The question is:"If addiction isn’t a disease ,then what is it ?".An addiction is a habitual response and a source of gratification or security.It is a way of copying with internal feelings and external pressurs that provides the addict with predictable gratififcations,but that has concommitant cost.Eventually these costs may outhweight the subjective benefits the addiction offers the individual.Nonetheless,people continue their addictions as long as they belive the addictions continue to do somethingfor them .It is important to place addictive habbits in their proper context,as part of people’s lives,their personalities,their relationships,their enviroments,their perspectives.The effort to change an addiction will generally affect all these other facets of a person’s life as well.
An addiction may involve any attachment or sensation that grows to such proprtions that it damages a person’s life.Addictions, no matter to what,follow certain common patterns.When a person becomes addicted,it is not a chemical but to a experience.Anything that a person finds sufficiently consuming and that seems to remedy deficiencies in the person’s life can serve as an addiction.The addictive potential of a substance or other involvement lies primarily in the meaning it has for a person.
So that means that person is vulnerable to addiction when that person feels lack of satisfaction in life,an absence of intimacy or strong connections to other people,a lack of of self-confidence or compelling interests,or a loss of hope.Periods such as adolescence,military service and times of isolation or grief may for a time make people especially potent for addiction.