Food and Addictions

Abstract

People need love to grow; the unwelcome child suffers damage to the development of the brain architectures that expose them to developmental disorders. When we are born, we are in a state of absolute dependence, and we are biologically built to live the condition of dependence. The quality of the mother–child interaction is the tool that lays the foundation for later emotional regulation and cognition, the qualities that are most involved in the formation of addiction.

Addiction makes some experiences easier and more rewarding and, conversely, other different experiences increasingly difficult and less rewarding. Addiction is so spread to fell into the dilemma: is addiction just the severe degree of impulsive-compulsive disorders sedated/modulated by drugs or behaviours or does it embrace all consumption and impulsive-compulsive behaviours?

Indeed, a phenomenon of addiction occurs because of:

• A substance (or a human habit) that carries within it the possibility of addiction

• A person and therefore a personality open to addiction

• A socio-environmental context

All three aspects are necessary, but none alone is sufficient to determine the condition.

On his 700th death anniversary, it might seem suggestive to connect the subject of this article with the path taken by Dante Alighieri accompanied by Virgil in the Divine Comedy in the descent into hell “I do not say well why I enter there; I was so confused and slept that I lost the right way” (Inferno c I ° 9).

The relationship between eating disorders and substance use disorders is one of the many possible comorbidities, and although many times underestimated and insufficiently investigated in clinical practice, the presence of substance use disorders in people with eating disorders and vice versa is significant.

ED and SUD have various similarities: neurobiological, emotional and behavioural mechanisms seem to bring them together. The disease histories must clarify which of the two disorders arose first or whether the onset is contemporary.

In one clinical area as in the other, disorders are often underestimated with negative consequences for the results.

In DSM-5 alongside the disorders related to the use of substances, a new category is introduced, addictive behaviours; between them, some authors introduce that food addiction, especially activated by refined and manipulated, palatable foods, would override the cortical inhibitory processes that signal satiety to cause the compulsive consumption of food in large quantities. The loss of control and compulsive behavioural patterns of food consumption replicate the patterns of drug use observed in the SUD.

In his latest work on food addiction, Melchionda explains one of the essences of life: the struggle between regulation and dysregulation of behaviour, above all food.

The struggle between accepting and letting go has at its root the ontological incompleteness of the human person.

We are currently in a new phase in the history of addiction: an environment full of stimuli related to the object of too much desire, which can be drugs, food, sex, play, the Internet, shopping, work, power and, why not, the beloved, stimulates the desire to take drugs, eat, have sex, play and so on until you are always with your loved one. Desire is formed before acting, creating a state of expectation that can become poignant, tearing and craving.