Developmental Stress and the Addiction to Adrenaline

Do you have trouble relaxing or sleeping? Do you try to do many things at once? Do you get easily bored if your are not doing something exciting? Do you tend to work long hours and still never get done with everything you want to do? Are you good at starting relationships, but have trouble sustaining them? Do you get uncomfortable with too much closeness and intimacy? If you answered “yes” to any of these things, you may have an addiction to your own adrenaline. Our whole fast-paced, modern lifestyle supports these behavior and actually makes them seem “normal.”

Addictions of all kinds are attempts to self-medicate against feeling certain unwanted feelings like fear, grief, or anger. You may need to have constant activity so that these unwanted feelings don’t show up unexpectedly and take over. Like any addiction, you need more and more of the substance or activity to insure you won’t feel these unwanted feelings. Adrenaline is similar is chemical composition to that of cocaine or opiates.

You are hurried and overextended and your minds and senses are daily bombarded with information from advertisements, neon signs, billboards and road signs, and the sights and sounds of radios, televisions, mobile telephones cell phone towers and high-frequency electrical lines. In addition, 24-hour news coverage informs you of floods, earthquakes, terrorist attacks, child disappearances, and other stressful and traumatizing events. 

Just a few minutes of a typical newscast has been found to raise stress levels. Add to this the flood of daily emails, high workload, concern over finances and the world economy, gas prices—the list goes on. This information overload regularly keeps your body supercharged with epinephrine. It is possible to spend much of your day and night in a stress state without even knowing it.

The initial surge of epinephrine is usually pleasurable. As a result, some people become "adrenaline junkies" and seek continued experiences that give them a rush. We’ve seen this phenomenon in our area with the opening of a regional chain of “The Rush” fitness centers. Their website advertises themselve as “high energy clubs . . . designed to keep you ‘pumped up’ throughout your workout” and as “the excitement that will thrill you, the energy that will empower you and the enjoyment that will inspire you.” 

If you are interested in finding out if you are addicted to your own adrenaline, Download Addiction to Adrenaline Inventory to take the Addiction to Adrenaline Inventory, download it, fill it out and score it. Also, read the post on the “Scientific Information on the Function of Adrenaline and Developmental Stress” to better understand how adrenaline operates in the body and how it can become addictive.