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Addiction as a coping structure, not merely pathology


Addiction: A reading beyond the traditional lens

There are a few other behaviours associated with automatic negative judgment and stigma as much as Addiction. The addiction literature is burgeoning, with an increased awareness of its impact on one’s mental and physical health. However, this has not prevented the addiction stereotypes. Individuals often do not want to engage with addicted individuals unless they themselves resort to that specific addiction. It is extremely potent and influential, often colouring an individual’s entire identity. The existing institutions meant to manage and treat addictions often concern themselves with the physiological and chemical nature of it. This article is meant to provide a fresher angle to the paradigm by looking at addictive behaviour not just for what they are, but also why they exist, generally and specifically. It shifts focus from the traditional conceptions of addiction to conceptually clear alternative explanations that look at addiction not from a diagnostic lens but from a hermeneutic one. It is meant to broaden the readers’ scope when thinking about addiction, and gain an understanding for the lesser-appreciated perspectives while honouring the dominant ones, and eventually knowing when and how to combine these, depending on a specific case or client.


Only 1 in 12 people with drug disorders receive treatment (UNODC World Drug Report 2025: Global Instability Compounding Social, Economic and Security Costs of the World Drug Problem, n.d.). Addiction transforms individuals into isolated shells, severing all human connections (SBS On Demand, 2020). These lines indicate how the topic of Addiction enters everyday conversations, and our understanding of what addiction means for an individual and society. When speaking of addiction, what often comes to mind is an image of a helpless, worn-out individual, teetering on the verge of dysfunction, smoking one too many cigarettes a day, drinking too much, and isolated from reality and the rest of the world. The broadly held view of addiction revolves around substance use, poor self-control, poverty, dysfunctional families and an ‘unhealthy’ person. This is in line with the media portrayals of addiction, and what is read in textbooks, newspapers, and heard in common conversations. The medical view of addiction views it as the release of neurotransmitters, a malfunction of brain systems, and a form of tolerance and dependence. It is inherently a ‘brain disease’. The diagnostic system lists down tangible symptoms of addiction (such as impaired functioning and poor social control) with the purpose of better classification and treatment. These broader paradigms reinforce the public discourse of addiction as something abnormal and meant to be treated in rehabilitation centres. However, what if there is another angle to it that these systems fail to capture fully? A gap that leaves our understanding of addiction incomplete, and hence its treatment unfulfilled. It is this gap that this article is walking into. Addiction can be viewed as a form of self-destruction, borne out of misplaced creative energy, the kind of energy all individuals possess. Addiction is a force that robs the addict of their creative energy, exhausts them, and forces them to resort to external pleasures to cope. Addiction may not always be about pleasure and pain. Sometimes, addiction and addictive behaviours are the only way an individual feels alive, feels the intensity s/he was craving. This was the case with Alexei, the protagonist of the novella The Gambler, written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which delivers the idea that addictive behaviours provide humans with the intensity and aliveness they crave, even if that comes at the cost of self-destruction. This self-destruction also ensues when humans lose healthy contact with their experiences, emotions and reality, perceiving this contact as threatening or unsafe (Leung, 2010).



The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, to this date, has involved two important considerations for the diagnosis of an addiction disorder. It is that it provides temporary pleasure or relief, and at the same time is known to be functionally impairing and harmful for the individual. This conception, however, is behaviourally non-specific. At a fundamental level, addiction could be seen as a behaviour, serving an individual’s conscious or unconscious needs in any given situation, which do not always lend themselves to biology, medicine or any diagnostic manuals. The function of addiction could be spiritual, existential, behavioural, or simply a method of coping and distraction. These frameworks may not always apply to a client with addiction (notice the phrasing), and s/he may fit into the medical and diagnostic explanation. Still, these views are nonetheless important for understanding addiction as a behaviour, and not an inherent pathology. This argument has important implications for Psychotherapy and professionals dealing with cases of addiction. Counselling and therapy do not benefit from a one-size-fits-all approach, and trying to view every addictive behaviour from the dominant medical/diagnostic model can act as an obstruction to a successful therapeutic process and practice. Frameworks such as the ones articulated above offer a conceptually clean and more experiential approach to understanding addiction in its entirety. This article is not here to argue against the existing views of addiction, but to inform a more complete, client-driven, and deeper understanding of addiction and addictive behaviours.


The central focus of rehabilitation and de-addiction centres and therapy settings is to give space and support for the psychological care of an addict (I am going to use the term addict instead of person with addiction for the sake of simplicity; the term is not meant to be all-encompassing of an individual’s identity, and is just for referring to the individual’s relationship with a addiction object which could be a behaviour, context, relationship, or habit). However, what an addict brings in with himself/herself into a therapy room is a host of their lived experiences, and multiple points of view that constitute their inner reality and their outer world. We will come back to this distinction a little later. The individual seeking help is not just going through an addiction. Rather, there is a complex relationship between the addict and whatever it is the person is addicted to. This brings in a relational focus to the picture. Trying to focus only on the addict or only on the addictive behaviour risks leaving many pieces untouched. What should get a practitioner’s focus is the relationship between these two major elements in an addiction case. Coming back to the addict’s inner reality and the outer world, an individual with an addiction to a substance may be doing it as a way to cope with a stressful situation, because when the individual is experiencing that high, it serves as a much-needed distraction or enjoyment for the individual. In that window, the client momentarily forgets about the stresses of life, and this maintains the addictive behaviour. However, because the individual might feel judged by his family and peers for this behaviour, s/he engages in it secretly. This brings an important distinction between the functions the addictive behaviour serves for an individual, and its multi-layered nature. The practitioner would not benefit by only looking at this client’s addictive behaviour through a purely medical or corrective lens. Effective treatment demands addressing the addictive behaviour’s role in helping the client avoid their stresses, as well as the discomfort the client faces because of that behaviour itself in the face of his/her outer world.


Appreciating the agency of persons in their recovery journeys is complementary to understanding the complex contextual dynamics in which personal recovery processes take place, as long as recovery is viewed as an inherently relational rather than an individual process (Mudry et al., 2019). In the book ‘Love and Addiction’, originally written in 1975, Peele and Brodsky (2015), argue that addiction is a fundamentally human experience that is not limited to substance use, since certain behaviours like love, sex, and eating can also be addictive depending on how constructively or destructively persons become involved with them and the specific function a habit serves in an individual’s life (e.g. pain relief, feelings of reassurance), which is rooted in one’s social and structural circumstances. (Bellaert, 2022)


To add another layer to this, an addictive behaviour may become better understood and managed when viewed in its specific context. For those who have watched the popular sitcom Friends, go back to that episode where Rachel starts smoking with her colleagues at Ralph Lauren, in order to be included in their workplace discussion, because she was not included if she did not do that with them, and she felt like she is missing out. Here, the character started doing something in order to fit in at the workplace. This is not very unlike real life. There are many instances where individuals engage in their addictions at high frequency only in some settings. It could be at the workplace to ease off the professional burden, or with friends to get along or even in peer pressure, or during times of serious crisis as a way to cope or distract oneself. The rationale of contextualising any particular addiction is to see it at a micro level. When a mental health professional does this for any client, they understand the relationship between the addict and the addiction first at a broader, general level, and then at a narrower level. It is like going from saying, “My client X smokes” to saying, “My client smokes when he has an argument with his boss or colleagues”. Notice how in the second statement, the presenting problem seems easier to manage and deal with for both the client and the psychotherapist. Understanding of addiction at a fundamental level, in terms of the function it served, the need it fulfills, and the particular setting it occurs in, better equips the client to exercise their choices revolving around their relationship with the addiction, and also gives the psychotherapists a way to make specific, measurable, achievable and realistic therapy goals.


The analysis of an addictive behaviour down to its basic and contextual levels is just the beginning. This specificity would aid in pinpointing an addictive behaviour and understanding its need or purpose in the individual’s life. When speaking of an addiction’s function or purpose, we are referring to what the addictive behaviour does for the individual, what need it fulfills, what it protects the individual from, and what it compensates for. This would apply to most addictions, be it that of a substance, behaviour, relationship, person, habit, or role. Humans have an attentional bias. It is easier for our cognitive systems to attend to the stimuli that are readily available and present, and neglect the extra associated information, as long as it is not relevant to us. This is what happens when we encounter any case of addictive behaviour. The addictive behaviour is a salient stimulus, meaning that it takes up most of our attention resources. Thoughts about the addiction and its symptoms would flood the human mind and system, and very little beyond it. Combine this with the stigma around addiction and the preponderance of the idea that ‘addiction is bad’, and the underlying reasons and motives for an addiction often go unnoticed. The act itself is associated with automatic negative thoughts and immediate judgment, and there is no consideration given to why a specific individual could be addicted to the ‘addiction object’. What looks like dependence is just the tip of the iceberg, hiding many complex layers of dysfunctional coping and self-regulation. A note of caution here, understanding an individual’s reasons (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) for engaging in an addictive behaviour is not meant to take away their responsibility for their actions. This article is meant to provide an in-depth read of what addiction means, and that necessitates looking at it from a molecular perspective. Whether or not this understanding can help a particular client would be determined by their particular mental health professional. It is a psychotherapist’s responsibility to decide how much responsibility a client is ready to take, willing to take, and should take. The article is not meant to completely expunge the diagnostic and medical idea of addiction from the current understanding, but widen the lens we use to view it in a way that gives more field for the psychotherapists to work with the clients, tap into their resources and decision-making capacity, and reinforce the autonomy of the client while keeping them under necessary supervision, and upholding the sanctity of psychological expertise. Psychological calibration remains important.


We have understood till now that addictive behaviours serve a need/purpose for the addict. One dominant reason that keeps an addict trapped in their addiction is coping and Trauma. There is sufficient literature that shows addiction to be a defence mechanism that individuals resort to to cope with painful experiences, unresolved feelings, shame, guilt, grief, abuse and regret (Hassanbeigi et al., 2013). Individuals who have experienced trauma and adversities feel depleted in their emotional and psychological resources. As a result, their personal growth gets obstructed, their sense of safety and optimism are crushed, and they become trapped in a constant spiral of anticipation (Sieff, 2014). They also feel a sense of injustice, thinking about all the reasons why an unfortunate event had to happen to them (Impact of the Impact | Anil Thomas, n.d.). This inner turmoil, when expressed towards the outward world, may show up as aggression and hostility (Liang et al., 2024), whereas when turned inward, it leads to incessant self-blame.


Individuals, after such experiences, may sometimes blame themselves and hold themselves responsible for the hurt that was inflicted upon them (Impact of the Impact | Anil Thomas, n.d.). They even start thinking they deserve those adversities. What develops is a sticky feeling called Shame, and eventually, Guilt. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and negative experiences as an adult foster this idea within the individual that the reason they keep facing such things may be because something is inherently wrong with them. Something unfixable, worthless and helpless, when in reality there is nothing unfixable or wrong with them. This feeling of shame fuses with their self-perception, disrupting their growth and fulfillment. Addiction starts becoming a part of their fractured self, something they cannot do away with, and the only thing giving them momentary relief. The addictive object provides them with a shelter from the unbearable feelings of shame and rage, and allows them to form a veil of reality that is bearable for them. It is not that they do not have the energy or desire to have a meaningful life, but their nervous system does not know any reality outside of their addiction, where they could channelise their inner energies. “Addiction becomes a melody that repeats so often, the listener forgets the harmony ever existed”. This does not immunise them from the feelings of guilt they experience later, which further reinforces the idea that ‘they are bad/wrong’, causing them to spiral into the rabbit hole.


Addiction results from disrupted development and childhood trauma, becoming a way for the individual to compensate for the lack of emotional availability and self-belief (Maté, 2008). The addictive behaviours provide temporary relief to the individual from their internal deficits and sufferings, but eventually, as the effect wears off, they experience a terrible crash, withdrawal symptoms and negative long-term consequences. This is the reason behind the difficulty in giving up an addiction. The individual becomes trapped in the cycle of temporary pleasure, avoidance, compensation, painful realisation, crashes and compulsions. Individuals under such a state could be said to be ‘ego-depleted’, impacting their self-functions and affect regulation. Under these circumstances, they may become vulnerable to addictions, including but not limited to substance use (Krystal and Raskin, 1970; Khantzian and Mack, 1983). Addiction may also sometimes simply be a plain armour of survival. Individuals whose nervous system has been traumatised or feels agitated due to the imprints of their past experiences often seek ways of calming it down (The Body Keeps the Score, n.d.). The addictive behaviour then becomes a mechanism for bringing stability and regulation. Substances and drugs hijack the brain pathways and neurotransmitters to induce a feeling of pleasure and euphoria. The addictive behaviour itself becomes a solace for individuals to relax and stabilise themselves. This explains why it becomes difficult for individuals to give up their addictions, because these hook them biologically, mentally, physically and existentially.


Another perspective which challenges the traditional ‘disease model’ of addiction argues that addiction is a belief system. Some individuals know of their dependence and tolerance, and are willing to give up their addictive behaviours. However, even those wanting to abstain find it difficult to do so. The reason being that addiction is not a standalone behaviour or action, but is built on a set of beliefs the individual has about oneself, others and the world. It is not simply the physiological hold the addiction is having, but the addict’s firm belief that being ‘the best thing to do / the best thing for me’ that makes the influence of these behaviours potent. Many needs an addictive behaviour serves could be unconscious needs, like maybe in the case of childhood trauma, where the addiction serves as a defence mechanism. However, addictions can also be goal-directed, with the addict having an awareness of why the behaviour is good for them, and if not good, at least functional. This is both good and bad. This paints a more autonomous picture of an addict than a purely medical model would allow. At the same time, this makes treating addictive behaviours with pharmacotherapy insufficient, because we now need to target the client’s psyche, and their conviction of why their addictive behaviour is not harmful, but helpful. A corollary to this point is the argument of secondary gains. Even when an individual is aware of the ill effects of their addictive behaviour, they refuse to give it up because they get to reap certain benefits due to that. When they tell themselves that ‘this is the best thing to do’, it is because they are getting something important and valuable out of it that they won’t have otherwise. A man fully aware of his workaholism and its negative impact on his personal life may continue engaging in it because that puts him in a better light than his colleagues, and makes him everyone’s ‘favourite’.


Reading these viewpoints makes it clear that typecasting addiction as just a biological phenomenon makes our understanding of it simplistic at best, and perfunctory at worst.


Addiction is a popular choice. It offers a quick fix, the feeling of euphoria and being high, the kick and zest to do things one could not do otherwise, and keeps one in a predictable loop. With the prevalence of ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ mentality, it offers a form of escapism. Along with the factors that lead to addictive behaviours (such as the ones described above), it is also the glamorous portrayal of it in the media that has played a role in the public appeal of addiction. Films, TV shows and Social media often show intense, emotionally charged, repetitive, dramatic behaviours that are exciting, real, and even heroic. Obsessive preoccupation with people or habits is the hallmark of intensity and true feelings. The concept of notifications, likes and public validation has normalised constant engagement. Influencers and social media celebrities often tell their stories of addiction (gambling, on-and-off relationships with one person, substance, parties, hustle culture) with a lot of enthusiasm, which makes these extremes exciting and worth trying. Under the fun of these behaviours lies an immediate emotional payoff, which is what people are actually addicted to. It is the feeling provided by addictive behaviours that one craves, not the behaviour itself. It is the relationship between the addict and the behaviour, and how the addict feels about himself/herself when engaging in that behaviour, that makes it difficult to let it go. Beneath all this is a gradual erosion of one’s coping resources, mental health and healthy self-regulation, which does not become visible until it is too late, or sometimes even never.

This article was meant to be a stimulus that pushes the readers to think of addiction beyond its commonsensical and stigmatised conception. The purpose was to invite a deeper, more relational lens of an individual with addiction; a view that does not rush to correct or medicate the addict, but one that aims to understand the pain, trauma, burden and complex coping that is not visible at the surface. The motive is not just empathy, but better treatment, management, and psychoeducation. It is important to keep in mind that no single framework will ever suffice to explain human behaviour, and no single ideology will be the complete truth. This article is for widening the lens of the readers as members of the Psychology fraternity, or anyone with respect and appreciation for the complexity of human nature. It has briefly captured the current understanding of addiction, and aims to foster empathy and respect for those under stigma, and allow professionals to think beyond the dominant models they have been working under. At the end, the question is not ‘What is the right definition of addiction?’, but ‘What is the right definition for you, and your client?’




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