- These addictions just go to show that even good things are dangerous in excess.
Addiction is never healthy. Whether you’re addicted to alcohol, drugs, or even exercise, it often comes with side effects that severely impact your well-being.
But you can get addicted to basically anything. Outlandish addictions, such as addiction to coffee enemas, have been featured on TV shows like My Strange Addiction. We’ve written about them as well.
Yet then there are seemingly perfectly normal things that most people do on a regular basis that can turn into debilitating addictions. Here are six bizarre addictions that can have their origins in normal everyday things and behaviors.
1. Piercings and Tattoos
Piercings and tattoos were once only for sailors and hooligans, but in the past few decades, they’ve become increasingly acceptable. These days, it’s nothing unusual to see a CEO or other “respectable” person sporting a tattoo or an earring or two.
But the normalization of tattoos and piercings has given birth to a strange phenomenon. Some people become addicted to them.
More precisely, they get addicted to the act of getting one. And there’s a scientific reason why we may develop that addiction.
When you get a piercing or tattoo, you experience a small but usually tolerable amount of pain. But your brain responds to it the same way it does to any injury — it pumps out some feel-good chemicals to take the edge off the pain.
Some people get hooked on that surge of endorphins. What started simply as a mildly edgy fashion statement can spiral into a full-blown addiction.
2. Not Eating Well
A well-balanced diet is critical for a healthy body and life. Failing to eat properly can lead to many health issues, including a couple of strange addictions.
First of all, sugar or junk food addictions are increasingly prevalent in Western societies. Highly processed fatty foods can stimulate the same areas of the brain that some hard drugs, like cocaine, do.
But a poor diet could also lead to an even more bizarre phenomenon — eating things that aren’t food.
Chronic nutritional deficiencies can lead the human body to try and get the minerals or nutrients it needs through any means necessary. As such, some people with such deficiencies develop a compulsive craving to eat inedible matter, like dirt or glass.
Needless to say, eating that stuff isn’t good for you and may even be lethal. All the more reason why we should keep a healthy diet.
3. Pulling Your Hair
Many people will play with their hair when stressed, anxious, or even happy. But this seemingly harmless habit can get out of hand and develop into trichotillomania.
Trichotillomania is the compulsive urge to pull out one’s hair. This condition is a complex one and often straddles the line between addiction and mental disorder.
However, it shares many similarities with alcohol or drug addictions. Trichotillomaniacs may pull their hair as a result of seeking a physical sensation, which is often associated with substance abuse.
Additionally, they often get withdrawal symptoms if they try to stop. They may get anxious or irritable, and the only way they feel they can improve their mood is to grab their hair.
4. Heartbreak
If you’ve ever been rejected romantically, you might wonder how anyone could get hooked on that awful feeling. But yet, some people start deriving a twisted pleasure from having their hearts smashed to pieces.
Studies have found that our bodies can react to emotional distress from rejection as they do to physical pain. They can release hormones and chemicals that stimulate the brain’s reward and pleasure centers in an attempt to cheer us up.
Just as with piercings, it’s easy to get hooked on those chemicals. But there’s also another, more morbid element at play.
Often, people find it’s easier to wallow in their misery than try to improve their lives. Experiencing constant rejection can feed that little demon whispering how worthless you are into your ear.
As a result, people can begin to unwittingly sabotage their relationships to feed their sense of despair. Unfortunately, that downward spiral can lead to violence toward other people — or ourselves.
5. Drinking Water
Everybody needs to drink water — about a gallon a day. But even something as vital as water is dangerous in excessive amounts.
Water addicts, or aquaholics, often start as people who are just trying to stay well-hydrated. But their water-drinking habit becomes uncontrollable and they end up guzzling way more water than is healthy.
Excess water consumption can lead to serious side effects, like headaches, nausea, insomnia from having to go to the bathroom at night, excess sweating, or liver failure. It could also dilute our blood and lead to low sodium levels.
Low blood sodium can, ironically, lead to polydipsia — excessive thirst. And so the problem only gets worse.
6. Listening to Music
There are very few people in the world who don’t like listening to music. But this pastime, too, can become addicting — and we have a case to prove it.
Roger Tullgren is a Swedish heavy metal fan whose unreasonable love for headbanging has been recognized as a genuine disability. As a result, he’s entitled to disability benefits since he can’t hold down a full-time job — he feels a compulsive urge to attend metal concerts during work hours, after all.
It might be easy to brush Tullgren’s case off as him just being lazy, but multiple doctors have testified that he suffers from severe addiction. As such, we assume that this same condition could afflict fans of other genres as well, and not just metalheads.
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