Addiction and sociopathy: what causes the selfish behavior?

Addiction and sociopathy overlap. The sociopathic brain functions like an open invitation to addictive behavior and substance abuse. Both illnesses attribute self-centeredness, narcissism and irrational behavior to an empathy deficit.

Sociopathy falls on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum - along with its older, evil cousin psychopathy. This article focuses on sociopathy and addiction – not psychopathy and addiction. Psychopaths fall on the zero empathy end of the ASPD spectrum. Unlike psychopaths, sociopaths have a sense of right and wrong – sort of. Often times, the sociopathic perception of right and wrong clashes with social norms.

“Antisocial personality disorder is a type of chronic mental condition in which a person's ways of thinking, perceiving situations and relating to others are dysfunctional — and destructive,” according to Mayo Clinic.

Sociopaths tend to engage in isolating and compulsive behaviors: smoking crack, drinking alone or having a stream of meaningless sexual partners for extensive time periods.

“Comorbid substance abuse is common in persons with specific types of personality disorder creating the management problem of drug-seeking behavior, e.g., sociopaths,” according to The Dementia Education and Training Program.

Sociopathy does not occur in all addicts and addiction does not occur in all sociopaths. However, the comorbidity rates appear staggering.

Within addiction treatment programs, almost half of the patients exhibit a strong range of ASPD symptoms. Meanwhile, almost 90 percent of people with ASPD abuse drugs, according to Elements Behavioral Health.

Addicts and sociopaths share malfunctions within the brain’s emotional CPU – the prefrontal cortex: the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala.

The addiction disease often restricts a person’s emotional resonance, even during active recovery. Within active recovery, people become self-aware of empathy deficits, consequently placing effort into remembering the feelings of other people before speaking or acting. It seems simple and automatic. However, a person suffering from addiction lacks this automatic brain function.

Neuroimages showed narcotic use increased activation within PFC areas executing emotions, self-control and awareness, according to a 2011 Nature Reviews Journal article.

“Deficits in emotion regulation and inhibitory control in addicted individuals and enhancement of PFC activity by direct drug administration could support the self-medication hypothesis,” according to the 2011 NRJ article.

The brain processes empathy within the ACC. The amygdala controls learning through positive or negative results. Both a hypoactive ACC and a malfunctioning amygdala plague addicts and sociopaths – the culprit for irrational behavior and destructive decisions.

“With a reduced capacity for both aversive conditioning and passive avoidance learning,” according to an article “The neurology of antisocial personality disorder” by the University of Mississippi Biology Department. “It denies crucial forms of emotional learning which no doubt contributes to their lack of empathy because they are unable to tag memories and experiences with emotional salience.”

Adding narcotics to this brain function results in addiction. The getting high action creates a happy memory, causing the amygdala to interchange the two concepts of happy emotions and drugs.

“The amygdala affects emotions and memory,” according an article by The Employee Assistance Programs and Community Mental Health Centers. “The memory of engaging in the addiction is stored with a pleasant emotional state. Thus, the pleasing memories of engaging with an addiction can lead to repeating those behaviors and a habit forms.”

Although the sociopathic brain creates the ultimate precursor to addiction, several factors influence addiction. Sociopathy does not apply to every addict. The disease of addiction afflicts an area of the brain regulating mood, emotion and memory – regions vulnerable to several co-occurring mental illnesses.

Borrowing the immortal words from the Rolling Stones, have some “sympathy for the devil.” Psychopaths do not care to feel anything. But, a sociopath struggles to feel human. Unfortunately, the struggle escalates into addiction. In recover, addicted people learn to live with this empathy deficit.