Habit and Addiction

I am writing again about habit and addiction because it is a subject that I’ve been thinking about often lately. I was actually wondering how the switch comes to be from habit to an actual full-fledged addiction.

Because let’s face it, the definition of habit is in a way comforting, but even hearing the word addiction worries you. You know it is a bad thing. Addiction implies an obsessive behavior, a behavior that is negative. Per its definition, addiction means "to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively" (www.m-w.com).So how does the switch happen? Is it an incapacity to control a particular behavior? Is it something so good that It pushes to an excess?

One can be addicted to all kinds of things… a person, a star, an author, a concept, a belief, a substance… I suppose that as humans we are weak. We tend to succumb to one thing or another. We’d like to extend the feeling of pleasure that we experience thanks to this addiction. We don’t want to let go of this feeling because it’s like a ray of sun on a gray and dark day. It brings us joy, hope, and a feeling of ease.

Addiction does however have its dark sides, as it pushes us to behave stupidly, to ruin ourselves (be it mental, physical, or financial), and ultimately to lose who we are… All we end up thinking about is that ray. We forget that the storm always comes to an end, and that the weather ultimately changes.