Addiction to Drama

Over 20 years ago, I noticed that certain people would repeat behaviors that weren’t even enjoyable simply because the behavior is familiar. Caving to mental illness and eating an entire bowl of candy in a professional workplace isn’t exactly “joy-producing” after all. The act of disrupting or angering loved ones isn’t exactly fulfilling. But people do this and more all the time. I began to formulate a theory that people are actually addicted to “being off.” That is, ironically, people crave being unhealthy. They’re drama addicts, self-destruction addicts, dishonesty-addicts. Willpower doesn’t fail. They don’t fail. Instead, they get high from needlessly being reckless or unreliable.

Dr. John Grey has spoken about this at length, and detailed it in his book, Staying Focused in A Hyper World. In some cases, people will even become addicted to grief, a counter-intuitive and painful dopamine trigger. We all have familiarity with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, but think less about other hyper disorders.

This study (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/isj.12253) I find to be a bit more pertinent. People will become irritated on social media, only to spend more time on it. Interesting implications. Also, be careful.