Self Ratings of Dependency/Addiction Regarding Drugs, Sex, Love, and Food: Male and Female College Students

To what degree do addictions to drugs, sex, love, and food correlate
with each other? Are there meaningful sex differences in
the addictions? To study this, 9,313 college students (3,083 males,
6,230 females) rated 13 items on 0–100 scales for their dependency/
addiction to the things represented by the items. Results
indicated that males reported significantly more addictions than
females, but females were more likely than males to report addictions
for cigarettes, chocolate, and food in general. Results also
showed consistent intercorrelations, typically in the 0.20’s or 0.30’s,
but sometimes higher. Not only did things correlate within their
category—e.g., the different drugs correlated with each other, indicating
polydrug use—but correlations occurred between unrelated
topics, such as dependency/addiction to alcohol correlating
with dependency/addiction to having sex. The findings support the
notion of small but significant overlap in the various dependencies/
addictions, and of sex differences in the various addictions.

Is addiction pervasive, or does it operate in just one area? For example, if a
person is addicted to cigarettes, would they also be addicted to marijuana?
What about chocolate? Or, heroin? It is also important to know if the two sexes
differ in how they respond to the extent of their dependency or addiction to
various substances, including drugs, food, sex, and love.
People try to control their lives and their environment, and the extent
to which they can control things has a lot to do with their well-being, as
opposed to having addictions that control them (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan,
Kuhl, & Deci, 1997). Addiction would seem to be at one end of a continuum,
with self regulation at the other end (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Maddux, 1995;
Ryan, Kuhl, & Deci, 1997; Vielva & Iraurgi, 2001). Using the term “addiction”
in a general sense would also encompass a person feeling dependent on
something. That is the person’s feeling of dependency or addiction to something
indicates their feeling of lack of control. There is some evidence that a
person who lacks control in one area often has additional problems in other
areas (Oltmanns, Neale, & Davison, 2003). And, one bad experience can
lead to subsequent problems in other areas of life (Riggs, Dancu, Gershuny,
Greenberg, & Foa, 1992).
The control that people feel over their lives is an important part of
who they are. Most addictions detract from feelings of control. If people
feel compelled by outside forces, or by inner demons, then they do not
see themselves as being able to exert self control. One concept which has
enjoyed an increased popularity in recent times is “addiction.” Originally used
with regard to drugs, the concept of addiction has been added to such things
as sex and food. Thus, we can conceptualize someone as being a sex addict
or a food addict, which implies that they behave compulsively in these areas,
and have little control over their behavior.
Related to feeling that one is a victim is a related concept of being
dependent on drugs, sex, love, food, etc. Dependency, too, implies that
the individual does not have total control or freedom but must depend on
something else to feel complete, to feel adequate. The inability to regulate
oneself or to control events in one’s life can be a major problem (Eisenberg
& Zhou, 2000; Eisenman, 2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b; Epstein & Katz, 1992;
Rotter, 1990; Singh & Darroch, 2000; Zuckerman, 1991).
Some of the concepts mentioned here can be broken down into smaller
units, or divided into different forms. For example, there are different types
of drugs, and a person may be addicted to/dependent on one without having
the same problem(s) with other drugs. Or, a person may be addicted to
sex but not love or vice versa. While the concept of sexual addiction has
been explored (Carnes, 1983, 1989, 1990, 1991), the idea of being addicted
to love has received less attention. Sometimes, people have strong emotional
feelings and a lack of control. The idea of sexual addiction is controversial.
We may not need the concept to understand compulsive sexual behavior,
and it may not be desirable to add such a diagnostic term which implies that
sex addiction is like drug addiction (Eisenman, 2001). But, self-described
addiction or dependence would seem to indicate a real problem. For example,
if a people say, they have chronic illnesses, their life would not seem
to be very enjoyable. The mere perception of a constant illness would help
make things unpleasant. Likewise, believing that one has a dependence or
addiction would seem to contribute negatively to one’s happiness or feelings
of comfort. We wish to know if the drug addictions/dependencies are related
to one another, suggesting problems with polydrug use, and if drug addiction/
dependency is related to addiction/dependency in other areas, such as
love, sex, food, etc.
METHOD
Participants
The participants were 9,313 college students (3,083 males, 6,230 females)
in the United States and Canada. They were a convenience sample, tested
by cooperating professors in these two countries, who asked students from
their classes to answer a longer questionnaire, in order to find out about
sex differences in drug and other addictions, and to find out about the intercorrelation
of addictions. The data are drawn from these questionnaires,
which also contained other questions besides the ones discussed here. The
addiction questions were analyzed for sex differences in the addictions, and
for intercorrelations among the addictions.
Self-Ratings
The subjects were asked to provide ratings with regard to the following
question: “To what degree have you ever felt yourself becoming dependent
upon, or addicted to, the following things?” The students were told to
employ a 0–100 scale, with “0=not at all” and “100=to the most extreme
degree.” The students were given 14 categories for the 0–100 ratings: alcohol,
amphetamines, barbiturates, being in love, chocolate, cocaine, coffee,
cigarettes, gambling, having sex, heroin, marijuana, and food in general.
RESULTS
The results are shown in Tables 1–5. Table 1 shows the mean scores for the
addictions by gender: males vs. females. Table 2 reports t tests for the different
addictions by gender. Table 3 presents the correlations for all subjects,
while Table 4 presents the results for males only, and Table 5 presents the
results for females only. It is apparent that being dependent or addicted to
one thing is frequently—but not always—associated with being dependent
or addicted to something else.
There were many sex differences, with males usually more likely to have
reported dependency/addiction to the various topics. Males reported significantly
more addiction for the areas of alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates,
cocaine, gambling, having sex, heroin, and marijuana. Females reported significantly
more addiction for chocolate, cigarettes, and food in general. Being
in love and coffee both had small, nonsignificant differences, with females
slightly higher in both. For the entire sample (males and females) the addiction
ratings, on a 0–100 scale, ranged from a low of 0.40 for females for
heroin (males 0.74) to a high of being in love, at 49.67 for females (males
49.13).
For the entire sample, i.e., both sexes combined, most of the items show
a statistically significant correlation with one another, although sometimes
quite low. At times, though, the correlations have a moderate but not low
relationship, as when being dependent/addicted to barbiturates correlates
0.52 with dependence/addiction to amphetamines. The low intercorrelations
may be due, in part, to the low amount of addictions admitted to by the
participants in this study. Such limited admission of addictions would usually
result in small or nonsignificant findings.
For dependency/addiction in males only, amphetamines correlated 0.56
with barbiturates, 0.49 with cocaine, and 0.41 with marijuana. Being dependent/
addicted to being in love correlated 0.48 with those dependent/addicted
to having sex. The results for males only are summarized in Table 4.
For dependency/addiction in females only, amphetamines correlated
0.49 with barbiturates, 0.48 cocaine, and 0.38 with marijuana. Being dependent/
addicted to being in love correlated 0.49 with those dependent/addicted
to having sex. The results for females only are summarized in Table 5. For
the variables discussed in this and the preceding paragraph, the male and
female correlations are very similar. Both sexes show a multidrug usage pattern
with being dependent/addicted to one drug having moderate relationships
to being dependent/addicted to other drugs regardless of what drug
one examines: cocaine, alcohol, cigarettes, amphetamines, etc. For example,
dependency on/addiction to marijuana shows statistically significant correlations,
indicating dependency on/addiction to other drugs. And both sexes
show a moderate relationship between sex and love dependency/addiction.
It is not as though females link sex and love and males do not or vice versa.
Both sexes show about the same correlation between love and sex.
As with the males and females combined, the separate male and female
correlations usually show some statistically significant correlation between
one kind of dependency/addiction and another. In part, this is due to the
large sample size that can make very low correlations statistically significant.
But, if one looks at the actual correlations, many are in the 0.20’s or 0.30’s,
suggesting that some degree of variance in one variable is related to some
degree of variance in the other.
DISCUSSION
The results suggest that the concept of being dependent or addicted is a
meaningful one to college students, in that there was some admission of
dependency or addiction to a variety of areas, including both drug and nondrug
areas. And if they admit to a dependency or addiction in one area, there
is often a dependency or addiction in another area. At times, this seems to
make sense, as with the correlation between some of the drugs (users often
have a multidrug use pattern) or between sex and love. We would expect
that sex and love dependency/addiction might go together, to some extent.
However, at other times the results are by no means obvious such as when
the combined male and female sample dependency/addiction on chocolate
correlates 0.24 with dependency/addiction to being in love (0.19 for males
and 0.28 for females). Both food and sex are natural drives, but it is not
obvious that there would be any kind of relationship between the two. The
results of the present study suggest that there is somewhat of a food and sex
relationship, at least for those admitting dependency or addiction in these
areas.
The results are consistent with past studies or theories indicating that
there is often an interrelationship between a person’s addiction in one area,
e.g., drugs and/or sex, and their addictive problems in a different area, e.g.
eating disorders (Crowther, Wolf, & Sherwood, 1992; Fairburn, Hay, & Welch,
1993; Gordon, 1990; Hoek, 1995; Shisslak, Crago, & Estes, 1995). The results
are also consistent with previous studies that have shown usually small but
significant relationships among addictive behaviors or among addictive behaviors
and other problem behaviors (Dembo, Getreu, Williams, Berry, La
Voie, Genung, Schmeidler, Wish & Kern, 1990; Gorman & Derzon, 2002;
Jessor, Chase, & Donovan, 1980; Sieber & Angst, 1990).
The results also show important sex differences, with men usually more
likely to admit to addictions than women. All the drug items have men higher
than women. Men were also significantly higher than women in ratings of
being addicted to gambling and to sex. Women were only higher in addiction
to cigarettes, chocolate, and food in general. The last two are food items.
Thus, males reported greater addiction to drugs than females and females
reported greater addiction to two food items, chocolate and food in general.
Females also reported greater cigarette addiction than males. Only the items
of being in love and coffee showed no significant gender differences. The
results are what one might expect, given biological differences between the
sexes and gender roles, with males being more adventuresome than females
in the areas of sex and drugs. Perhaps love appeals equally to both sexes,
and thus there was no difference.
The results also suggest the utility of the dependency/addiction concept.
Although many are skeptical of referring to people as sex addicts or food
addicts, there may be some value in such a concept. However, the results
further suggest caution, in that the addictions seem to fit together to only a
modest degree. That they do fit together shows the value of the dependency
or addiction concept. That they do not fit together more strongly means we
should not always conclude that a person with a dependency or addiction
in one area will necessarily be dependent or addicted in another area. But
we must consider the possibility of a correlation, since the self-report data
show that there is often some overlap.
Self-report data are always susceptible to distortion. It may be that the
data reflect a response set with people willing to admit to one kind of dependency/
addiction often admitting to another kind. Future research could
investigate if there are addictions to, for example, chocolate, and if there
really is an overlap with addiction to being in love. Do people just think
they are this way, or do addictions to various areas really exist? This could
have important clinical implications for those working with addicted people.
The sharp clinician, based on the present data, would look for dependency
problems in different areas.
Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy often can explain why people do or
do not do something (Bandura, 1977). Perhaps a major problem for the participants
in this study is that they often lack self-efficacy feelings regarding
the various substances (drugs, food) or concepts (love, sex). People with
self-efficacy feel that they have control over what they are doing (Bandura,
1977). In contrast, a person who feels dependent or addicted to something
does not have that control. Thus, the lack of control may be somewhat
general, as revealed by the intercorrelations in the present study between
areas that do not necessarily seem related. A person who lacks self efficacy
with regard to, for instance, alcohol, will have problems with that drug
(Sitharthan, Job, Kavanagh, Sitharthan, & Hough, 2003). It would be interesting
to find out if learning self efficacy—or other improvements in one’s life—
in one specific area, led to generalized improvements in other areas as well.
From the present data, we can speculate that such may well indeed be the
case.
Many people try to quit undesirable behavior on their own, without undergoing
any professional intervention (Curry, Ludman, & McClure, 2003).
Thus, it is often difficult to know how well a person has succeeded in overcoming
a problem. The fact that the problems may intercorrelate to some
degree—as suggested by the current findings—means the person has tough
road ahead. On the other hand, the present data also imply that if the person
succeeds in correcting one area, corrections in other, unrelated areas may
also occur.
The results are consistent with the view that there may be some
usefulness in the concept of sexual addiction (Blanchard & Tabachnick,
2002; Carnes, 1983, 1989, 1990, 1991; Corley & Schneider, 2002), at
least defined within narrow boundaries (Eisenman, 1994) or utilizing
self report. Sexual dependency/addiction here was linked with other dependencies/
addictions. And, there were meaningful sex differences. It
appears that addiction has an overall, pervasive nature, such that addiction
in one area has moderate correlations with addictions in other
areas.