In order to achieve goals and wishes regarding one’s own psychophysical wellbeing, humans use different strategies of emotional balancing. One of these is also the use of psychoactive substances (hereinafter PAS). In case of individual’s common use of PAS, dependency can develop where individual’s various brain mechanisms and functions, which are essential in balancing affect conditions, can be altered. The concept of alexithymia, which is characteristic for addicts, includes deficits in the cognitive-experiential domain of emotional responses and on the level of interpersonal regulation of emotions. Incapable of distinctly recognizing their own subjective feelings, the addicts communicate their own emotional distress to other people very unsatisfactory. Consequentially, they cannot obtain others as sources of help or comfort.
The master’s thesis tries to answer the research question whether the persons being treated for the dependency of PAS are different from the persons who are not treated for the dependency of PAS, i.e. in the field of the painful affects regulation, on the level of the risk of the abuse of PAS, and on the level of alexithymia. The master’s thesis is divided into three theoretical chapters, which represent the concept of regulation of the positive and negative affect, the collection and the efficiency of various affect regulation strategies. The master’s thesis represents various PAS and also the syndrome of dependency of PAS as well as emotions in the addicts. The methodology of research, the results, and the discussion on the acquired results are presented in the empirical part. The results of the research showed statistically significant differences between the groups on the level of the risk of the abuse of PAS, on the level of alexithymia, and in painful affects regulation strategies.
The master’s thesis contributes to better understanding of the role of the affective dis/regulation in persons treated for the dependency of PAS. It presents inner, personal factors which contributed to the emergence of the dependency. It shows the importance and the role of emotional regulation in the process of treating persons addicted to PAS.
|
