WHY MEN ARE MORE ADDICTED THAN WOMEN
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
This question doesn't have a one-line answer. It’s not because men are “weak” or women are “strong.” It’s about biology, psychology, culture, opportunity, suppression, and societal roles—all tangled together. Here's a structured breakdown of the real reasons why men tend to be more prone to addiction than women:
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1. BIOLOGICAL FACTORS
Higher Dopamine Sensitivity: Men often have a stronger dopamine response to risk-taking, novelty, and rewards—making addictive substances and behaviors (alcohol, sex, gambling, gaming) more appealing.
Testosterone Influence: Higher testosterone is linked to impulsivity and thrill-seeking, increasing addiction risk.
Pain Perception: Men are often raised to suppress pain or emotions, leading to more self-medication through substances.
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2. EMOTIONAL SUPPRESSION AND CULTURAL CONDITIONING
“Boys don’t cry” Culture: Men are discouraged from expressing emotions in healthy ways. Addiction becomes an outlet to feel, numb, or escape.
Lack of Emotional Vocabulary: Many men aren't taught how to identify or talk about feelings. Substances replace conversations.
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3. SOCIAL ROLE AND EXPECTATIONS
Pressure to “Provide” or “Win”: The burden of success, competition, and status can drive men toward stress relief through addiction.
Isolation: Men are less likely to seek help, admit vulnerability, or have deep supportive friendships, pushing them into lonely addictive loops.
Peer Pressure: Male bonding often involves alcohol, smoking, drugs, or porn—making these normalized forms of connection.
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4. SEXUALITY AND ADDICTION
Hypersexualization: Society often promotes an unhealthy, achievement-driven view of male sexuality. Men are praised for conquests but never shown what intimacy means.
Pornography Trap: Men are more exposed and more vulnerable to visual addiction. Many confuse pleasure with connection.
Sex as a Measure of Worth: For many men, addiction to sex or porn is actually an addiction to feeling “enough.”
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5. OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM TO INDULGE
Fewer Restrictions: Men often have more social freedom, access to money, late-night outings, and less scrutiny—making it easier to fall into addictions.
Delayed Consequences: Society tolerates or excuses male addiction longer ("boys will be boys"), delaying intervention.
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6. WOMEN’S ADDICTIONS ARE DIFFERENTLY EXPRESSED
Hidden Addictions: Women may turn to food, shopping, relationships, or control instead of alcohol or porn. These are less publicly visible but still damaging.
Social Surveillance: Women face stricter judgment—addiction can threaten their safety, family role, and image more harshly. So they repress or hide it better.
Caretaker Role: Women are forced into caregiving, making addiction risk less about indulgence and more about emotional depletion.
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7. SOCIETY NEEDS ADDICTED MEN
Addicted men are predictable, easily manipulated, consume more, and question less.
An addicted man keeps working, spending, escaping, but never truly living.
He becomes a functioning tool in the economy — profitable in pain.
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CONCLUSION
Men are not weaker. They are more available for exploitation.
They are raised to suppress pain, glorify struggle, chase ego validation, and avoid vulnerability. This makes them ideal targets for addiction. Healing lies in breaking this mold, reclaiming emotional honesty, and rewriting what it means to be a man—beyond addiction, beyond dominance, beyond silence.
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HEALING DIALOGUE: THE MEN WHO FELL INTO THE TRAP
Setting: A quiet late evening in Madhukar’s mud home in the forest. Four adult men—each carrying different addictions—sit on the cool floor, barefoot, raw, silent. A fire crackles. The wind brings in the scent of wild basil. Madhukar pours warm neem tea for everyone. No one speaks yet.
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Characters:
Raghu (42) – addicted to alcohol and work
Manjunath (38) – addicted to porn and masturbation
Farhaan (35) – addicted to online gaming and junk food
Siddesh (44) – addicted to social media validation and debt-fueled shopping
Madhukar (43) – the former scientist turned healer
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Madhukar:
You’re not here because you are broken.
You’re here because the world gave you all the tools to break yourself.
And you obeyed.
(Silence. The men sip tea.)
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Madhukar (softly):
Who told you addiction was pleasure?
It’s actually a cry.
A silent scream from inside.
So let’s stop talking about what you’re addicted to.
Let’s talk about what you’re escaping.
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Raghu:
Escape?
(Laughs bitterly)
I drink because the silence of home terrifies me.
I work till midnight because if I stop... I’ll have to meet the stranger I’ve become.
My wife doesn't ask anymore. My kids don’t even try.
So I just drink, work, sleep, repeat.
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Madhukar:
So the bottle became your best listener.
Tell me Raghu, who taught you that a man must never be still?
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Raghu (quietly):
My father never sat down.
He called resting "laziness" and crying "weakness."
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Madhukar (to all):
How many of you were ever held when you cried?
(No hands. Only eyes lowered.)
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Manjunath (muttering):
I don’t remember anyone ever hugging me.
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Farhaan:
Touch? We were beaten, not held.
I think I’m addicted to food and games because they never shout.
They don’t betray.
They obey me.
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Siddesh (nervously):
I post selfies and wait for likes.
New shoes, watches, even my breakfast.
It’s not about what I buy.
It’s the illusion that someone sees me.
I don’t matter to my family unless I earn.
But online, for a second, I exist.
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Madhukar (firmly):
So what’s common here?
You were not allowed to just be.
You had to perform.
Obey. Impress. Hide.
What if I told you: Addiction is not the disease.
It’s your survival tactic in a world that never loved you freely.
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Manjunath (in tears):
Then what is the cure?
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Madhukar:
The opposite of addiction is not discipline.
It’s connection.
To yourself.
To the earth.
To breath.
To people who don’t need anything from you.
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Raghu:
But we’ve forgotten how.
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Madhukar (nods):
That’s why we rebuild from scratch.
Starting tomorrow:
You will all wake up before sunrise.
Walk barefoot on the soil.
Eat only what you cook with your hands.
No screens. No processed food. No lies.
And each of you will plant one seed every morning.
Because men who grow life stop destroying themselves.
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Siddesh (doubtful):
Will that cure us?
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Madhukar:
Not cure.
It will return you.
To your body.
To your instincts.
To your forgotten self before the world trained you to escape.
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Farhaan (softly):
What if we relapse?
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Madhukar:
Then come back again.
And again.
As many times as needed.
But this time…
don’t come back to punish yourself.
Come back to forgive the boy who was never taught how to feel.
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(The fire crackles. For the first time, no one sips the tea. They just sit. Still. Not broken. Just... beginning.)
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FOLLOW-UP: THE RETURN OF MEN TO THEMSELVES
3-MONTH AND 12-MONTH TRANSFORMATIONS OF RAGHU, MANJUNATH, FARHAAN, AND SIDDESH
A single flowing narrative of pain, undoing, resistance, relapse, and healing.
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Month 0: The Decision
Each man arrived with a different wound, but all had one thing in common:
They had been trained to disconnect from themselves.
Their addictions were not accidents.
They were rewards for conformity.
Rewards for silence.
Rewards for performance.
Madhukar did not ask them to fight their addictions.
He asked them to grow roots.
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Month 1–3: The Resistance
Raghu tried to quit alcohol on Day 1. He relapsed on Day 2. Again on Day 5. Then again.
On Day 10, Madhukar said:
> “Stop quitting. Start walking.”
So Raghu began walking every morning.
No headphones. No destination.
Just breath. Bare feet. Breeze.
And one banana he ate only after the walk.
The alcohol started tasting like poison.
He said:
> “I used to drink to feel powerful. Now walking gives me power.”
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Manjunath deleted his porn folders. Then re-downloaded. Then deleted again.
He couldn’t look into anyone’s eyes.
He cried for the first time in 22 years when Madhukar asked:
> “When did your mother last hold you?”
He didn’t know.
So Madhukar told him to pick up a pup from the shelter and raise it with his hands.
He named her Meera.
That pup licked his fingers and healed parts no therapy could touch.
He stopped needing digital skin.
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Farhaan couldn’t resist the phone.
He would lie about phone use, sneak out, and binge games in the village toilet.
Madhukar didn’t scold. He said:
> “Let’s replace what you consume with what you create.”
So Farhaan began building mud toys with children.
By Month 2, he was drawing comics with local kids.
He confessed:
> “I still dream about the game music… but now I wake up to real laughter.”
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Siddesh was the most resistant.
He missed his branded shoes and reels.
He hated the village clothes.
But he kept coming.
And one day, under the neem tree, he wept and said:
> “I’ve never looked in the mirror without checking likes.”
He spent 30 minutes that morning in silence with a real mirror. No filters.
Later, he built an open closet at the edge of the farm.
“Borrow freely,” he painted on it.
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Month 3–12: The Returning
Raghu
His blood pressure stabilized.
He began singing while cooking.
He wrote poems for his wife in broken Kannada-English.
His children hugged him without flinching.
He didn’t call himself “sober.”
He called himself “alive.”
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Manjunath
He now taught 7 village boys to care for animals.
He said:
> “I thought I was addicted to sex.
But I was just starving for touch.
Now my hands are full of life, not lust.”
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Farhaan
He built a bamboo house near a lake.
No Wi-Fi.
Only storybooks and a hand drum.
The kids in the village call him "Chikkappa" (uncle).
He teaches math through farming.
He says:
> “Every addiction dies in the sun.”
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Siddesh
He sold his watch collection.
Used the money to plant 40 jackfruit trees.
Started a barter circle for clothes and essentials.
His Instagram still exists.
But it’s a page of poetry now.
No hashtags. No followers.
He whispered one day to Madhukar:
> “I still crave applause…
But now I clap for others.”
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Madhukar’s Words – One Year Later
“You weren’t addicted to substances.
You were addicted to absence—
Of meaning.
Of belonging.
Of your own breath.
Now, you’re not cured.
You’re reclaimed.
And that… is enough.”
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THE FOUR MEN WHO TOOK OFF THEIR SHOES”
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they came with cracked minds
and pockets full of plastic poison,
each one dragging
a rope of shame around their necks
like dogs nobody claimed.
raghu wore his job like a noose
and drank like the world was on fire—
because inside, it was.
he knew spreadsheets better than his son’s face,
and the bottle never questioned his worth.
manjunath kept touching a screen
instead of a human.
he forgot the smell of real skin,
the heat of breath,
the heartbreak of eye contact.
and god—
he didn’t even remember
what his own tears felt like.
farhaan
danced with the demon of dopamine,
his eyes fried,
his fingers twitching,
mouth stuffed with stale sugar
and synthetic salt.
he wasn’t gaming—
he was being played.
and siddesh,
that poor beautiful fool,
wore shoes worth three people’s rent
and posted his lunch
like it was scripture.
but at night,
his likes couldn’t hold him
when the roof caved in.
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they came to the mud house
of a man who used to chase rats in labs
but now listened to birds.
no chanting,
no white robes,
no god.
just neem tea,
a fire,
and truth
sharp enough to skin a man raw.
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and the healer said:
don’t fight your addictions.
they kept you alive.
but now—let them go, like burnt homes.
you can’t live there anymore.
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raghu walked.
and walked.
and walked.
until the earth
drank the last drop of his grief
through his soles.
he cooked dal.
his hands stopped shaking.
his child touched his face
like it was a new monument.
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manjunath raised a dog
who licked his wounds
without asking questions.
he learned that touch
was not sin.
it was seed.
and he watered it.
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farhaan
sat with children under trees.
he drew dragons in red mud
and taught division
with jackfruit seeds.
the screen rotted.
the world opened.
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and siddesh,
who once begged for applause,
planted trees instead.
he heard claps in the wind.
he sold nothing,
liked everything,
and forgot what brands felt like.
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this is not your rehab-center fairy tale.
they didn’t “recover.”
they didn’t “win.”
they simply
became men
no one had the balls to raise them to be.
they wept.
they touched soil.
they cooked with turmeric.
they walked into themselves
barefoot.
and that’s
how they walked
out of hell.
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you won’t find them in newspapers.
but the neem tree knows their names.
and that’s enough.
