Am I Addicted? The Questions We Don't Like to Ask

When most people hear the word addiction, they think about alcohol or drugs. We picture someone whose life is falling apart, whose behavior has become impossible to hide, and whose problems are obvious to everyone around them. We tend to imagine addiction as something that happens to other people, particularly people whose lives look very different from our own.

But addiction doesn't always look like that, and it doesn't always involve alcohol or drugs. Gambling, shopping, food, exercise, work, sex, gaming, social media, pornography, and relationships can all become compulsive. The behavior may be different, but the questions we need to ask ourselves are similar.

One of the difficulties is that we can become very good at convincing ourselves that we are in control. We set rules, make promises, and establish limits that reassure us that nothing is wrong. I spent a long time trying to control my drinking. I could decide when I would drink, how much I would drink, and what I would not do. The problem was that I kept changing the rules whenever they became inconvenient.

I also didn't recognize how much alcohol was influencing my decisions. Instead of exploring different restaurants or traveling across the city to meet friends, I stuck to familiar places where the staff knew me and I knew I could get home easily. I told myself I was choosing what I liked, but my decisions were increasingly shaped by where drinking fitted into the picture.

My life was becoming more restricted, even though I was still working, meeting my responsibilities, and getting on with things. Because I hadn't experienced the kind of dramatic consequences I associated with addiction, it was easier to overlook what I was losing. I had less freedom to make spontaneous plans, try new things, or enjoy a social occasion without thinking about alcohol. I was arranging my life around something I believed I needed in order to feel comfortable.

Alcohol served a purpose for me. I thought it made me more confident and sociable, and I liked the way it changed how I felt about myself. I wasn't simply drinking because I enjoyed alcohol. I was relying on it to help me manage situations and feelings that I didn't know how to handle on my own.

I began therapy before I stopped drinking, and one day my therapist asked me what I was feeling. I couldn't think of anything. I actually asked her, "What are my options?" She held up a feelings chart, which gives you some idea of where I was starting from.

At one Thursday appointment, she told me to make room for sadness. That weekend, when people invited me out, I declined and explained that I couldn't go because I was making room for sadness. I found this quite funny at the time, but I did stay home, and I allowed myself to feel sad. I also felt better. I was beginning to understand that I didn't have to escape every uncomfortable emotion or immediately find a way to change how I felt. I could experience sadness without drinking to make it go away.

Recovery required me to learn things I hadn't known how to do before. Stopping drinking was necessary, but I also had to develop confidence, understand my feelings, and work out how to enjoy my life without relying on alcohol to make those things possible.

These changes can be difficult to recognize because they often happen gradually. Something that begins as an occasional pleasure can become more frequent, more important, or harder to imagine going without. You might start doing it alone rather than socially, during the week instead of only on weekends, or in situations where you previously wouldn't have considered it. Each change may seem relatively minor, but over time, the behavior can take on a much larger role in your life.

It can also be difficult to take other people's concerns seriously when you have an explanation for everything you do. Getting defensive doesn't automatically mean you have an addiction. Sometimes people are wrong, intrusive, or simply annoying. However, I became very good at explaining my drinking. There was always a reason for it, and there was usually somebody who drank more than I did. I could find plenty of ways to make my behavior seem reasonable, which meant I spent less time considering whether it was actually working for me.

I also lied to doctors and partners about how much I drank, understating how much I drank each night and over the course of a week. I didn't want other people to know the full extent of my drinking, and I put effort into making sure they didn't have an accurate picture of what was happening. Looking back, I can see that I was more comfortable managing what other people knew than confronting what my drinking might mean.

I don't think rock bottom is a useful test for addiction. The idea that you have to lose your job, destroy a relationship, end up in the hospital, or experience some other catastrophic consequence before you are entitled to take your behavior seriously creates a ridiculous standard. Plenty of people experience addiction while continuing to work, maintain relationships, pay their bills, and appear perfectly functional.

For me, the consequences were less dramatic but still significant. I was losing the freedom to make decisions without alcohol influencing them. I thought drinking gave me confidence, but I was increasingly arranging my life around something I believed I needed to feel comfortable. I was still doing many of the things I wanted to do, but I wasn't enjoying them entirely on my own terms.

It took recovery for me to understand that the confidence I attributed to alcohol was something I needed to develop for myself. I had to learn how to navigate social situations, deal with uncomfortable feelings, and make decisions without first considering how drinking would fit into them. That process changed my understanding of what alcohol had been doing in my life.

We can spend an enormous amount of time trying to decide whether we qualify for the label of addict. We compare ourselves with other people, look for evidence that we are not bad enough, and search for a definition that will give us a clear answer. The label may be useful for some people, but arguing over whether it applies can also distract us from a more personal question: What is this behavior doing to my life?

For me, the distinction became clear when I recognized that alcohol had stopped being something I simply enjoyed. I had begun depending on it for things I did not know how to give myself. Trying to control my drinking had become an exercise in managing the rules rather than enjoying my life.

I didn't need to settle the question of whether I met somebody else's definition of an alcoholic before I could acknowledge that my relationship with drinking had changed. Once I understood that, I could stop arguing about what to call it and start addressing what I needed to change.