America's Most Unusual Addictions
Quote:
1. Antihistamines for reading addiction
"One of the most unusual issues I've treated is a reading addiction," says psychiatrist Dr. Harold Levinson, M.D. Surprisingly, an inner- ear disorder can lead to this addiction. The inner ear fine-tunes the brain's concentration and sensory systems. A dysfunction in the inner ear leads to scrambled signals and impaired concentration, which disrupts the normal reading process. This can lead to reading problems, anxiety, restlessness and even phobias.
After treating the inner ear disorder, the reverse can happen: people become addicted to reading because they can now read clearly and easily—and they love it!
"People lose sleep because they stay up all night reading, and some even stop working," says Dr. Levinson. He treats this type of addiction with a combination of counseling and anti–motion-sickness antihistamines (to re-stabilize the inner ear).
|
If you want to read the other 9, go
here.