Many people think that addiction results from the body’s need for a certain chemical substance, and even though this statement is partially right, other psychological reasons can affect the person’s addictive behavior that is more powerful than the effect the chemical change in the body has.

What causes addiction?

Some people become addicts mainly because of wanting to find a distraction that allows them to escape from a certain situation that makes them feel vulnerable.

Their vulnerabilities and lack of other coping skills made them choose addiction as the preferred escapement method. If those people didn’t have these vulnerabilities, they might not have become addicts at all.

These vulnerabilities could be something as simple as being unable to deal with stress or being unable to tolerate a certain emotion.

One of the most famous cases of escapement using addiction is when someone becomes a love addict. Some people can fall in love just because they want to escape from their unsolved problems and vulnerabilities. Those people usually fall in love with people who don’t match their personalities, and thus their relationships always collapse.

Some other people become addicted to certain things due to certain mental connections that they have created. For example, smokers who smoke right after eating or become stressed are examples of people who became addicted to something just because it was associated with a certain situation they often encounter.

The third category of addicts is called reactive addicts. Those are the people who return to their addiction or become addicted to something as a response to a major life event in their lives.

Major Life events such as the loss of someone or the loss of their job sometimes force people to become addicts. Those people don’t find any other solution to handle the pain they feel other than becoming addicted to a certain habit.

Dealing with addiction

Just as you saw, there are many types of addiction but what’s common between them is that they all represent the person’s desire to escape from his problems or unwanted emotional pain.

To give up an addiction, you don’t need to train your body to live without the addictive substance as much as you need to find a healthy coping mechanism for the problems that you face in your life other than addiction.

Why do people fail to deal with addiction?

Why do you think people keep returning to their old habits each time they give them up? They keep returning to their old habits because the vulnerabilities that made them become addicts force them to return to them.

When they quit making a certain habit, they find themselves directly facing this vulnerability they were escaping from before, and at this point, lots of them choose to escape to the bad habit once again.

To get over an addiction, you need the courage to face your vulnerabilities and unsolved problems; then, a strong will helps you find another coping mechanism other than being an addict.