There are a large number of situations, people, objects or animals that generate irrational fear in part of the population. All of these make up a long list of phobias that most people face to a greater or lesser extent.

One of these phobias is dromo-phobia . This strange anxiety disorder prevents people who suffer from it from crossing any street or urban road, even interfering in a very significant way with its daily routine.

What’s drug-phobia?

Like other phobias, drug addiction is considered an anxiety disorder in which the person experiences an excessive and irrational terror of crossing the street , and in which the extremely high anxiety he feels every time he must cross the street inhibits him from doing so.

Although drug phobia is a little-known type of phobia, it can be a highly disabling disorder, with people who suffer from it experiencing many difficulties in living in urban areas because of the fear they feel when crossing the street.

Luckily, there are very effective treatments for drug addiction thanks to which the person is able to overcome the phobia and lead a normal life.

Clinical characteristics

As mentioned above, drug addiction is considered an anxiety disorder. It is necessary to specify that the focus object of the phobia is not the street or its intersections , but the action of crossing the street itself.

The main consequence of drug addiction is that the person shuns all those situations or actions in which he must cross the street, to the point of becoming a recluse in his home , thus interfering with his daily obligations and needs.

Like many other anxiety disorders, drug addiction is distinguished by a phobic fear, which has the following characteristics:

  • Excessive and disproportionate fear given the real danger of the situation
  • It’s an irrational fear
  • The person is unable to master this fear
  • Generates avoidance behaviours
  • This is constant and permanent

    • fear

Symptomatology

The main symptom of drug addiction is the experience of great anxiety, with all its associated symptoms. This symptomatology does not appear continuously in time, only when the person faces or knows that he or she will face the feared action, in this case crossing the street.

This symptomatology can be classified into three categories, according to whether they correspond to physical, cognitive or behavioral symptoms.

1. Physical symptoms

In general any phobia, as well as the experience of an exaggerated fear produces a series of changes and alterations at a physical and organic level, due to the acceleration of the activity of the peripheral nervous system. These physical symptoms include:

  • Accelerated heart rate
  • Increased respiratory rate
  • Palpitations
  • Shortness of breath
  • Muscle stiffness
  • Excessive sweating
  • Headaches
  • Gastric pain
  • Nausea, dizziness and fainting
  • Vomiting

Cognitive symptoms

These physical symptoms are in turn accompanied by a series of distorted and irrational thoughts about the situation or situations in which the person must cross the street.

These thoughts are distinguished by a high negative charge, in which the person may come to perceive that some kind of accident or catastrophe may happen to him/her at the moment , or while crossing the street.

3. Behavioral symptoms

As is usual with specific phobias, the phobia itself ends up interfering with the person’s behaviour patterns . It alters the way they proceed in their daily life and generates two types of response: avoidance behaviour and escape from the situation.

Avoidance behaviors are those behaviors that the person with drug addiction does in order to avoid doing the behavior, such as not leaving the house. While escape behaviors originate when the person is about to face the feared situation, an example would be running across all the streets.

Causes of Drug Addiction

Although it is not always possible to detect at first sight, or know the causes of a phobia, there are a number of possible causes common to all phobias which encourage and promote them.

These mechanisms or associated risk factors are:

  • Genetic elements
  • Personality
  • Cognitive styles
  • Direct conditioning
  • Vocational Training

Diagnosis

There are a number of established diagnostic criteria that must be met when evaluating and diagnosing a person with drug addiction.

  • Excessive, persevering and irrational fear that originates from anticipating action or confronting it, in this case it takes the form of crossing a street or urban road.
  • The patient admits that the fear he feels is exaggerated and illogical .
  • Exposure to the feared action immediately triggers an anxiety or crisis response.
  • The person is running away or avoiding the situation.
  • The feeling of anxiety or fear , and the avoidance actions associated with it, interfere significantly with the person’s daily life, or cause clinically relevant discomfort.
  • The duration of symptoms should be at least 6 months.
  • The above symptoms cannot be explained by another type of mental disorder or illness .

Treatment

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, despite how disabling this specific phobia can be, there are effective treatments for so that the person can end up leading a normal rhythm and lifestyle .

For phobias, the type of intervention with the highest success rate is cognitive-behavioral therapy, where systematic desensitization (SD) has been shown to be highly effective.

In this systematic desensitization, the patient is exposed in an imaginary way to a series of situations related to the phobia, which are gradually ordered from less to more fear. Likewise, relaxation techniques are applied to reduce the level of anxiety.