LOUD MUSIC AS ADDICTIVE AS DRUGS, STUDY SAYS

Researchers find those who need high-decibel fix experience same
symptoms as substance abusers

Whether you prefer to blast Mozart, left, or James Hetfield of
Metallica, the effects are equally troubling. Loud music addicts can
experience hearing loss and symptoms of withdrawal like mood swings,
lethargy and depression.

Listening to Mozart or Metallica cranked full-blast may be an
addiction, a group of American researchers concludes.

People dependent on a high-decibel "fix" may experience the same
symptoms and side effects as alcohol, tobacco and drug addicts, says a
study published last week in Ear and Hearing by researchers at
Northeastern University in Boston.

The group adapted a 32-question survey used to diagnose alcoholism and
recruited 90 self-professed loud-music lovers, eight of whom showed
signs of addiction. The addicts displayed symptoms such as craving,
loss of control over their music-listening habits, detrimental side
effects like hearing loss, an infringement on other activities and
symptoms of withdrawal like mood swings, lethargy and depression.

Mary Florentine, a professor of audiology research and one of the
study's authors, says people with noise-induced hearing loss who
insisted they couldn't stop cranking their stereos planted the seeds
for the project. She adds that the subjects themselves suspected their
music-listening habits might be out of control.

"This doesn't apply to the normal condition of teenage music
listening, where teenagers will listen to music for long periods of
time. The problem is when it's too loud for too long and it's taking
over their lives."

The range of loud-music addicts crosses lines of gender, age and
musical taste, and takes in people ages 15 to 58 who listened to music
ranging from heavy metal to classical.

"We had a 56-year-old man who listened to classical music and would
blast classical music and his normally hearing daughter would tell him
'dad, turn it down'," Prof. Florentine says. "So it doesn't appear to
make any difference what type of music, it's just that the person
likes that type of music."

This voracity for volume is surfacing as one of a number of new
addictions linked to technological change, like addiction to gambling
at video-lottery terminals and obsession with the Internet.

Soren Buus, a professor of electrical and computer engineering who did
the number-crunching, says despite the 10 per cent addiction rate in
the study, loud-music addiction would be rare in society at large.

"A good part of the population we recruited in a CD store, so I don't
think we should expect to find anywhere near 10 per cent of the
population as a whole would have this problem," he says. "But one or
two per cent, maybe."

The study says music can be loud without being annoying and the more a
person enjoys a song, the louder they tend to play it -- to the point
that well-liked music may be perceived as less loud than unliked music
even when played at the same intensity.

The researchers say this, coupled with the popularity of equipment
like walkmans, is what prompts people to pump the volume in the first
place.

Music "has the capacity to induce rapid potent changes in mood and
level of arousal, the ability to reduce negative states and the
tendency to elicit the experience of craving," the study says. "These
three elements seem to be present in all addictive substances around
which patterns of addictive behaviour tends to develop."

The study, which has been in the works for three years, will next have
loud-music addicts clinically diagnosed by a psychologist.

Will Hunter, is director of substance-abuse at Mayo Regional Hospital
in Maine, and one of the researchers. He says he was surprised by the
results because his background in addiction research made him a
natural skeptic.

"My criteria for looking at the results was very stringent," says Mr.
Hunter. "I was especially careful to avoid a false positive above all
else."

But Mr. Hunter says while high-decibel dependence is possible, family
members shouldn't jump to the conclusion that their loved one who
loves music is an addict.

"There really is no need to be worried," he says. "It needs to be
clinically significant distress or impairment -- which means pretty
serious."

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady