Researchers Find This Emotion Is At The Root Of Most Addictions

Addiction can manifest in a lot of ways, whether it's drugs or alcohol, shopping, or even food. But new research says the emotion that underlies addiction may be the most notable factor as far as what triggers addictive behavior in the first place.

Many have wondered about exactly that—how emotion correlates with addiction. Which is why a team of Harvard researchers conducted four interwoven studies to identify the root of the problem.

In a national longitudinal survey of over 10,000 people, the sadder the survey participants were, the likelier they were to smoke and even relapse a decade or more after quitting. In another, 425 smokers watched different video clips and wrote about personal experiences. The participants who had to watch a sad video had higher cravings to smoke than participants who watched a neutral or repulsive video.

The third study had 700 participants also watch videos and write about life experiences. Then they were given the hypothetical choice of fewer cigarette puffs sooner, or more, later. Those who watched the sad video, as you might have expected, were more impatient to smoke.

The team's lead researcher, Charles A. Dorison, notes that these findings offer a novel perspective on the underlying cause of addictive behavior.

"The conventional wisdom in the field was that any type of negative feelings, whether it's anger, disgust, stress, sadness, fear, or shame, would make individuals more likely to use an addictive drug," he says. "Our work suggests that the reality is much more nuanced than the idea of 'feel bad, smoke more.' Specifically, we find that sadness appears to be an especially potent trigger of addictive substance use."

Jennifer Lerner, Ph.D., senior co-author of the research, says the findings could have positive effects on public health policy surrounding addiction, such as reframing substance abuse ads to avoid triggering sadness.

Dorison adds, "We believe that theory-driven research could help shed light on how to address [the addiction] epidemic. We need insights across disciplines, including psychology, behavioral economics and public health, to confront this threat effectively."

As far as how to mitigate sadness in general, well, wouldn't we all like to know?

There are lots of ways to invite happiness into your life, but often focusing on achieving happiness can actually have the opposite effect. Instead of dwelling on a lack of happiness, which only highlights sadness1, we'd be better off to focus on wholeness and accepting where we are.