It's badly written. They are saying that you shouldn't use the term "addicted" for anything except actual addiction. They object to, for instance, saying you are addicted to a TV show.
Many of the examples appear to be ignorant and even outright offensive-- but in that case I believe it's suggesting an alternative usage for non-addiction contexts.
E.g. Don't say that you're addicted to CheezePuffs(tm) say you're ... devoted. Uh well not the best but you get my point. The motivation for that one is to avoid conflating something someone likes a lot with heroin like addiction.
thanks for explaining, that actually makes some sense (if you accept the premise that we should change words that people might be offended by).. but then don't you immediately run into the problem of deciding which addictions are real and which are trivial?
Worse. The mechanism through which "substance addictions" and "behavioral addictions" happen (and are maintained) pretty much involves the same neurotransmitter paths:
"Preclinical evidence has demonstrated that marked increases in the expression of ΔFosB through repetitive and excessive exposure to a natural reward induces the same behavioral effects and neuroplasticity as occurs in a drug addiction."
The way I see it, it is literally harmful to try to make it seem like "behavioral addictions" are any less dangerous than (or significantly different from) "substance addictions", because they are not.
Yeah - that one at least makes sense (in terms of conveying the intended meaning) but it's arguable more casual than 'addict' so I'm really not sure whose feelings we're trying to preserve here.
