Addictions in the holiday season

In many ways, breaking the routine and leaving behind our work responsibilities is necessary to enjoy good mental health. However, this change of scenery also exposes us to certain risks, some of which have to do with addictions. Let's see what this is relationship between addictive disorders and vacations.

Addictions and vacation break

During the holidays, people have more free time to dedicate to our hobbies, leisure, visiting friends and family; In short, to activities that we tend to put aside in the frenzy of the rest of the year. Recreation in this period is extremely important to rest and recharge energy, but also to connect with ourselves, reflect on what really matters to us and evaluate where we want to go in our lives.

Unfortunately, some dispersal activities are framed in spaces where certain substances harmful to health are more availablesuch as alcohol, dope or tobacco, such as at a party or gathering with friends. Addictions are consumption and/or habits that are harmful to health that, as we will see later, we cannot do without due to both psychological and physiological factors.

The problem is that during the holidays people frequent these spaces more frequently and, if certain conditions are met, there is a possibility that we will engage in potentially addictive. This doesn't just come down to substance use. As we have more free time, we could also spend long hours glued to the screens of our phones mobile phones, hooked on the ephemeral videos on social networks, or spend whole nights without sleeping to play video game. With this in mind, in this article we will delve into the reason why many people tend to resort to this type of behavior, specifically during the holiday season, and what is possible to do when regard.

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Substance addictions: what we know about them

We know that, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), an addiction to a chemical substance implies the repeated consumption of it to the point that the consumer becomes intoxicated. Periodically, you find it very difficult to stop or change your use of the substance, and you experience urges to engage in behaviors that are harmful but are unable to check. Certain individual conditions must be met —but also others at a social and cultural level— for a subject to be prone to resort to a substance. In addition, there are different reasons why someone goes to them. For example, while consumption is usually accompanied by obtaining a wide range of pleasant sensations in the short term, from the relaxation to ecstasy, some people may use certain substances as an inefficient mechanism to calm very strong emotions. painful.

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A little useful mechanism and with many risks

We say inefficient not because it fails to reduce discomfort —in fact, drugs are highly effective in fulfilling that task—, but because the gratification they provide is momentary. Everything that goes up, has to come down: after consumption, the person will not only find that the discomfort reappears (after all, the drug does not resolve the emotion internal situation and/or external situation that you are trying to avoid), but also with which the frequency with which you will carry out that problematic behavior will increase. after.

The latter is due to the activation of the reward systems of our brain. The Spanish neuroscientist Lucía Hipólito uses the metaphor of a luminous sign to explain this in a simple way. When people perform useful behaviors for our survival, such as eating or interacting with others, in a region of our brain called the nucleus accumbens is as if a luminous sign were activated indicating: "This is important for the survival". This will install a tendency to repeat that behavior. The problem with addictions is that they "turn on the sign" as if they were necessary to survive, since consuming is a behavior that generates intense pleasure, but which, nevertheless, is extremely harmful in the long term.

The cost of resorting to drugs for a long time is very high, since it negatively affects the physical health of the person, but it also affects their mental health and other vital areas: interpersonal ties, studies, the job... The person may be aware of how detrimental it is to their well-being the fact that they present a consumption problematic, also for your circle of friends and family, but this is usually not enough to eradicate the habit of consumption.

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How to prevent addictions on vacation

The risk of beginning or relapsing into this type of behavior could be more common on holidays than during the rest of the year. Although it is not limited to it, nightlife is an area in which people are more likely to use drugs. This could be the product of the social pressure experienced by people to consume, especially adolescents, who are in a stage of development in which belonging to a group is vital for the elaboration of their own identity. Also, consumption could be based on the illusion that only then will they have fun, or that this is the only resource available to distract yourself from your personal problems.

However, it is not a question of vetoing night outings or meetings with friends by adults towards adolescents if what is desired is to prevent drug use. On the other hand, the main protective factor is to promote spaces for dialogue with them, talk about the issue, expose the consequences long-term negatives (even from highly normalized practices like getting drunk to the point of passing out), but allowing the adolescent to draw their own conclusions, share her vision about it and express what she observes in her close circle. This will strengthen parent-child ties, which will not only prevent drug use, but will also bring positive consequences to the bond between the two in general.

Digital addictions on vacation: the case of video games

So far, we have described the risk of drug use during vacations, although it remains to point out that addiction is not limited to habits that involve the intake of chemical substances. Although the approach to this issue is highly complex, we said that, broadly speaking, an addiction implies the persistence of a problem behavior that can hardly be abandoned. For this reason, current diagnostic manuals contemplate that people can suffer an addiction to other types of behaviors, such as gambling —under the argument that gambling behaviors game activate reward systems similar to those activated by drugs and produce some behavioral symptoms comparable to those produced by substances—or to video games in line.

Regarding the latter, although during vacations it is good to be more flexible with schedules, keep certain regularity in them is a useful strategy to avoid falling into behaviors that could be troublesome. This does not mean that having the holiday habit of staying up all night playing video games necessarily implies an addiction, although it is indeed a behavior that is detrimental to health and well-being and may be an ineffective way of coping with difficult emotions and problems everyday. For this reason, it is always necessary to emphasize the importance of consulting with a health professional. in case of detecting in oneself the possibility of carrying out addictive behaviors at the time vacation.