Real Health: The addiction episode with Professor Colin O'Gara
Early in the conversation, I asked the professor of Psychiatry to define addiction. He explained, 'The World Health Organization defines it as a persistence with a behaviour be it a process or ingestion of a substance in the face of adverse consequences.'
I wanted to find out from the addiction specialist, when do people end up coming in to seek treatment. Professor O'Gara says, 'The person could feel that there's something up. In a lot of cases, addiction is characterized by a lack of insight or otherwise known as denial. It is usually the people around the individual that'll be raising the alarm. People come to me in a variety of ways. Often, it's because they've been encouraged to go and they'll go because somebody wants them to go.'
You can listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.
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