“My passion is traveling.” Surely you have heard this from more than one person and you may have said it yourself at some point. Who does not like to travel? Discovering new places, disconnecting, living new experiences… It seems that everything is beneficial in travel. But what happens when traveling becomes an addiction or an irrepressible compulsion? You may suffer from dromomania, a travel disorder that we tell you about in our dictionary of manias.
What is dromomania
If there is something in which happiness can materialize, it is in a trip. Traveling makes us happier, more mature, more tolerant and even more interesting. Traveling enriches us, no doubt about it. So, how is it possible that we are facing a disorder? Be careful because not all travelers suffer from dromomania.
Dromomania is defined by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) as the “obsessive or pathological inclination to move from one place to another”. Seen in this way, the addiction to travel would be like a kind of flight or escape from life itself or from reality itself, which makes us intuit the dire consequences of this obsession, addiction or mania.
The obsession with traveling can become a psychiatric disorder related to impulse control problems, as occurs with all addictions. You can’t help it. That feeling of packing your suitcase for your next trip is priceless, like the happiness that overwhelms you when buying a plane ticket to a new destination.
When traveling becomes a disorder
- But, is traveling really a problem, even in excess? Because we don’t stop hearing about the benefits of traveling, the need to disconnect, the usefulness of getting to know new cultures. What harm can one more trip do us? In principle none. In principle, you can travel as much as you want and as much as you can afford, and here comes the problem.
- Can you really afford it? There are many people who do not give up making four or five trips a year and for this they have to get into debt. There are people who give up stable jobs because they are not allowed to travel as much as they want. And there are people who break up with their partners, who disappear from the lives of their relatives because they cannot avoid traveling the world.
How to know if you have dromomania
- To know if you suffer from dromomania you have to attend to the reasons for your trips. Do you travel because you like it or do you travel because you need to? It is not the same. The need makes the dependency product of the addiction. People with dromomania have obsessive thoughts about travel, suffer a true withdrawal syndrome when they return from the trip and only find relief in the preparation for a new adventure.
- Perhaps they have told you many times that you do not stop traveling, that you are always traveling the world, that yours is not normal. And you don’t listen because you love to travel. This is a problem? Depends. If traveling makes you neglect your obligations, perform less at work, lose friends, have a crisis in your relationship or not take care of your family, then it is a problem.
- The key is in your degree of life satisfaction. Dromomania is a disorder characterized by its addictive or need aspect. You need to travel because you need to escape, because traveling is the only way to feel happy, because when you return from your trips and try to settle into your normal life, you can’t find your place, just frustration.
- Because you don’t like your life and you want to go far away. It happens to a lot of people; you know? About not finding the meaning of life, about vital crises, about feeling cheated by life. And about wanting to escape from your own life. But you, if you suffer from dromomania, turn that desire to escape into reality. You avoid facing your own life traveling. And avoidance is not the best journey you can take in life.
Can travel addiction be cured?
- It must be taken into account that we are not talking about a hobby or the pure pleasure of traveling. In dromomania we talk about obsession, addiction, avoidance and dependency. And therefore, it is a problem that requires psychological treatment. It is a full-blown mental disorder, even though society sees travel addiction as very acceptable.
- No addiction is good, even if we are not talking about drugs, but about something very pleasant and healthy like traveling. The fact of being dependent on this activity is what makes it dangerous, so you better put yourself in the hands of professionals.
- The treatment? A psychologist will analyze the origin of your disorder and determine the best therapy. From now on we guarantee that you will not have to give up traveling, but that you will be able to do it with other, healthier motivations other than escaping. And if you can’t travel on a vacation for some reason, you won’t feel like it’s the end of the world.
The positive side of dromomania
- We do not want to get too alarmist on the subject of drug addiction. We only warn that it is a serious disorder with dangerous consequences. But we insist that not all so-called travel addicts are dromomaniacs. If you like to travel and if you can afford it, go ahead, you have the whole world to discover.
- Because we are not going to deny the amount of benefits that travel has. The illusion that fills you before and during, what you get to learn about yourself and others, especially if you travel alone, the cultural and human enrichment that knowing other cultures gives you… And we can continue because the list of benefits of traveling is endless.
- Traveling enriches you, humanizes you, helps you in your personal development, creates bonds with the people you travel with or meet along the way. Traveling helps you disconnect from daily responsibilities, something necessary that has nothing to do with avoidance behavior. A trip breaks with your routine and at the same time favors your emotional balance. What more could you want?
- There’s nothing wrong with spending your days off traveling, whatever other people say. If you like to travel, pack your bags and travel the world. If traveling makes you happy, travel. But try that it is not the only thing that makes you happy.