A Study of Addiction through Ice Dependency Experiment

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Ice Dependency --or ICD for short is the ice cube substance abuse stimulation/ experiment that I partook in. The ice cube addiction exercise started off very awkward. It felt very unnatural and also very uncomfortable. I felt this way because I had to sneak around all the time to get my "drug.” During this exercise, I felt as if I was limited to certain actions, and all the time I thought about my next action to sneak some more ice from the freezer.

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Sometimes it was easy for me to grab some ice, but at other times, I had to endure because there were too many people that were around during that time. And when I had to endure for a drink, I felt very anxious because I wanted to quench my thirst badly and felt like I was going to die of dehydration (the max time I had to wait was 4 hours because I ran out of ice in the restaurant so I had to wait until I got home).

Whenever I started to feel "thirsty" I craved for ice, but I also felt a bit of shame, because I had to sneak around for the ice.

Comparing my experience to an addict, there are similarities, but also some differences. The feeling of shame and guilt also occurs to an addict because there is a lot of sneaking around whenever any illegal actions were to be done secretly. Both the addict and also myself during this experiment also felt very limited in actions and also in mindset --most or all of the thoughts from the mind was about the "drug”.

What was different was the "trace markings”, for a drug addict, it would be in one location and it is stationed there, but in this experiment, the yarn that was used was not stuck to the skin so it could slide, making it harder to hide. Another difference would also be the lack of withdrawal in the ice cube "drug" stimulation experiment, in reality, withdrawal symptoms are common in any substance drug abuse, including psychoactive drugs. Withdrawal also forces the drug abuser to continue using the drug making it hard to quit, while for the ice cubes, it was not hard at all to "come off” of it.

This was an interesting experiment to partake in. It did open my eyes and showed a brief glimpse of an addicts' lifestyle and actions and thoughts during a craving, only partially of course. My attitude towards drugs and alcohol remains the same; people can do whatever they want to themselves but make smart decisions and also do not get other people involved. Of course, I do feel drugs are being abused to a very extreme extent and I do want it to stop or just calm down. It somewhat unveiled the power and consequences of addiction behaviors because when a person craves badly for something, he or she will do whatever to get what he or she desires. All they have in their minds during the intense craving is what they are craving and that can cause people to lose their morals and make them act in a very "disgraceful” way. There are also many cases where people rely on drugs to function normally in everyday life --be it physical or physiological dependence. Of course like in alcohol, they can build up a tolerance, and then consume more and more each time, harming themselves in the long run.