One of your friends claims to have a shopping addiction and another reports being addicted to internet games. what is one potential danger of considering these types of excessive behaviors to be addictions?

An addiction is a disorder characterized by the compulsive engagement in some activity, or the compulsive consumption of a substance. Most of the time, it is used to refer to people that are reliant on substances like drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

It has become increasingly common to refer to certain types of behaviours as addictive. A common example is gambling. Some benefits of thinking of excessive behaviours as addictive is that people might be more likely to think of them as a disorders and thus seek medical help. They might also try to increase their understanding of addiction in general.

However, the term can also be misused. A behaviour pattern that is constantly repeated is not necessarily an addiction. The confusion is increased by the difficulty in defining mental disorders. More research would be needed before we can come to a complete definition of what addiction is. However, a potential danger of considering these types of excessive behaviours to be addictions is that people might think their situation is unfixable without medical treatment. This could make them feel powerless and it might lead them to not attempt to control the behaviour. It might also make it more difficult to reach a better understanding of substance addiction.

nigger, that word was originated for white folks   to keep black people under

and when black people use it, they know that's just how they greet each other

and when white folks use it, they know there's a double meaning under

there are no options provided but you can choose among the following gender-neutral pronouns: zir, hir, eir, vis, tem, eir.

in the normal course of maintaining a pronoun-antecedent agreement, we could have used the words his or her but since we are also required to use gender-neutral language, we need to replace it with its equivalent gender-neutral pronoun.