

Addiction behavior patterns can be more easily spotted if you become familiar with these five common examples of manipulation common to those with alcohol addiction: 1. Why do people struggling with addiction lie and manipulate in certain ways? If you have been exposed to more than one case of addiction in your life, you may have realized that manipulative behavior tends to look similar even in very different people. People suffering from addiction use these cravings to justify their manipulative behaviors.Ĭommon Manipulation Tactics Associated With Addiction Cravings: We define addiction as an uncontrollable need, both physical and psychological, for drugs or alcohol.They often don’t think beyond their next fix and whatever they have to do to achieve it. Difficulties with Objective Thought: Addiction and substance abuse negatively impacts a person’s ability to think clearly and make educated and informed decisions.Guilt and shame: Some people realize their addiction is affecting their loved ones, and they experience partial remorse that causes them to try and lie about substance abuse.Desperation: Drug and alcohol cravings quickly erode a person’s morals and principles, causing people to stop caring about how their actions are affecting relationships.Need for control: The loss of control associated with addiction can cause a person to try and compensate by controlling the people around them.There are five basic reasons why people with alcohol addiction lie and cheat: These effects combine to completely shift a person’s priorities, causing them to lie and manipulate in order to sustain their addiction. Addiction also affects the brain’s danger-sensing circuitry, making people feel stressed and anxious when they don’t have access to the substance. This results in the addicted person wanting more and more of the substance, regardless of the consequences.Īddiction takes over the reward system to the point that critical life factors, like work responsibilities and family relationships, become insignificant compared to the need for the substance. However, drugs and alcohol provide an immediate, artificial sense of gratification to the reward system that far outweighs the pleasure received from everyday activities. Likewise, the brain’s reasoning ability allows us to properly weigh consequences and decide which actions we shouldn’t take. Normally, the brain rewards healthy behaviors like bonding with friends and family, exercising or eating a good meal. It’s common to hear that addiction has “hijacked” the brain, and it results in people acting in ways they might never have considered prior to their struggles with drugs or alcohol.Īddiction begins when the brain begins to adapt to the frequent consumption of a substance. The most important thing to remember when someone you know is addicted is that addiction causes changes in the brain itself. Why Are Many People With Addiction Manipulative? So, why do people with addiction lie and cheat? How do you recognize when you are being manipulated, and what can you do about it? The answers to these critical questions will impact the way you handle typical addiction behavior in your relationships, and the role you play in convincing someone with an addiction to seek treatment. Two common threads you can observe in nearly all addictions are lying and manipulation on the part of the person abusing drugs or alcohol.

When you care about someone with an addiction, you may find some of their behaviors confusing and upsetting. Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) Program.Levels of Care for Substance Use Treatment.
