Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research: On functional and compulsive aspects of reinforcement pathologies

BACKGROUND: This paper is a commentary to a debate article entitled: “Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research”, by Billieux et al. (2015). METHODS AND AIM: This brief response focused on the necessity to better characterize psychological and related neurocognitive determinants of persistent deleterious actions associated or not with substance utilization. RESULTS: A majority of addicted people could be driven by psychological functional reasons to keep using drugs, gambling or buying despite the growing number of related negative consequences. In addition, a non-negligible proportion of them would need assistance to restore profound disturbances in basic learning processes involved in compulsive actions. CONCLUSIONS: The distinction between psychological functionality and compulsive aspects of addictive behaviors should represent a big step towards more efficient treatments.