DA signs and symptoms
Clinically speaking, when it comes to diagnosing a disease such as dopamine addiction, signs are identified by physicians, while symptoms are observed by the patients. Although the course of DA is unique for every individual, there are common signs. Symptoms are another matter. Because DA has been a plague on our species for so long, many of the disease’s characteristics have become ingrained as socially-acceptable behaviors.
Additionally, the most common sign of all addictions is self-deception. This facilitates the denial of symptoms. Consequently, the most self-deceptive DAs are genuinely convinced that even their most addictive behaviors are indications of normalcy and even superiority.
Since this is a primer we’ve included a single sign exhibited by all dopamine addicts. The sign is a marked lack of concern for the damage and destruction caused by their addictions to themselves, to others, and to the sustainability of our species.
Examples:
Heroin addiction: Typically, heroin addicts aren’t concerned about destroying their health, they don’t worry about burdening family and friends with financial and emotional hardships, and it doesn’t matter if stealing valuables that they sell for pennies costs their victims thousands of dollars.
Food addiction: Anorexia, bulimia, and obesity aren’t the only signs and symptoms of food addiction. Millions of image-conscious food addicts who derive the bulk of their calories from unhealthy junk foods stay slim by avoiding healthy foods and relying on dangerous diets.
Meat addiction: Few meat addicts care about the unhealthy and inhumane treatment of factory-farmed animals, or that meat consumption is a proven form of slow suicide to the carnivores addicted to meat, to everyone else on the planet, and to the planet itself.
Sex addiction: Sex addicts are the most likely to catch and spread STDs and the least likely to care about the countless innocent children and adolescents whose lives are destroyed by pornographers and sex traffickers supplying the sex addicts’ dopamine needs.
Gambling addiction: Gambling shifts from a pastime into an addiction when the craving to score gambling related dopamine hits overshadows concerns about the financial, psychological, and emotional damage gamblers inflict on themselves, their families, and society.
Safety addiction: When safety addicts feel threatened the resulting dopamine withdrawal sends them scurrying into the clutches of fear mongers who provide addicts with scapegoats, scriptures, and lies. The greater the fear, the greater the need to blame others: resulting in even less concern about persecuting, silencing, or even destroying the lives of innocent people.
Peer-approval addiction: To satisfy the pathological need for approval and avoid the dopamine withdrawal stemming from disapproval, peer-approval addicts forfeit all concern about the loss of their personal integrity, spiritual growth, and ability to think for themselves.
Esteem addiction: Dopamine withdrawal keeps esteem addicts obsessively seeking to score dopamine to put out the pain stemming from their low self-esteem and completely indifferent to the destruction caused by their addiction induced behaviors. For example, the bankers, venture capitalists, and politicians responsible for the recent financial crisis remain totally incapable of assuming any responsibility for the misery caused by their malfeasance.
Because most esteem addicts are already suffering from debilitating low self-esteem they remain highly vigilant, vehemently defensive, and obsessively closed-minded when it comes to hearing, evaluating, or learning any information that might add to their already unpleasant dopamine withdrawal. Examples of status reducing information that esteem addicts simply cannot handle include diagnosable signs that reveal they are suffering from low self-esteem, that their need to feed addictions causes unnecessary suffering and damage to others, or that their lack of free will keeps them from understanding that they are dopamine addicts.
To learn more, read The Perfect Pandemic.
