today-is-a-good-day
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Home Fun Facts Top 10 Strange Addictions

Top 10 Strange Addictions

It is quite common for people to have a guilty pleasure or a passionately followed hobby. But sometimes personal habits take a turn for the extreme and grow into self destructive obsessions. Here’s a list of 10 simple habits that can become fully fledged strange addictions if allowed to go on unchecked.

#1. Shopping

shopping

Shopping is good, retail therapy is better, but oniomania (commonly called “shopaholism”) is a proper psychological disorder. Shopping is the most prevalent addiction among teens and tweens. According to experts it is caused by parental indifference toward a child’s emotional needs, thus leaving the child to look for objects like toys to satisfy their loneliness. As a grown up, this habit can take a turn for CBD or compulsive buying disorder, leading to guilt, stress and debt.

#2. Exercise

 Exercise

After omniomania, this is the second most common addiction among college students. Sudden bouts of strenuous exercise cause the release of endorphins which act on the body’s opiate receptors to create the sensation of pleasure, euphoria and relief from pain. This leads to addiction to these endorphins until a person becomes habituated and needs more and more exercise in order to produce the desired effect. This can lead to a serious decline in one’s health.

#3. Internet Addiction

- Advertisement -

Internet Addiction

(image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

Believe it or not, it’s a real medical condition. It is known by many names like IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder), PIU (Problematic Internet Use) CIU (Compulsive Internet Use) and even iDisorder. This kind of an addiction can have withdrawal symptoms and interfere severely with the normal life activities and work productivity of the addict.

#4. Eating Dirt

image005

(image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

Eating dirt (geophagia) is a genuine disorder that came into the spotlight after we saw video clips of Kristie Spinuzza crunching on rocks on TLC’s show “My Strange Addiction”. Geophagia can be a result of a severe nutritional deficiency of iron and calcium, or some kind of a psychological disorder. If allowed to go unchecked, it can lead to lead poisoning and parasitosis.

#5. Pulling hair

Pulling hair

(image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

Trichotillomania, or the compulsive pulling of hair (scalp hair as well as body hair) leads to rashes and awkward looking hairless patches on the scalp, arms or legs. Trichophagia is an extension of this disease where a person eats the hair they pull out, often leading to choking on a hair ball (trichobezoar) or Rapunzel syndrome, where the tail of the ingested hair can extend down to the intestines.

#6. Plastic Surgery

 

Immense amounts of insecurity and unrealistic body goals can lead to a very dangerous addiction to plastic surgery. The above image is of Valeria Lukyanova, a Russian model who has had countless surgeries to end up looking like a human Barbie doll. There are many people who end up in the hands of back alley “surgeons” and get their face and bodies totally distorted.

#7. Smelling Gasoline

Smelling Gasoline

Sniffing gasoline has effects like alcohol consumption and can cause euphoria, numbness, disorientation and dizziness so it’s a gratifying experience which can fast turn into an addiction. This can lead to permanent brain damage, respiratory tract damage, coma, congenital anomalies and, in case of over dosage, death.

#8. Routine Snakebites

Routine Snakebites

(image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

Snake venom: Because weed and coke are too mainstream! People who have crossed all limits of substance abuse achieve immunity to the effects of common drugs like marijuana, heroin and cocaine. This can obviously lead to death from over dosage.

#9. Habitual Cleaning

Habitual Cleaning

(image source: commons.wikimedia.org)

Some people like cleaning so much that it becomes a need for them to spend all their day just cleaning and re-cleaning their place. This reminds us of Hayley Leitch, the mother of three who starred on channel 4’s show Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners. She spends 19 hours a day cleaning. She has tried committing suicide as a relief from her agonizing habit.

#10. Stealing

 

Stealing or shop lifting can be understood if done by a homeless person, but news of famous Hollywood celebrities doing so kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It can be explained by the fact that stealing sometimes turns into an obsessive compulsive disorder called Kleptomania and can obviously put the patient on the bad side of friends, family and co-workers, not to mention the police!

- Advertisment -

Most Popular

Subscribe to our newsletter

To be updated with all the latest news, facts and knowledge.