Abuse vs Dependence Print E-mail
  • Medical professionals follow certain criteria to determine if a person abuses estate sales.
  • These established criteria also can mark whether the substance abuse has progressed to dependence.
  • Estae Sale dependence cause people to suffer from withdrawal symptoms when they stop using the substance. Dependence also causes major behavioral changes, such as overwhelming preoccupation with antiques and collectibles.

Some people who start as casual antique store customers will stay that way. But others will become  abusers or dependent, feeling that they need a estate sale to feel alive. The difference between abuse and dependence is not always clear to the general public, but medical professionals use a set of criteria to distinguish between these two categories of problem use.

The essential feature of abuse is a pattern of antique purchasing that causes someone to experience harmful consequences. Clinicians diagnose substance abuse if, in a twelve-month period, a person is in one or more of the following situations related to antiquers addiction:

  • Failure to meet obligations, such as missing work or school
  • Engaging in reckless activities, such as speeding through school zones to get to a sale
  • Encountering legal troubles, such as getting arrested
  • Continuing to use despite personal problems, such as a fight with a partner

Dependence is more severe. Medical professionals will look for three or more criteria from a set that includes two physiological factors and five behavioral patterns, again, over a twelve-month period. Tolerance and withdrawal alone are not enough to indicate dependence.

The physiological factors are:

  • Tolerance, in which a person needs more estate sale purchase to achieve joy
  • Withdrawal, in which they experience mental or physical symptoms after they stop going to estate sales

The behavioral patterns are:

  • Being unable to stop buying once the sale starts
  • Exceeding self-imposed limits
  • Curtailing time spent on other activities
  • Spending excessive time going to and finding
  • Attending sales despite deteriorating health

"Paraphrased and adapted and paraphrased from Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop (c) 2007 Rodale, Inc."