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Why QAnon followers are like opioid addicts, and why that matters

Addy

Rebuild With Biden!
The take on this explains why QANON followers are so easily manipulated. They think everyone is out to get them.
Maybe that is why they seem to have such so much outward appearing anger and appearing to always have a chip on their shoulders.
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Why QAnon followers are like opioid addicts, and why that matters
Recognizing the similarities is helpful in both accurately diagnosing the QAnon phenomenon and trying to treat it.

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For starters, QAnon, like the painkiller abuse epidemic driven by the drug oxycodone, engulfs people who are most vulnerable to its content. An overwhelming proportion of QAnon followers arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, for instance, have mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a University of Maryland analysis. If you believe the world is out to get you, you are probably more likely to embrace QAnon narratives that explain exactly how the world is out to get you.

Their psychological pain may make these people especially vulnerable to QAnon’s content, which often speaks to fears, anxieties and anger. People who worry about contamination, for example, are probably more susceptible to lies about the Covid-19 vaccine carrying a contaminating agent that makes their children gay or transgender.

One way to comprehend the incomprehensible is to recognize the parallels between QAnon and addictive drugs like opioids.
Last week, we learned of a QAnon-related data leak of Colorado voting machine logins. The week before, people around the country struggled to comprehend a gruesome homicide allegedly committed by a QAnon-following father who, according to authorities, told the FBI he killed his two small children because he believed they’d inherited from their mother lizard DNA that would turn them into monsters. Last spring, a mother admitted to killing her three children, saying she wanted to protect them from becoming victims of a sadistic cabal of pedophiles whose existence is widely believed among QAnon adherents.

Why would such outlandish conspiracy theories hold sway over these parents and others around the country? One way to comprehend the incomprehensible is to recognize the parallels between QAnon and addictive drugs like opioids — which are also manipulated by malicious actors to trap vulnerable people in increasingly unhealthy spirals that ultimately result in the destruction of families and even death. Recognizing these similarities is helpful in both accurately diagnosing the QAnon phenomenon and trying to treat it.


It is also likely that prolonged exposure to QAnon content exacerbates or even triggers mental illness, as watching video after video about horrific devastation can have a detrimental effect on anyone’s mental health. This then increases the appeal of the remedies QAnon prescribes, such as refusing Covid vaccines, protesting mask mandates or even storming the Capitol in Washington. Though to be sure, most people with mental health problems do not believe in QAnon conspiracy theories, just as a sizable proportion of QAnon followers are not mentally ill.
Moreover, the internet platforms through which most QAnon followers consume content are deliberately structured to sustain user engagement and foster a kind of addiction. In fact, these online QAnon experiences seem to engage the same brain structures responsible for addiction, as solving the “puzzles” revealed by conspiracy theories may prompt pleasure-driving dopamine hits.

 
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