Why Can't I Stop? Reclaiming your Life from a Behavioral Addiction by Jon E.Grant, JD, MD, MPH, Brian L.Odlaug, PhD, MPH, & Samuel R. Chamberlain, MD, phD

Why Can't I Stop? Reclaiming your Life from a Behavioral Addiction by Jon E.Grant, JD, MD, MPH, Brian L.Odlaug, PhD, MPH, & Samuel R. Chamberlain, MD, PhD is a Johns Hopkins Press Health book of great interest.

In this book treated all that behavioral addictions that sometimes become clinically treatable because not anymore under control: gambling, food, sex, stealing, internet, shopping and buying, hair pulling and skin picking.
All these behaviors, in a common person are perfectly normal.
Sometimes, for a reason or another, maybe for a moment of weakness, maybe for stress, depression, sadness, situation becomes more serious with high repercussion for the personal life-style of the person involved in that compulsive behavioral addiction but also for the rest of his/ her family.
Some examples?
Gambling. It is not a bad activity but if it becomes compulsive the person can loses a lot of money, with heavy repercussion for everyone; sexual addiction; if the person, using cocaine, a drug in grade to let you see the happiest side of life, is sexually compulsive it's high the percentage of starting to suffer of terrible illnesses like HIV/AIDS, because he/she won't use any kind of protection living in promiscuity relationship and changing partners pretty quickly in search, constantly, of new emotions.

Stealing is a behavior in general adopted by rich people or, anyway people in grade to buying the object they are stealing with simplicity.
We speak of people who want to discover an emotion; serial stealers because they can't do anything different: they must steal.
Of course this act at long bring nasty consequences for the person and her family. In general stealers are more women than men.

Internet is an important voice of behavioral addiction; not yet classified as a behavioral addiction, it's a young "dependence" just 20 years old,  for work, for pleasure, time passed close to a device passes by in a few click. But...In what way people spend their time close to a device? Do they work and are productive or they search constantly and compulsively for something? Maybe becoming addicted to some games? Sites? There are apps, like https://freedom.to/ (the word, freedom says all, to my point of view) in grade to block every kind of internet activity. Again: not yet clinically recognized as a proper illness or addiction, internet starts to be taken in serious consideration.

Food addiction is dangerous for obvious reasons. Gaining weight means the arrival of a lot of illnesses. I found very interesting the inter-connections existing in the brain, and our second brain, the emotive one, the intestine.

Buying and shopping is good; a moment of gratification just for ourselves but when it becomes a compulsion, it is dangerous: a lady told in the book that she had bought wagons of bags, still new. She didn't need them after all but she bought them.
You see: these clinical behaviors are not just dangerous for the person but also for his/her family.
The student internet addicted won't be in grade to be productive in college because he won't study; he will be weak after hours spent online and maybe confused (too many informations need to be digested by our brain.) He will lose his friends, perception of the reality; a compulsive shopper will spend more than what she can, like for the gambler; the sex addicted, apart spending money, can also brings home dangerous illnesses like syphilis, or HIV/AIDS; stealing, when it's possible to buying it's embarrassing and dangerous because it's not said that all the stores-owners understand the illness of the person. Maybe in little centers but not in big cities.
Some of them can call the police with heavy repercussion for the life of the subject and the one of her/his family.

For all these disturbs, including of course hair pulling and skin picking,there are remedies passing through the utilization of medicines and therapy.

This book will be illuminating, if you have one of these behavioral addictions or if you know someone with these problems. With clarity, simplicity, every behavioral addiction is explained with clarity, vividly,offering answers like the best approaches for removing it from the life of your beloved ones or from your one.

Highly recommended.

I thank Johns Hopkins University for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori