I am not a neuroscientist, but I thought the actual physiological cause of addiction was similar in both nicotine and gambling: you crave the predictable release of dopamine.

If that is the (heavily simplified) case, is there a distinction for you between a chemically-induced dopamine release from smoking and, say, and a button you can press that magically releases dopamine in your brain?

You're missing the negative affect node of the Koob addiction cycle, which exists for gambling but to a lesser degree than for nicotine.

I don’t gamble, but if I did, I am fairly certain it would release little to no dopamine for me, win or lose.

I don’t smoke, but if I did, I’m also fairly certain I would find it hard to stop.

You’re being downvoted, but there’s an interesting point you’re trying to make. Dopamine-chasing is truly selective in the behavior and chemical sense.

There is a particular hard drug that I could be easily addicted to if it were cheaper and more accessible. Nothing else like it gives me irresistible craving for more. Not nicotine, ADHD meds or speed, benzos, and not even opioids have the same effect. So after I discovered this about myself, I went on a little journey to self test myself other possible addictions.

Social media? Nope. Video games and tv? yes. Gambling, hoarding, shopping: No. Sex: yes. Exercise: yes

I can’t rationalize any of it.

And yet, some people find themselves compelled to continue gambling long after they’re drowning in debt.

If you don’t want to call that addiction, fine, but you can’t deny that it happens.

Right: They’re gambling addicts. That’s a distinct fact from, “Gambling is a physiologically addictive behavior for typical humans.”

Right, there's a difference between a chemical that will addict most people simply because of the changes the chemical makes to the brain (even if the person doesn't even really like doing the thing that causes them to consume it), vs. an activity that gives you dopamine hits and can be addictive, depending on the person.

One is physical addiction and the other is psychological.

But I'm also feeling a parallel here to people who think that mental health issues aren't real medical problems and that people can just "get better" whenever they want. And that's concerning. We shouldn't be more lenient on things that are "only" psychologically addictive.

It's predictably addictive under common circumstances (a lack of socioeconomic support and a lack of alternative means to occupy one's time). If those circumstances are becoming more and more widespread in a society (which they are in this one), it behooves experts to consider that "typical" and "this particular cohort" might become harder and harder to distinguish, to the point where what would have been targeted interventions need to become general.

From everything I have read about addiction, it is far from that simple. One of the best examples are pain medicine like morphine. Give opioids to patients and some will form addiction to it and others will not, and the predictors for that are both genetic and environmental. It is not as simple as inject it into person X and now they are a slave to it. One way one can see this is in statistics in that long-term opioid use occurs in about 4% of people following their use for trauma or surgery-related pain.

It not at all certain that you would find it hard to stop if you suddenly decided to try smoking. There would naturally be a risk, but how high that risk is is a debated subject if you have none of the risk factors for addictions.

You seem to be differentiating between physical and psychological addiction, and saying that only physical addiction meets the technical definition of addiction?

I’m saying society should tread extremely carefully in attempting to regulate citizens’ potentially psychologically addictive behaviors.

Ah OK. Yes I agree, there can be a blurry line between something a person does compulsively/addictively and something that he just enjoys doing. And it's different for different people.

To add to the confusion, sometimes I do stupid things just once. Even so, those things should be banned, for harming me.

Good news, social media has been extensively studied and found to be addictive. So we have little need to tread carefully, we already know it’s addictive.

Fortunately it also has minimal to no value to society, so even if we overreacted and banned it completely it’d be fine

Good news, the thing you like had been found to be addictive. Please relinquish your freedom, this is for your own good.

If by relinquish freedom we mean, respect other people and limit your vice to controlled settings where harm is minimized.. yes.

You can still smoke, drink, get high, and gamble. We ask that you limit these to places that minimize the damage you do to other people.

We already have a category called addictive personality disorder where someone is much more prone to being addicted to pretty much anything.

In the US, regardless of what type of addiction you have, it is considered mental health. Open market insurance like ACA does not cover mental health, so there is no addiction treatment available. Sure, you can be addicted to a substance where your body needs a fix, but it is still treated as mental care. This seems to go directly against what your thoughts are on addiction, but that doesn't say much as you're just some rando on the interweb expressing their untrained opinions. So am I, but I'm not the spouting differing opinions with nothing more to back them up than how you feel.

> If something compels behavior vs. behavior remaining a free choice, a liberal society can and should treat it like any other source of compulsion.

Indeed, and if we want those behaviours to remain as things considered to be choices rather than the nearly inescapable negative life-destroying feedback loops (activities with high addiction potential, for lack of a more concise term), they should be treated with special reverence and highly restricted from outside influence. Put another way, if we want liberal societies to be sustainable, I'd argue all forms of overtly addictive behaviour should—in many cases—be banned from public advertisement and restricted from surreptitious advertisement in entertainment, and we should have definitions for those.

For ages we've not had cigarette ads on public broadcasts, and yet people still "choose" to smoke, meanwhile there's been a increasing presence of cigarettes among Oscar winning movies in the last 10 years.

If you are addicted to smoking and trying to avoid being reminded of it, you'd realistically have to stop watching movies and participating in that aspect of culture in order to regain control of that part of your life. Likewise, with gambling, you don't only have to stop going to the casino, you have to stop engaging with sports entertainment wholesale.