Part One: What is Addiction?

As an addict, I find that my addiction is a daily, continuous battle. It is a battle between my true desires and my addiction. In order to win a battle, you must know your enemy. You must know their characteristics, their trends, their origins, how they fight, and their weapons in order to fight them appropriately and have a chance at winning. Thus, in order to begin my battle, I must understand my enemy, my addictions. Because addiction can be defined and its characteristics described in many ways, I thought a list of definitions and characteristics would be appropriate.

Addiction is, in its essence, any compulsion.

Addiction is desire gone amok.

Addiction is co-dependency.

Addiction is any preoccupation or obsession.

Addiction is any compulsive habitual behavior or thought that limits the freedom of human desire, and is caused by chaining, or attachment, of desire to specific objects.

The object of addiction is any thing, behavior, thought pattern, or relationship that controls our decisions and actions through craving, control loss, and continued use is an addiction.

The object of addiction is whatever you sacrifice things for to obtain or do.

If we truly examine ourselves, we can see that everyone is an addict to something, whether it be relationships, chemicals, activities, adrenaline, exercise, food, media, thoughts, attitudes, et cetera. It is not a moral failure, a personality disorder, or a medical disease in and of itself, but it is all of these interplaying that creates addiction.


There are 5 essential characteristics that mark true addiction. These characteristics can be used to determine areas of addiction in our own lives and to distinguish addiction from freedom.

Tolerance
Tolerance is always wanting more of the object of attachment in order to feel satisfied. It is essentially the process of becoming accustomed to the object while still being obsessed with it, leading to a desire for more.

Withdrawal Symptoms
This is a physiologic and psychologic stress reaction due to withdrawal of the object of attachment. It involves the acute phase stress reaction, a physiologic response that causes irritability and uneasiness to extreme agitation with physical symptoms and panic. It also involves rebound, a backlash of symptoms opposite those caused by the addictive behavior itself.

Self-deception
This is where your mind subconsciously or unconsciously subverts every attempt to control the addictive behavior. It includes such tactics as denial, rationalization, displacement, and every other psychological tactic known.

Loss of Willpower
This involves the true lack of ability to quit your addiction. Every time you try, it becomes harder and harder to quit, and the addiction gains a stronger foothold in your life. The failures make you question your ability, and your faith in your ability to control your own behavior gets smaller and smaller.

Distortion of Attention
All addictions grab and distort our attention, keeping us from pursuing and concentrating on love of God and others. You cannot have your attention on more than 1-2 things at a time. Your addictions distract the mind from love and holds attention captive. It is idolatry - the addiction holds primary concern and God is anything but the primary concern. Thus, at many points in our day, all people display this property of addiction - they give more priority to a concern compared to their concern for God and His will. It is not about our immediate concern versus our ultimate concern. They are one in the same. All we need to do is look at our actions to determine what our primary concern is at that moment

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:21)

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. (Matt 12:33)

An example will provide us with realization that all of us are addicted. The example comes from the universal search for security.
The Bible is plain in its language that we we can and should trust in God for our ultimate security.

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? ...But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matt 6:25-27, 33)

Trusting in God for our security leads to freedom.

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31-32)

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1)

The things that secure us tend to bind us down, and those that free us often feel like risks. True freedom can only happen when we trust in God's ultimate care for us and we relax our grip on the lesser sources of security. In our society, the three gods we trust in for security are possessions, power, and human relationships.
Possessions occupy and preoccupy the mind, making us think we are securing financial freedom. However, the more we acquire, the more occupied we become with possessions. They become heavier and heavier burdens, leading to being more and more consumed by them and controlled by them rather than being free.
Power in this world involves seeking status, influence and control over our lives and living autonomously. The more power we have, the less vulnerable we feel in regards to others influencing us or oppressing us. However, it typically becomes egotistical and selfish; instead of serving freedom, we result to serving our own will.
Human relationships provide us with feelings of personal worth, value, and affirmation. They provide us with security and stability. But relationships can also make us too dependent and possessive; they can be a source of manipulation; our sense of personal worth, lovability, and goodness may become contingent on the approval of others. These are the signs of addiction. Our personal worth and value, our capacity for loving others and being loved, and our ultimate care and protection are all things that have been given to us by God. When we feel bound to extract these qualities from others, something is wrong and addiction is taking root.

The final thing that needs to be considered in determining the nature of addiction in order to help identify personal addictions is attraction versus aversion addictions. Thus far, we have only considered attraction addictions - those that draw us to them and we find pleasurable. However, desire has two sides, attraction and repulsion. Thus, there are repulsion addictions - those things which we are compulsively pushed away from. They are often called by other names such as phobias, prejudices, bigotries, resistances, and allergies. Some aversion addictions are just the opposite of attraction addictions (example: I'm addicted to cleanliness vs. I'm repulsed by dirtiness). Aversion and attraction addictions have essentially the same characteristics; in aversion addictions, however, there exists intolerance instead of tolerance, and instead of withdrawal symptoms, there are approach symptoms.

Anything in life can become an addiction. Yet there is a difference between having strong feelings about something and really being addicted to it. The difference is freedom. With most things which we care (and do not care about), we remain free to choose the depth and extent of our investment. True addictions are compulsive habitual behaviors that eclipse our concern for God and compromise our freedom and they must be characterized by tolerance, withdrawal, loss of willpower, and distortion of attention.

Here is a partial list of different types of addictions to help you realize that you are addicted and what you are addicted to so that you may come to know your enemy.

Attraction Addictions
Anger, Approval, Attractiveness,
Being good, Being helpful, Being loved, Being nice, Being right, Being taken care of,
Calendars, Candy, Cars, Causes, Children, Chocolate, Cleanliness, Coffee, Caffeine, Comparisons, Competence, Competition, Computers, Contests,
Death, Depression, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs,
Eating, Envy, Exercise,
Fame, Family, Fantasies, Finger drumming, Fishing, Food, Friends, Furniture,
Gambling, Gardening, Golf, Gossiping, Groups, Guilt,
Hair twisting, Happiness, Hobbies, Housekeeping, Humor,
Ice cream, Images of God, Internet, Intimacy,
Jealousy,
Knowledge,
Lying,
Marriage, Meeting expectations, Memories, Messiness, Money, Movies, Music,
Nail biting, Neatness,
Parents, Performance, Pets, Pizza, Politics, Popularity, Power, Psychotherapy, Punctuality,
Reading, Relationships, Responsibility, Revenge,
Seductiveness, Self-image, Self-improvement, Sex, Shopping, Sleeping, Soft drinks, Sports, Status, Stock market, Stress, Sunbathing, Suspiciousness,
Talking, Television, Time, Tobacco,
Weight, Winning, Work, Worthiness

Aversion Addictions
Airplanes, Anchovies, Anger, Animals,
Being abnormal, Being alone, Being discounted, Being fat, Being judged, Being overwhelmed, Being thin, Being tricked, Birds, Blood, Boredom, Bridges, Bugs,
Cats, Closed-in spaces, Commitment, Conflict, Crowds,
Darkness, Death, Dentists, Dependence, Dirt, Disapproval, Doctors,
Embarrassment, Evil spirits,
Failure, Fire,
Germs, Guilt,
High places,
Illness, Independence, Intimacy,
Mice, Messiness,
Needles,
Open spaces,
Pain,
People of different beliefs/class/culture/politics/race/religion/sex,
People who are addicted/competent/fat/thin/ignorant/messy/neat/rich/poor,
Public speaking,
Rats, Rejection, Responsibility,
Sex, Sharp instruments, Slimy creatures, Snakes, Spiders, Storms, Strangers, Success,
Tests, Traffic, Tunnels,
Vulnerability,
Water, Writing

So in summary, we are all addicted in some fashion or another, to some "thing" or another. This is the result of abnormally attaching our desire to an object, idolizing it, and that subsequent attachment enslaves us to the object. As our bonds to the object grow stronger with time (until broken), our freedom shrinks. Because we are sinful, we are all addicts. Breaking free from denial is the first step in the battle against addiction, and now is your time to take that first step.