The name of the article I choose is “Are you Hooked” by author Leah McLaughlin. Soft addiction is the simple uncontrolled things we do every day that we would not have thought to be harmful for us. Things like excessive web surfing, drinking too much coffee, stress eating, watching too much TV, etc. We do these things to avoid something we do not like to confront, to help us cope, or to help us feel that we have control over specific matter. For example, a lot of us stress eat as a relief from feeling of hurt, to avoid what bothers us inside. What happens in our brain is that when we stress eat, is that we forget how we truly feel inside and the troublesome feeling gets replaced by the reward stress eating gives us, which is pleasure. The brains reward system gets compromised and ultimately disables the function that would say stress eating is not good for you. This then leads to the consequences of these addictions, our family, career, other relationship, and health gets affected and put in jeopardy. We start to neglect having family time instead of spending hours and hours on the web. Gladly, there are ways to resolve these addictions. First we try to figure out the source of addiction, or why or what made us do certain things, secondly, by following moderate steps, for example, instead of watching TV for four hours, maybe cut down to two. By doing this consistently, things get easier eventually restore balance in our life. “Soft addictions are an escape from uncomfortable feelings,” says Judith Wright, who wrote a book on the subject, The Soft Addiction Solution.(McLaughlin, 2010, pg. 138).…
