What is the Assumption?
Addiction is a phenomenon whereby the user's organism develops a certain degree of resistance to the action of the drug or drug taken; this entails the need for gradually increasing doses to obtain the desired effects previously obtained with lower doses.
In practice, the organism becomes more able to metabolize the active ingredient or loses sensitivity towards it at the cellular level. The concept of habituation is therefore combined with that of tolerance and the only ways to deal with it are to increase the dose or temporarily suspend it. of the treatment. In fact, addiction represents a reversible state, since the original sensitivity to the active principle is restored by the suspension of use; therefore addictive drugs or supplements are typically used cyclically and intermittently.
Addiction should not be confused with drug addiction, even if the latter often favors the development of addiction by inducing in the individual the absolute need to take a certain substance.
Health Risks
The phenomenon of addiction strictly depends not only on the type of drug, supplement or drug taken (not all of them have this risk), but also on the conditions of use and individual characteristics. Unfortunately, the increase in dosages to cope with addiction is accompanied by the parallel, sometimes exponential, rise in side effects.
Tolerance and addiction usually develop gradually, but this is not always the case. This is the case, for example, of laxatives, which many people resort to to solve constipation problems; the use of these products, especially if with a drastic action, produces a particularly abundant "evacuation, such that it will take 2-3 days to accumulate enough fecal material to produce a new evacuation. During this time many people interpret the lack of stimulus as a perpetuation of constipation, and are therefore led to take a new dose of laxative to obtain the purgative effect . Given the scarcity of fecal material, there is also a tendency to increase the dose to obtain a more abundant and "satisfying" defecation.
Beyond this example, which is in some respects questionable, actual addiction mainly affects psychoactive substances, such as benzodiazepines (alprazolam, diazepam, lorazepam), alcohol, opiates (morphine, codeine, heroin and the like), amphetamines and nicotine. Let's take an example to clarify the concept: despite the lethal dose of morphine per os in a normal subject is about 200 mg, among addicts there are cases of tolerance up to doses of 2 or more grams.
Even anabolic steroids are subject to the phenomenon of addiction, so that professional bodybuilders often come to use "horse" pharmaceutical dosages and combinations.
As for the supplements, the phenomenon of addiction accompanies the prolonged use of the so-called "stacks", thermogenic or fat-burning, based on caffeine (mate, cola, guarana, coffee, tea, cocoa), ephedrine (no longer allowed as a supplement), bitter orange and synephrine. Creatine also gives a sort of addiction, given that once the muscle stocks are saturated, any further supplementation is practically useless.
