It does clarify what you are talking about, thank you.
Now it’s your use of “intolerable” that I don’t like. I think most people could kick a coffee addiction if they were given enough incentive, so withdrawal is not strictly intolerable. If every feeling that people take actions to avoid is “intolerable”, then the word loses a lot of its meaning. I think “unpleasant” is a better word. (Also, the reason people get addicted to caffeine in the first place isn’t the withdrawal, but more that it alleviates tiredness, which is even less “intolerable.”)
Your phrasing in the below section read to me like addiction is symptomatic of some character defect. If we replace the “intolerable” with “unpleasant” here, it’s less dramatic and makes a lot more sense to me.
This is the basic core of addiction. Addictions are when there’s an intolerable sensation but you find a way to bear its presence without addressing its cause. The more that distraction becomes a habit, the more that’s the thing you automatically turn to when the sensation arises. This dynamic becomes desperate and life-destroying to the extent that it triggers a red queen race.
I don’t think this matters much for the rest of the post. It just felt like this mischaracterizes what addiction is really about.
It does clarify what you are talking about, thank you.
Now it’s your use of “intolerable” that I don’t like. I think most people could kick a coffee addiction if they were given enough incentive, so withdrawal is not strictly intolerable. If every feeling that people take actions to avoid is “intolerable”, then the word loses a lot of its meaning. I think “unpleasant” is a better word. (Also, the reason people get addicted to caffeine in the first place isn’t the withdrawal, but more that it alleviates tiredness, which is even less “intolerable.”)
Your phrasing in the below section read to me like addiction is symptomatic of some character defect. If we replace the “intolerable” with “unpleasant” here, it’s less dramatic and makes a lot more sense to me.
I don’t think this matters much for the rest of the post. It just felt like this mischaracterizes what addiction is really about.