What role does it play in addiction? A number of specialists in the field see addiction as a response to stress or anxiety that has no avenue for solution. With this in mind, a major key to successfully dealing with and halting addiction, can be the understanding of stress and the use of appropriate tools to regulate it. With regulation, addictive response can then be stopped before it is acted on, again. So the cycle of addiction can stop. According to the viewpoint, the more a person practices these stress reduction strategies, the better they will be at maintaining non-addictive behaviour.
Stress and Addiction produce some of the same changes in brain systems, so they are intimately connected. Animal studies have shown that the brain changes associated with stressful experiences are also associated with more sensitivity to the effects of drugs abuse. For people who have addictions, stressful life experiences such as divorce, job loss and conflict are often associated with craving and relapse. In addition, people with addiction often have poor coping strategies and turn to drugs and alcohol to relieve stress. While it is impossible to remove all stress from the lives of individuals with addictions, teaching coping strategies and treating stress-related disorders is an important factor in stable recovery from addictions.
