Addict or sociopath?

Some people ask if they or an addict who they know is a sociopath. My understanding is that addicts often display the characteristics of sociopaths without being able to actually be diagnosed as sociopaths because it's not a permanent condition (e.g., recover from the addiction, recover from the sociopathic traits). I don't have any real experience abusing drugs, so it's hard for me to know when someone is just an addict or is also a sociopath?

From a reader:

Convinced that I may be a sociopath, or at least have some type of antisocial personality disorder, I've come to you for further analysis. I've come to the point where I can recognize patterns in my behavior, past and still occurring, that can be identified with sociopathic traits & characteristics. I’ve noticed my inability to empathize with my mother, or any of my relatives, and my lack of interest in others ideals or their emotions. In later infancy and early adolescence, I was described to be abusive and manipulative of my mother/sister during my father's absence while incarcerated. I would physically abuse my sister and take advantage of my mother’s tenderness and inability to deny me of almost any privilege. My father's arrival into my life brought structure and discipline within the household. I was very hateful of my father, initially, but respected his ability to deliver swift punishment with complete rationality. We had a lot in common which lead to me favoring him over my mother. But I still persisted in my mischief. In elementary school, I made friends easily and could band them together to accompany me in my nefarious schemes. It came to the point where my father couldn't afford to leave work anymore to beat me himself, so he gave consent to certain instructors and faculty members to do the job for him in his stead.

I grew fond of my father but still felt emotional unattached to him. For example, when he was hospitalized in the result of a stabbing during a street fight, I wasn’t very emotionally receptive and didn’t feel any sense of urgency for his well-being. During the hospital visit, I feigned sadness in order to seem concerned. My attempt to fool him wasn’t successful. When he saw me he immediately knew that my tears lacked sincerity and smiled at me while lying on his bed, with his abdomen stapled together.

 I think that because of him and his almost militant approach at disciplining me, I turned out to be much more tame than what I could've been. As I grew older, I used lies and manipulation in order to avoid being beaten. Although it wasn't foolproof and it ended up contributing to my family members deeming me generally untrustworthy, I was able to maneuver around and stave off immediate punishment.

In high school, I was extremely conflicted. My father wasn't around anymore, due to his past criminal charges coming back to haunt him. I was then elected to be the man of the house and was expected to fill his shoes. I tried to emulate him and his role as a diligent, selfless, and stern family man. That proved to be very difficult. In some ways, it was easy to fashion myself after him. He could be extremely calculative. In addition, my apathy could be mistaken for benevolent qualities similar to his selflessness and generosity. Ultimately, I felt inadequate in my role. My responsibilities also hindered me from indulging in the typical activities that a normal teenager would have been able to. 

I also felt a slight betrayal from my mother, who couldn't accept my general impartial attitude towards my duties and at the fact that she was very intrusive of my privacy. Whatever discoveries she made as a product of her habitual prying, she became more and more aware of my true nature. I simply did what I felt like doing, as long as I felt it didn't have a detrimental affect on others. I believed that it was justified. She had hopes for me to grow into a loving and compassionate son who was considerate of other’s feelings, and primarily of hers’. I thought of her as a mess, at times. She could be very emotional and it didn't have a pull on me. She would question my love for her but I would say things like I loved in my own way. I feel that I do love her as my mother but am not very fond of her as a person. I grew to be very close to my sister. I hold her very dear to me, despite our past violent relationship.

Upon graduating from high school, I was accepted to one of the best design schools in America. I chose to major in illustrations because I was very good at it. After completing my freshman year, on the slow track of a part time student, I felt quite passionless about drawing in general. Around that time, I became unemployed and was earnestly looking for work. I took to craigslist and went for a rather unordinary job for someone of my background and stature. Growing up middle class, others felt that it was odd that I felt compelled to sell $2,000 vacuum as a cold call, door-to-door salesman, in trailer parks to boot. I didn’t know exactly why at the time, but I didn’t have any qualms with the work and had a rather positive outlook. During that time period, I believe that I was at my most sociopathic. I played the role of a seasoned salesman well, as I went from trailer to trailer pitching a sale to people who were obviously financially unfit to buy a vacuum for the price of a used car. People were often forced to buy with the alternative option to finance the payments on the vacuum. The money was terrible, due to the company being an actual pyramid scheme, but for some odd reason that did not concern me. My mother recommended that I should find work elsewhere, after a month. 


 Working in the environment that I did, I fell into recreational drug use. I began to experiment with MDMA and LSD to rouse myself or try to gain some direction, because I fell into apathy. It ended up being quite detrimental. I started to feel emotions and couldn't understand them. I started to feel extremely alienated and off kilter. I felt weak and had numerous episodes of uncontrollable sobbing. Sometimes from depressions, anxiety or deep joy. I did not like it. Going to raves and partying every weekend was also taking a toll on my school life and finances. I stopped for a short period of time and turned to drinking. I felt much more I control while intoxicated from alcohol. I also started to experiment with narcotics (Xanax, Adderall, Oxy, Cocaine). They induced almost the same feeling. Oxy and Xanax put me into a state of dismissive drowsiness that I am not very fond of. Cocaine and Adderall were almost identical in how they induced energetic highs with a trace of overzealous aggression, when tapped into. All of these drugs gave me the ability to draw off of a spectrum of emotions that I normally couldn't. I appreciated it, but wasn’t fully convinced that they were going to be beneficial to my quest of self-discovery. They eventually led to me being kicked out from under my mother's roof and my current homelessness. Nevertheless, I am complacent. Without a working vehicle, I am unable to work as my position of delivery driver. I am currently stationed near a well-populated and budding town where I have access to nearly free food and Wi-Fi. I spend my days reading books in a local cafe that I steal from Barnes and Nobles. On weekends, I spend my time in the company of my female familiars that I've met during my drug and alcohol filled adventures with friends. My family does not know of my homelessness only because I feel that it will complicate things if they did.

I'm not an addict

People have suggested to me several times that drugs might enhance my ability to "feel," particularly MDMA or cannabis. I haven't tried either, but even if I were to feel different things I think my brain would reject them as not coming from me. Already when I have emotional hallucinations, I basically ignore them as being quirks in my brain chemistry, like you might ignore voices in your head. I think the same would go double for narcotics, particularly if I knowingly consumed them as opposed to be drugged.

Sociopaths are supposedly prone to addiction. I can sort of see why that might be true for some--chronic boredom would mean self medication in some form or another. I have never been drawn to narcotics, though, in fact I would say that I affirmatively dislike them because they hamper my brain function/control. Not only do I not like narcotics, a recent study, discussed in this NY Times article, suggests that sociopath's brains may make them particularly unsusceptible to addiction. The article first discusses how addicts tend to have an underactive reward system in the brain:

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has shown in several brain-imaging studies that people addicted to such drugs as cocaine, heroin and alcohol have fewer dopamine receptors in the brain’s reward pathways than nonaddicts. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter critical to the experience of pleasure and desire, and sends a signal to the brain: Pay attention, this is important.

When Dr. Volkow compared the responses of addicts and normal controls with an infusion of a stimulant, she discovered that controls with high numbers of D2 receptors, a subtype of dopamine receptors, found it aversive, while addicts with low receptor levels found it pleasurable.

This finding and others like it suggest that drug addicts may have blunted reward systems in the brain, and that for them everyday pleasures don’t come close to the powerful reward of drugs.

In contrast, there is research that suggests that sociopaths have an overactive reward system, which would presumably make them largely immune ("aversive") to at least certain substance addictions.

Interestingly, the article cites the borderline personality disordered as being particularly susceptible to addiction ("People with borderline personality disorder, who struggle to control their impulses and anger, often resort to drugs and alcohol to soften their intolerable moods."). Is this possibly a way to distinguish between the brains of sociopaths versus those with BPD for purposes of diagnosis? If so, it might be a step toward ending the gender stereotype for sociopathy and BPD.

In any case, those facing drug addiction problems can always rely on Vermont addiction services or other similar programs across the United States for treatment help.

Drugs, eating disorders, and burn victims

I regularly cull through photos of drug addicts, anorexics, and burn victims (let's be honest, bulimics, you're not horrifyingly skinny enough). My drug addict of choice is the crystal meth user and his rotting-out-of-his-face teeth. These pictures are the result of no one stepping up to help a drug addict, and it’s hard to look away.I think everyone likes to stare at the macabre, even empaths. They're all images of human destruction, of course: the drug addicts show the effects of a demon, the eating disordered show the effects of a mental weakness, and the burn victims reflect our own inhumanity back at us.

But I do feel like I get a unique pleasure from gazing upon them. I think I like the notion that I can easily understand how bad their lives are. If sociopaths like me can understand their pain, then they and the similarly afflicted may be the only people immune to a sociopath's exploits. They're so bad off even a sociopath can feel sorry for them, somewhat. At least they have that to cheer them up!