuticals (legally prescribes or otherwise) that will have long-term unhealthy side effects. People know how to “doctor shop”, and although this area of medicine is becoming much more regulated, it still occurs. Unfortunately, there are people who do require certain types of legal drugs, in a timely manner, to find relief as a means of not engaging in any of the previously mentioned behaviours.

Some people may not have much faith in the field of psychiatry or psychology – HOWEVER – you may find yourself in a situation one day where you will need a doctor who knows your history to increase the likelihood of prescribing medication to treat anxiety when you need it most. This medication usually has addictive properties. An ethical psychiatrist will usually be unwilling to prescribe more than a single repeat of potentially addictive medication to treat their patients. This is standard, regulated medical practice in Australia.

Anyone working in the drug and alcohol sector or has regular contact with a person living with anxiety, or any form of addiction, will know that patients – people – are not being seen in a timely manner top treat anxiety before the patient starts looking elsewhere. Even once the patient has accessed some type of medical care, the length of care is not long enough for the patient to be “well enough” after discharge or ending their hourly session, to be on their own in the community safely without becoming vulnerable to their condition in a short time and looking for more relief to ease their pain and improve their well-being.

If a person or a patient cannot depend on the medical system in the way they need to feel safe and well, they will almost certainly begin to lose faith and trust in health professionals, and ‘the system’. This perpetuates their internalised stigma being reinforced, yet again.

I am not saying the patient doesn’t have a significant responsibly of their own to make valuable choices outside of medical treatment. I quote what someone once said to me, “You may not have asked for this disease, but it becomes our responsibility to stay well”. That is our duty as the person living with a health issue of any kind. There are things we certainly must do (or not do) to stay as healthy as possible. The help make not be there in a timely manner the next time we need immediate help.

It can take weeks or more to enter a detox facility. It can take months to enter a rehabilitation facility. It can take months for an available appointment to open with a psychiatrist. It becomes our responsibility to know that even when we’re feeling well and back to “normal”, we must continue those relationships with medication professionals. It becomes our responsibility to try alternative medicines if that’s something you’re interested in. Let’s face it, psychiatrists cease their practice, our professional relationship has reached it’s potential for adequate, loving care, or we want to try something new.

Start the process of finding a reliable, qualified, and credible psychiatrist today. I would recommend finding a counselling psychologist or other mental health professional that you have a productive and friendly working relationship with – and if you want to practice Buddhism, or acupuncture, or hypnotherapy, or any other complementary and alternative medicine – do it. If you want to connect with God – do it. If you want to see a naturopath – do it. Whatever it is, this may very well be a lifelong journey for you. Based on my own experience, don’t stop because you think you’re “all better now”. The previously mentioned professions or treatment options or lifestyle choices can be extremely expensive, but I would encourage you to save for it, find less expensive options. Sitting in church is free, or listening to an online guru can be the price or maintaining your mobile service bill.

I once knew of a fellow peer in treatment alongside me who said he saved money for years to travel overseas to have a procedure not available in Australia at the time for this purpose. He wanted blood transfusions and heat therapy for chronic pain that didn’t doctors could not determine had physiological origins. The peer was sure it had to, and medical investigations in Australia come up negative. The peer explained the theory behind blood transfusions and heat therapy – he believed – were supposed to improve his blood circulation and blood flow to treat the chronic pain he’d been living with for years after a workplace accident. Even this procedure overseas proved ineffective in mitigating his chronic pain. So, next he tried the wim hof method. He changed is diet. He exercised differently. He tried hypnotherapy. Finally, he turned psychology to treat stress and process childhood trauma. He was being treated for this a private facility where I was a patient at that time. I lost contact with him after I ended my own treatment episode. I don’t know if he’s still living with chronic pain or not.

The following are some very basic and well-known strategies in the Western world of psychology that you can begin to practice today, and then practice every day after that too – even for 5-20 minutes:

– learning about anxiety – your specific “causes” and the conditions more generally

– mindfulness

– relaxation techniques

– correct breathing techniques

– dietary adjustments

– exercise

– learning to be assertive

– building self-esteem

– cognitive therapy

– exposure therapy

– structured problem solving

– support groups

My firm believe is this:

Strong, healthy, quality relationships are essential to treating anxiety and other psychological illnesses. This about your life today: are you lonely (romantically or otherwise), are you a stressed individual, do you regularly feel like you job is stressful or unfulfilling, do you feel sad a lot, are you feeling pointless a lot, or feeling helpless a lot, feeling shame a lot, getting angry a lot over considerably minor things? etc. etc. etc. I would strongly encourage talking to a professional and begin exploring what options you have available to you.

Try, explore, play with a few methods of treatment. However, this must take a priority in your life. It must balance will all the many other obligations and responsibilities people encounter daily.

Type alternative medications or approaches to psychology. There are so many. It can be fun to try out a few when your finances permit. Even planning a holiday every 3-6 months is taking care of your well-being.

Many blessings friends.