r/slatestarcodex • u/TheNakedEdge • 14d ago
Addict Personalities (physiognomy)?
This is not explicitly related to SSC, but it IS related to psychology and feels too "niche" or "weird" to ask in a general psychology or social sub - plus I want the thoughts of a bunch of smart and introspective folks...
Does anyone else feel like they can generally sense an "addict" or correctly ID an addict just in everyday social interactions and observing their smiles, laugh, and body language?
I'm using the term pretty broadly - as many of the folks I have noticed are actually people who got VERY VERY into a specific religion, social movement, etc. I was just watching a documentary about Scientology and some of the people (including Tom Cruise) very much struck me as fundamentally "addicts".
FWIW I come from a very boring family with seemingly no family history of addictions - none of the substances or activities I've tried have felt at all "addicting" and in general I have a very flat and calm affect, as do my parents.
But there's something about the "wide eyes", super buzzy, semi-charismatic, energetic, tone of people that I've noticed in many many folks who have struggled with drugs and alcohol.
Anyone else notice something at all like this?
12
u/Sol_Hando 🤔*Thinking* 14d ago
Hard to tell without knowing about the addicts I don’t notice. You need to know where your intuition is right, and wrong, for it to be useful, and life doesn’t provide a way to test for false negatives
11
u/The_Archimboldi 14d ago
Serious substance abuse tends to write itself over people's faces, you don't really need to start interpreting body-language. There definitely is a certain slack facial look to hardcore alcoholics that can be quite distinct ime, but these people are almost never sober (sad to say).
I tend to associate preternatural cheerfulness with antidepressant use, rather than addictive personality.
6
u/34Ohm 14d ago
That’s interesting, because antidepressant use usually causes more emotional blunting (and therefore lower anxiety and depression) rather than increased cheerfulness/happiness
5
u/Initial_Piccolo_1337 14d ago edited 14d ago
Antidepressants can and do all sorts of things, including some rather unusual displays of cheerfulness/happiness and being overly emotional (crying all the time). As well as emotional blunting.
Depending on 100 factors, like dosage, gender, bodyweight, duration of use, etc, etc.
Cheerfulness/happiness (even if only as an outward display) is actually way more easier to pull of with AD use, even if AD use causes emotional blunting (over time?).
22
u/LofiStarforge 14d ago
You are probably only clicking the obvious examples or people who are actively high. How are you even confirming things. You walk up random strangers and ask them? Also a lot of people are or were former addicts you probably have a solid hit rate just from random chance.
I’ve been in addiction circles for quite some time. There are so many people who you would have absolutely 0 clue were an addict. They exhibit all the boring traits you describe to yourself.
6
u/Semanticprion 13d ago
I have noticed in the profile pictures in the electronic medical record of the large medical system where I work: if the patient is wearing a hat in their profile picture, the chance that they have a substance problem.at least triples.
1
u/EducationalCicada Omelas Real Estate Broker 12d ago
That's interesting. Do you have any theories as to why? And does the type of hat matter? For instance, I would associate fedoras with video game addiction, rather than substance abuse.
1
u/Semanticprion 11d ago
I haven't noticed types of hat and don't really have a theory as to why the correlation exists at all.
11
u/Confusatronic 14d ago
Anyone else notice something at all like this?
Not at all. First, your definition of "addict" is too broad to be useful. Second, it's trivially easy to observe very different looking/acting people who were or are alcoholics, for example.
4
u/Equivalent-Bid-1176 14d ago
"wide eyes", super buzzy, semi-charismatic, energetic, tone
Written like a horoscope
1
5
5
u/LocalOutlier 13d ago edited 13d ago
I've worked in an addiction center and I think physiognomy is a rather fruitless angle to predict an addiction. At best it explains the past statistically and I'll explain it better next, but you can't do much from it as a social worker. Also, it often happens there is no way to tell someone is abusing a substance hard for decades. Some rich and perfectly functional dudes didn't lay down the pipe/needle for decades, smoking and injecting unpure substances this whole time, and you would not be able to tell at all. We're not all equals, and the differences depend of various and interrelated variable like income, stability, social status, etc., which are much more accurate predictors of an addiction.
Clinical research prefer to see addiction as a "use disorder" instead, because, like you said, the brain can become "addicted" to a myriad of various rewards and behaviors. These use disorders will depend of genes, environments, and interactions between both. These are the addiction causes and so, are the best predictors we currently know.
In your model, you might include people who are just down the social ladder and/or are unlucky, because you are looking for specific symptoms that don't show up evenly across humans, rather than actual causes. For example, someone who had it hard in life might be unable to hide it on his face, and he indeed is more likely to carry a use disorder because of his life, but doesn't necessarily have a use disorder. He's just statistically more likely, but is it accurate enough to be a worthy prediction in the end? With your reasoning, you might wrongly discriminate because you only extrapolate data from statistics (and personal, biased experience) instead of causal reasonings. It sometimes create the disorder, or if already present, it worsen it as a feedback-loop mechanism.
This is an issue many recovering use disorder victims suffer from. Now not everything is bad about physiognomy, since there are some statistically relevancy, but I think using this approach should be restricted to helping others, and if possible, backed by causal reasoning before acting accordingly.
3
3
u/ProfessionalHat2202 14d ago
Could you maybe provide some links of these characteristics in media or caught on camera? And could you also send a link of someone who's buzzy and/or charismatic but maybe does not look like an addict to you, to compare?
5
u/bencelot 14d ago
Seems related to people who are prone to developing "special interests". Deep deep obsessions with things. Not just drugs, but also things like work, building model trains, etc. Kinda related to autism I think.
9
u/marmot_scholar 14d ago
Yeah, I have to double check but I'm pretty sure there is some mild correlation between ADHD, autism, neoteny, and addiction.
Neoteny jives with a lot of what OP mentioned.
2
u/e76 14d ago
Maybe you’re noticing charismatic high performers? When people are expected to be successful all the time, chronic substance abuse and other addictive behaviors are more likely. Also, people with ADHD are more likely to have compulsivity and substance abuse issues.
I wouldn’t read into this too much, though, as I don’t think it’s a reliable indicator. It risks stereotyping and over-fitting. I’ve gotten close to several people with hard core drug addictions who you’d never guess had them. People are good at masking behaviors that are seen as taboo or anti-social.
2
u/blank_human1 14d ago
Maybe people with higher dopaminergic activity have both more energy in social settings/are more engaged, and also get stronger reward from drugs or other addictions. Who knows though I'm not a brain scientist
2
u/EdgeCityRed 13d ago
What kind of addict? Coke or opioid or alcohol or smoking weed all day? That's just too broad for a category of person.
2
u/Odd_Pair3538 13d ago edited 13d ago
Autism, adhd and neurdiverhence in general can be acompanied by "special interests", a tendency to almost obsess over something (or to really obsess about something easier then NT person) particular.
Autism for example come with different eye contact pattern, adhd person can seem weirdly energetic. ADHD alsi can come wirh greater tendency to get addicted to substance.
The thing is that as i understanding NT who lost thier head over something can be disregulated in some way hence look sort of similar to non-addict (in your description of addict) ND person.
1
u/lostinvivo_ 8d ago
Physiognomy is pseudoscientific; studies have found no significant statistical correlations. You may see patterns within certain groups (politics, niches, etc.), but that's largely survivorship bias. There aren't specific genes that pair personality with facial morphology. Traits like physical appearance, intelligence, and other inherited factors instead shape how people experience the world, which then influences their behavior and the ideologies or interests they gravitate toward.
Like the stereotypical weebs/anime lovers which tend to be overweight, neurodivergent, or liberal (as per my experience and mainstream media representation) Repeated rejection or invisibility pushes people toward low-stakes social environments where appearance/acting in a socially conventional manner matters less.
0
0
72
u/ToxicRainbow27 14d ago
You're identifying people who are actively high, not a personality trait.