Addiction: It's Not Just About Substances

When people hear the word addiction, most think of alcohol, drugs, or gambling. And while those are real and painful struggles, addiction can take many forms and it often starts long before a substance ever enters the picture.

I help individuals and families understand addiction through a broader lens because addiction involves more than just using something to feel different. Addiction shows up in our daily patterns, in relationships, and in the roles we take on without even realizing it. If you or someone you love is caught in a cycle that feels overwhelming, stuck, or confusing, Roots of Courage can help you break free of that painful cycle.

Addiction Is About More Than Substances

At its core, addiction is a coping strategy. It’s a way of numbing pain, escaping discomfort, or gaining a sense of control. And that coping can attach itself to all kinds of behaviors, not just substances.

Some common behavioral addictions include:

Overworking and always being busy
People-pleasing
Perfectionism
Food restriction or bingeing
Gambling
Sex or pornography
Compulsive shopping, scrolling, or gaming
Obsessive exercising
Chronic caretaking or control in relationships

These behaviors may not look like addiction at first glance, but if they’re used to avoid, numb, or manage emotional pain, they can become compulsive and hard to stop. Over time, they take a toll physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually.

How Does Addiction Start?

Addiction often begins with a need that wasn’t met. For whatever reason, intentional or not, there wasn’t enough emotional safety, connection, love, validation, or a sense of being in control. If those needs weren’t met often enough, the nervous system adapts to survive. It finds ways to meet the needs that aren’t being met.

Sometimes that adapting looks like:

Turning to food, screens, or fantasy to self-soothe
Using a substance to relieve the boredom, loneliness, or lack of satisfaction with life
Over-functioning to feel worthy or needed
Shutting down emotions and pretending everything’s fine
Taking on the role of the “fixer,” “hero,” or “scapegoat” in the family

These survival strategies work for a while, until they start causing pain rather than stopping it. That’s often when someone starts to realize that their casual use isn’t just a bad habit. It’s something deeper.

Chronic use of things like screens, gambling, substances, and food can create actual changes in the brain’s reward and self regulation systems. Something that once felt manageable now feels like something you can’t imagine going a day without. Something that you once did occasionally now feels like it controls you. Something that once helped is now creating arguments, shame, and disappointment.

Addiction Lives in the Family System

Addiction rarely happens in a vacuum. It’s often part of a larger relational pattern that may have been passed down through generations. In a family system, addiction can show up through:

Enabling or rescuing behavior (“If I just fix it, everything will be okay”)
Denial or secrecy (“We don’t talk about that”)
Blame and shame cycles (“If they would just stop, none of this would happen”)
Codependency (losing your sense of self in someone else’s struggle)
Rigid roles — like the “hero,” “lost child,” “scapegoat,” or “caretaker”

These survival patterns are usually unconscious, and naming them isn’t about blame. It’s about taking ownership and being fully honest about how these behaviors are affecting you so that real change can occur. Therapy helps unwind the web that addiction weaves so the whole system can begin to heal.

How Therapy Helps

In therapy, we don’t just look at the behavior. Together, we explore:

What the addiction is doing for you. What pain it numbs and/or what need it fills
Where these patterns started and how they may have served you in the past
How your family system shaped your beliefs about emotions, love, and self-worth
How to reconnect with your body and emotions in safe, supportive ways
Healthier tools for managing stress, grief, shame, or disconnection
How to shift family dynamics without blame and with compassionate boundaries

Whether you’re the one struggling with addiction or you love someone who is, therapy creates space to untangle these complex dynamics with compassion and without piling on more shame.

Recovery Isn’t Just About Stopping. It’s About Healing

Stopping a behavior is one step. Healing the root cause is where long-term change happens. That might mean:

Learning how to feel without numbing
Setting boundaries that honor your own needs
Letting go of roles you’ve outgrown
Grieving what you didn’t get, and learning how to give it to yourself
Fully resolving old experiences that continue to re-play in your mind
Reconnecting with your true self, not the version shaped by trauma or survival

Recovery is possible when we focus on honoring and letting go of the patterns that keep it alive.

If you're ready to break out of painful patterns, please contact me below.

If you’re reading this and seeing yourself (or someone you love) in these words, you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you. Your behaviors make sense when you understand what they were protecting you from. Therapy offers you the space to be curious, not judgmental. To get support, not shame. And to start building a new path that’s based on connection and not simply coping. If you’re ready to explore what a life without addiction could look like, please contact me.

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