Football players wish they never started snus
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - over half of Premier league football players now want to give up using nicotine pouches and want help - a perfect little addiction case study here with interesting research by Loughborough Uni for the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA).
We see addiction as 'An act of self-care gone wrong' and this is exactly how it happens:
1. It became a craze with Premier League Footballers to use nicotine pouches, who thought it would calm them, and help them cope with the stresses of the game. (A big ask for a little bag of nicotine and chemicals stuck next to your gums!) But nicotine has this reputation, which is disputed, with many suggesting it is merely an 'expectation effect' (David Robson's book shows the power of that).
2. Because it doesn't do the trick, and because most addictive substances gradually require more frequent use to get the effect of the early use and also we think we aren't just taking enough and more will help more - you persevere.
3. You get in a psychological loop of thinking you need it to function properly, and get stuck taking more and more, hoping it will help you with the problem you had at the start, which still remains. This is addiction.
Then what? How to get out of the spiral?
I interviewed John C. Dicey the CEO of the words most successful Un-addiction company Allan Carr's EasyWay and he explains "The addict realises they are a victim of a flawed belief system created and nurtured by the physical and mental process of addiction. If the arguments “for” taking the drug are stripped away – becoming valueless (a process, we call cognitive reconfiguration) then the need for huge amounts of willpower is eradicated, along with the sense of deprivation an addict feels when they pit their willpower against an addiction they don’t understand."
Perhaps Premier League clubs or individual footballers should give him a call!?
Here is my interview with John if you want to know more - Un-addiction, the Easyway!
https://lnkd.in/emCXYxvF
Here's the BBC article
https://lnkd.in/eXEzaMEt