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Add the andPOP Facebook Application(andPOP) - Having trouble sleeping? Lost your appetite? Feeling tired and cranky?
You just might be suffering from Harry Potter withdrawal -- really.
A group of Pennsylvania-based researchers have just completed a study which they say shows being a Potter fan could actually become an addiction, MTV reports.
In the study, titled "Harry Potter and the End of the Line: Parallels with Addiction," Muhlenberg College psych professor Dr. Jeffrey Rudski and two of his undergrad students polled 4,000 Potter fans online and report finding characteristics of addiction in at least 10 per cent of the participants.
The researchers used craving scales but instead of cigarettes they substituted "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," which was released in July 2007 and marked the seventh and final book of a series that began in 1997.
Fans were surveyed before the book's release, when they completed it and six months afterwards.
The 10 per cent of "addicted" respondents said they spent more than four hours a day on Potter-related activities and, upon completion of the series, experienced a change in appetite and sleep patterns, engaged in less physical activity, had a lower sense of well-being and were more irritable.
"Some readers can become so engaged in the series and the ancillary world that grew out of it that they report behaviors that truly fit definitions of addiction or dependence," reads a synopsis of Rudski's draft.
The study says the end of the Potter book series triggered a withdrawal in these participants similar to those who quit a drug cold turkey after years of addiction.
"An addiction is an addiction is an addiction," Rudski said. "An addiction to a drug is no different than an addiction to Harry Potter or the Internet or pornography. Although it's not always a bad thing. There's a community that you get with Harry Potter that you don't get with heroin."
The study is being submitted to the Journal of General Psychology.
