Ouddicts (not So Much) Anonymous

[Louis Miller]

I used oud to aid in meditation, but I cannot say that it helped, and I don’t think oud is strong enough to cause a withdrawal struggle.

***I don’t mean to pick-apart your post. I just want to share my personal experience with oud. Maybe other people may get affected by oud in such a way, but not me. Oud is a wonderful scent/scents, as are many other scents from nature that I smell everyday. It seems like nature’s soul resides behind all these wonderful aromas, and that enjoying them is a feat more than Human.

I did not feel at all picked apart, and I appreciate your words. In fact, my post was prompted by another user on this forum who shared with me that he did use oud to enhance things like yoga and found eventually that he began to depend upon the oud to stay focused or "get through." He may also have been daily swiping top-notch, heaven-tier oils. I hear that some are more 'addictive' than others.

 

[Louis Miller]

A common misconception I see about marijuana is that it's not addictive because it does not produce detrimental consequences when use stops, that is patently false. Marijuana, like many other things that bring a user pleasure, can be addictive. Is that to say that everyone who uses it will become addicted, no. Same goes for heroin, alcohol, pills, alcohol, etc., some become addicted and some don't.

Oud can be addictive. Many also have the misconception that unless something causes physical/physiological withdrawal symptoms than it's not addictive, that is patently false. Porn, gambling, gaming, exercising, working, eating, and many things that bring a user pleasure can be addictive, although those things tend to not get the same amount of attention or impact populations as much as elicit drugs. There's a word used to describe someone addicted to drugs, which is habit. Any habit can be addictive and despite many not causing physical/physiological withdrawal symptoms, can cause dependence and psychological withdrawal symptoms.

Thanks for this. It is true, as you say, that addicition takes many forms. All pleasure is elusive and fleeting, and is never "enough." When we try to make the pleasure ours to possess and control, pleasure teases us is always just beyond our reach, and we chase our tails until we forget to take a breath.

 

[EHV]

For me, the biggest issue with taking a break or slowing down my purchasing of oud is....... FOMO, (*Fear Of Missing Out*)!!!

With Western fragrances or even the other things that I have collected/accumulated, even if something is a limited edition, one usually has time to contemplate, study, SAVE UP for and truly make sure the purchase is truly what you want to go ahead with.

With oud, there always seems to be the fact that what you want may not be available if you wait.......even a day or two.
Sometimes, even purchasing a sample to test the oil can take so much time that if you decide on a full bottle, it may not be there when the time comes to purchase!

Couple this FOMO with our love for oud and perhaps our need to acquire the substance and our obsessive compulsive nature and you can possibly have a dangerous mix. The danger for me is FINANCIAL.
Sadly, I don't have unlimited resources for oud purchases and this tends to eat away at me.

Very much like @Rai Munir, I have quite a few oils, attars and a load of Western fragrance yet I still feel much is missing.

Now, I won't get into the psychology of that, which I actually understand but I will say that it's FOMO coupled with the financial impacts of purchasing a lot of what is usually an expensive product in the grand scheme of my life that is causing the negative aspects of oud "addiction".

 

[Fahad]

A common misconception I see about marijuana is that it's not addictive because it does not produce detrimental consequences when use stops, that is patently false. Marijuana, like many other things that bring a user pleasure, can be addictive. Is that to say that everyone who uses it will become addicted, no. Same goes for heroin, alcohol, pills, alcohol, etc., some become addicted and some don't.

Oud can be addictive. Many also have the misconception that unless something causes physical/physiological withdrawal symptoms than it's not addictive, that is patently false. Porn, gambling, gaming, exercising, working, eating, and many things that bring a user pleasure can be addictive, although those things tend to not get the same amount of attention or impact populations as much as elicit drugs. There's a word used to describe someone addicted to drugs, which is habit. Any habit can be addictive and despite many not causing physical/physiological withdrawal symptoms, can cause dependence and psychological withdrawal symptoms.

Soon we shall have a definitive answer on that.. All thats needed are a few volunteers which I don't think should be too hard to find considering the incentive.

Procedure: Undergo an MRI test to determine if the neurological basis for chronic addiction is present in persistent oud users.

Recent research has shown that addiction to substances causes some parts of the brain to grow and some to shrink like the frontal cortex involved in decision making, people with addiction having smaller prefrontal lobes, less white or grey matter, difficulty in certain tasks, decision making etc.
for further reading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851068/

So what parts of the brain light up when we're sniffing Oud? Are they different for Kyara/Kinam oils? : ) How about when smelling Agarwood incense...Does the brain react differently to smoke than to oils? Do 'incense grade' oils light up the limbic system more? How do EO ouds compare to other vendors in firing up the brain? Too many variables, could do a double blind test...The MRI will tell it all.

Incentive: All volunteers get to sniff / inhale premium grade oils/incense lying completely still and meditating for about an hour. Materials for the study would be made available courtesy of vendors sponsoring these academic studies which seem to have become a necessity considering the large numbers of the population that are affected and seem to be growing everyday as evinced by the forum numbers.

 

[Fahad]

Glad to have found this thread. I recently asked about "ouddiction" on the general board but got very little feedback. I wonder if this topic might be a bit taboo among some on this forum.

Addiction might be the wrong word, as it denotes overall personal disfunction, and also is often associated with physically debilitating withdrawal symptoms. Even if we're focused on the compulsive buying and collecting of oud rather than on physical addiction to oud as a substance, I doubt that this compulsion is likely to reach crisis-level, large-scale breakdown of a person's life. Or if it did, then as Anmar said, oud is not the culprit but the object of a neurosis. A person could compulsively collect rare books or spend uncontrollably on jewelry, but in in neither of those cases would we label the substance as inherently addictive.

However, being that oud is positively psychoactive, the substance can influence our behavior. No, it will never cause a physical dependence to the extent of heroin, alcohol, or tobacco, but what interests me is that oud might become something our brains begin to associate with day-to-day life. If a person finds that Oud helps them sleep and then begins to use it every night, they may find that they need more and more of it to fall asleep, or they might try to to stop self-medicating with oud, only to find that its harder to sleep at night than it ever was before oud (a sort of oud withdrawal).

Or, if a person finds that oud enhances their spiritual practice, be it yoga or meditation or prayer, they might begin to rely upon it for a deeper experience, but if they no longer have oud, they may struggle to make it through their routine, and this struggle might be greater than it ever had been before their brain came to expect the addition of oud's powerful aromatic molecules.

The point here is to be wary of relying regularly on a substance, because the brain will adapt. Before you know it, you could find that, instead of an elevation above your baseline state, oud helps you feel normal, and the lack of oud is the exception that needs remedying. I don't suppose this means that swiping every day is always bad, but means to be careful that regular oud use is voluntary and not routine, a free and pleasurable enhancement rather than a habitual and necessary addition that solves a problem.

Safe swiping, friends!

I quite agree that this kind of dependence as in the example of oud used as a meditation and sleeping aid can develop but not in everyone as Oudamberlove proves the exception. It seems to be a psychobiological one. Another type of dependence which is more psychosocial could also develop (again not in everyone) from oud being used as a social aid or crutch. What was a personal pleasure at one point morphs into a means for social acceptance or approval, a confidence booster or worse Oudstentation. This also could just be the object of a neurosis..The jury's still out on oud. The guilty verdict has not yet been passed. The problems seem to stem from us.

 

[Fahad]

The point here is to be wary of relying regularly on a substance, because the brain will adapt.

Or even the tummy...I used to be able to finish food and that was it. Ever since I started taking fennel after food I need to have it every time or else the ingestion process seems incomplete!

 

[Louis Miller]

Or even the tummy...I used to be able to finish food and that was it. Ever since I started taking fennel after food I need to have it every time or else the ingestion process seems incomplete!

Yes, the body always adapts to maintain equilibrium, but often that adaptation is positive; when we exercise regularly, the body adapts so that daily exercise feels normal rather than extreme, and voila we are in shape.

 

[Joe King]

ok the first step, recognizing the reality,
now the question, do I want to or (maybe importantly) need to, stop my addiction?
and Will I replace it with another? Will I be happier without it? Is there a "safe" level of addiction?

 

[alcolado glacial]

There is another problem besides the psychological ones. What does oud do physically with the body.Is it a form of antibiotics that a tree makes to fight of disease?. will we become antibiotic resistant by daily use of oud?

 

[Louis Miller]

There is another problem besides the psychological ones. What does oud do physically with the body.Is it a form of antibiotics that a tree makes to fight of disease?. will we become antibiotic resistant by daily use of oud?

I don't think that oud acts as an antibiotic in our system, because our microbes are different than tree microbes. But even if it did, there'd be no cause for concern. "Antibiotic resitstance" is a problem when we have an infection and the treatment kills only some of the microbes, leaving those who are genetically less susceptible to the drug to proliferate. So long as we don't need oud to treat our infections, this will never be a problem because it doesn't matter that these microbes might become resistant to oud. Resistance to drugs is very specific; if an infection becomes resistant to oud, its resistance is specific to oud, not to other antibiotic treatments.

As to how the oil might effect us physiologically, here's another fascinating question: do the aromatic molecules in oud send signals to the body? We now know that olfactory receptors are found not just in our nose but actually throughout our skin and even in other internal organs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/science/smell-turns-up-in-unexpected-places.html

The New York Times reported some years ago that aromatic molecules in sandalwood actually triggered rapid healing of wounds when applied directly to the skin. The molecules bind to lock-and-key receptors, sending signals to stem cells, and the healing process is accelerated. Scientists even found that the aromatics found in violets and roses inhibited cancer growth by switching off cancer-causing genes.

Given that oud has such a profound number and concentration of aromatics, it seems very likely that these molecules can do more than send smell information to the brain. The oud components are mostly mysterious and largely unstudied by science, so who knows what interesting effects they might have in our body. This seems to be a very promising area to investigate.

 

[Rasoul Salehi]

Glad to have found this thread. I recently asked about "ouddiction" on the general board but got very little feedback. I wonder if this topic might be a bit taboo among some on this forum.

Addiction might be the wrong word, as it denotes overall personal disfunction, and also is often associated with physically debilitating withdrawal symptoms. Even if we're focused on the compulsive buying and collecting of oud rather than on physical addiction to oud as a substance, I doubt that this compulsion is likely to reach crisis-level, large-scale breakdown of a person's life. Or if it did, then as Anmar said, oud is not the culprit but the object of a neurosis. A person could compulsively collect rare books or spend uncontrollably on jewelry, but in in neither of those cases would we label the substance as inherently addictive.

However, being that oud is positively psychoactive, the substance can influence our behavior. No, it will never cause a physical dependence to the extent of heroin, alcohol, or tobacco, but what interests me is that oud might become something our brains begin to associate with day-to-day life. If a person finds that Oud helps them sleep and then begins to use it every night, they may find that they need more and more of it to fall asleep, or they might try to to stop self-medicating with oud, only to find that its harder to sleep at night than it ever was before oud (a sort of oud withdrawal).

Or, if a person finds that oud enhances their spiritual practice, be it yoga or meditation or prayer, they might begin to rely upon it for a deeper experience, but if they no longer have oud, they may struggle to make it through their routine, and this struggle might be greater than it ever had been before their brain came to expect the addition of oud's powerful aromatic molecules.

The point here is to be wary of relying regularly on a substance, because the brain will adapt. Before you know it, you could find that, instead of an elevation above your baseline state, oud helps you feel normal, and the lack of oud is the exception that needs remedying. I don't suppose this means that swiping every day is always bad, but means to be careful that regular oud use is voluntary and not routine, a free and pleasurable enhancement rather than a habitual and necessary addition that solves a problem.

Safe swiping, friends!

highlighted part in particular rings true.

 

[Kabir Attars]

Interesting.
Schiller, a great German poet, used to sniff rotten apples to ignite his creative imagination. And, my more than favourite novelist Balzac used to drink at least 40 to 50 cups of coffee a day. Of course, aroma and caffeine stir imagination.

Sadly he died from stomach ulcers...but I did enjoy his work...key note moderation☕

 

[sío]

On the flip side, I've been wondering whether oudh could play a role in assisting people who are working on overcoming substance addictions, both as an adjunct to meditative-type practices, but also for relearning how to access pleasure through healthy avenues.

 

[Andrew Salkin]

Being 2 years clean from 10 years of IV heroin, cocaine, and meth, I can assure you that no one here is displaying anything in the same solar system of "addiction". I would group the behavior some display here as compulsive and obsessive. I've never woken up sick, pawned my family's treasured heirlooms, or gotten an absess from oud. I was a Psychology major too so I think I have a handle on these differences.

 

[Sproaty]

Being 2 years clean from 10 years of IV heroin, cocaine, and meth, I can assure you that no one here is displaying anything in the same solar system of "addiction". I would group the behavior some display here as compulsive and obsessive. I've never woken up sick, pawned my family's treasured heirlooms, or gotten an absess from oud. I was a Psychology major too so I think I have a handle on these differences.

yea and more compulsive towards shopping and purchasing as opposed to WEARING oud

 

[Oudamberlove]

yea and more compulsive towards shopping and purchasing as opposed to WEARING oud

How about the fear of running out?
Does that fall under hoarding?

Ourding

 

[Rai Munir]

How about the fear of running out?
Does that fall under hoarding?

Ourding

What about the fear of its NOT running out?

This is the question. Your question is the story of honeymoon time, not more than a year or two. My question is a life long reality.

sOUlDing!

 

[Andrew Salkin]

yea and more compulsive towards shopping and purchasing as opposed to WEARING oud

Something else I try to catch myself doing is moving from the positive vibes of oud like meditation, solitude, "me time", personal enjoyment - over to the negative side of these things, like not engaging with others, hoarding, loneliness, selfishness, conceit, reclusiveness, etc. Personally, I got into fragrance around the time I got clean/sober. I would be a bad Psych major if I didn't see the connection between losing one addiction and picking up another. In this case, both are starting cost about the same amount of money :|. Going from a very fast paced life in my late 20s, living in San Francisco, partying, etc. - to abruptly getting clean and living a slower paced life, I think there is a sense of boredom and loneliness that comes with that. Finding new things to bring excitement - activities and hobbies to keep engaged emotionally, intellectually. I think where I start to see parts of my previous addiction come out to play in this Oud world is when I make plans with Oud, and no one else. When I spend the day fiddling around with bottles and samples and wood and burners, and tea, and CBD, etc. When this becomes an entire day and I'm holed up by myself not actually interacting with anyone. In a much less dangerous way, this is what my heroin addiction looked like most days. By myself, obsessing about using, making plans with myself, fiddling with dope/needles/etc, (not washing), rinsing repeating. I think of Oud as an outlet in some ways - and like cannabis or wine, there are seemingly endless varieties of things to experience and learn. I think the purpose of fragrance is to enjoy but for it to be integrated into a larger life - not life itself. It's an adjunct. Addiction wise, I also notice myself making compulsive buying decisions. Or having a fear of missing out (which is probably why Ensar's marketing gets me everytime!). A fear of running out - which is literally every waking thought I had as a drug addict. I know this thread was created in good fun - and I'd hope that all kidding aside, if someone here legitimately had an issue with over purchasing far beyond their means, whereby it was effecting their family, friends, and life - that we are caring as a community to support that person. I think it's a conversation to be had. With that in mind:

Name a time you have made a large fragrance related purchase that you've ended up regretting, caused strife, or has made you feel guilty?

 

[Sproaty]

@Andrew Salkin - I completely understand your feelings, I smoked weed for 16 years (coming up to 2 years of stopping) and of course, nowhere near the level of heroin, the parts you say about loneliness, constantly being at it, anxiousness at running out etc all resonates with me.
I'd got into fragrances a year and half before this and my compulsive nature took over me quickly - ramping up from "cheapies" to designer and then the niche game, and then comes along oud, sometimes spending hundreds at a time.
I look back on a lot of my impulsive buys and feel regret, especially as I am now disciplined with purchases (am not making any!) and am saving a large portion of my paycheck to build towards house ownership.

 

[Mr.P]

Scent obsession feels like a kind of insanity. Now that I am obsessed with something else (fpv drones and such) my obsession with agarwood seems like a form of insanity. Now all my money is going into wire and solder and little cameras and electronic equipment. How crazy will this look to me retrospectively in a couple of years?