A man was declared unfit to work for being addicted to heavy metal

FAST DOWNLOAD

A 42-year-old Swedish man named Roger Tullgren has been granted a state disability pension. The reason? His addiction to heavy metal.

This may sound like a joke, but it’s completely true. The man claimed that his addiction to this music prevented him from performing in almost any job. Not only because he put all his concentration on the music and was unable to leave it to do other tasks. Also because he attended about 300 concerts a year.

Obviously, at first it was taken as a joke. However, after reading the reports of three different psychologists, the Swedish courts granted him a pension of 400 euros per month .

He did not, however, declare himself completely unfit for work. He was therefore helped to find a part-time job that would be compatible with his addiction to heavy metal.

This is how he ended up as a dishwasher in a restaurant. His boss allows him to wear metal clothes and listen to whatever music he wants while doing his job. This way, he can supplement those 400 euros and have enough money to live on. And to pay for more concerts, since, as he himself stated in an interview in 2016, heavy metal is his life.

Can you be addicted to heavy metal?

Before talking about heavy metal addiction, we should take a step back and see if a person can be addicted to music.

If we stick to psychology textbooks , the quick answer is no. However, it is true that there are points at which one could speak of something similar to an addiction.

To begin with, we know that addictions are caused by excessive stimulation of the brain’s reward systems . This is a physiological response that occurs to generate pleasure from stimuli that are evolutionarily beneficial .

For example, sex is pleasurable because it helps perpetuate the species. This feeling of pleasure is due to dopamine, which is released in response to this stimulus so that we want to do it again.

The same thing happens with eating high-calorie foods. They may not be healthy, but they give us energy and that is what our brain interprets as it triggers the release of dopamine.

Unfortunately, some harmful substances or habits can also stimulate the reward system. Some people are particularly sensitive to it, so they repeat the stimulus over and over again, so that they want more and more each time.

This is how addictions begin. It has been shown that people who get chills when listening to music experience them precisely because of a release of dopamine.