Psychophysiology of sports addictions (exercise addiction)

Addictive behavior is an attempt to escape real life by means of artificial changing one's own psychical state by taking drugs or performing certain activities. Depending on the means of the escape, pharmacological or chemical and nonchemical or behavioral addictions may be distinguished. During recent years, researchers focused their attention on nonchemical addictions, in which a behavioral pattern becomes an object of dependence instead of a psychoactive substance. In Russia, the first classification of nonchemical addictions was suggested by Korolenko. He pointed out direct nonchemical addictions, such as gambling, addiction of relationships between individuals, sexual and love addiction, avoidance addiction, ergomania, overspending addiction, and urgent addiction and intermediate addictions, including eating addiction, i.e., either overeating or starvation, which involve biochemical mechanisms. In addition to the above-mentioned types of addictions, a substantial number of other nonchemical addictions have been described. Some of them are various dependences on computers or the Internet, addiction to exercises or sports, and others. © 2011 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.