Learn / Addiction vs. Habit: What’s the Difference?
Addiction vs. Habit: What’s the Difference?
September 11th, 2024| Clinically Reviewed by
Key Points
- Putting your left shoe on first differs quite widely from an addiction.
- A habit you can break with effort; addiction often requires professional treatment.
- Some methods for breaking a habit can help with addiction recovery, too.
Do either of these sound like a true addiction, something that has the power to disrupt lives? Cause death, even?
“I’m addicted to these chocolates! I buy them without even thinking about it.”
“I’m so addicted to watching my TV show at night! I love ending my day with TV!”
“I got so addicted to having a latte in the morning! I can’t imagine life without it now!”
These proclamations align more with habits, which are activities practiced regularly and usually without much thought. Think of brushing your teeth, wiping your shoes on the mat before stepping inside, or turning the lights off before you leave the house.
Correctly identifying a habit versus an addiction can help you understand your potential need for treatment and empathetically communicate with others.
Addiction and Habits Defined
So a habit and an addiction aren’t the same thing—Why? What are they?
What Is a Habit?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a habit1 as ”an acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.” In some contexts, the word habit can appear synonymous with addiction, but they differ quite drastically. Swapping one for the other can inadvertently cloud the truth of an addiction and the effects it can have.
Examples of habits include:
- Having a cup of coffee in the morning
- Talking evening walks
- Reading before bed
- Meditating
- Making your bed
If needed, you can choose to not do a habit. Though doing it may come instinctually, you could stop with some conscious effort. Even if it feels a bit weird or uncomfortable, it doesn’t cause physical withdrawal symptoms or consume your thoughts.
What Is Addiction?
Addiction is a “chronic, relapsing disorder2 characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite adverse consequences.” The medical community defines addiction as a brain disorder, since it changes the brain circuits related to self-control, reward, and stress. Even after someone stops taking drugs (including alcohol), these brain changes persist.
At first, someone usually has control over their substance use and chooses to initiate it. But once the self-control aspects of their brain become impaired, so does their ability to control their compulsions and cravings.
Some people are more at risk of developing an addiction2 than others. For example, one person can take or leave an alcoholic, while another may try a drink once and feel an immediate draw to the substance, until it becomes essential. Several risk factors, like genetic predispositions, childhood abuse, and influential environments, make repeated use and addiction more likely.
Examples of addiction include:
- Alcohol addiction (drinking heavily; becoming physically dependent on alcohol)
- Cocaine, heroin, meth, and crack addiction
- Gambling addiction
- Psychedelics addiction
- Pornography addiction
Addiction primarily differs from a habit in that stopping has consequences. Many people who try to stop experience withdrawals, which are physical and mental reactions to not having the substance3. Someone with an alcohol addiction, for example, may experience tremors and sickness if they try to stop—even seizures and death.
Characteristics of Habits and Addictions
Habits and addictions form differently and have distinct characteristics that set them apart.
Formation and Development
You’ve probably heard the adage: “It takes 21 days to build a habit.” In reality, the timeline differs from person to person and depends on how much effort they put into solidifying their habit. All habits form through repetition4 and the positive reinforcement they bring. Habits become automatically followed formulas in your brain with triggers, actions, and results. For example, going to your bathroom sink after showering triggers the action of brushing your teeth. You get clean teeth and better dental health as a result, which reinforces the action.
Addictions form differently. They may start voluntarily2, like winding down for bed with a glass of wine. But as the circuits and functioning in your brain change, and your tolerance to the substance builds, your voluntary enjoyment becomes compulsive. Self-control fades. You need more and more of the substance to get the feelings you want. Your body can grow dependent on the substance too, leading to painful and potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms when you try to stop or cut back.
Control and Consciousness
You can stop a habit at-will. Could you imagine going through painful withdrawals or intense emotional angst if you didn’t make your bed in the morning? You could stop any habit and, usually, suffer mild inconveniences or discomfort. Conscious effort and practice are all you need to break a habit.
Addiction requires more than conscious effort plus a desire to stop. Even though you may know and feel the negative effects on your life, the urge to take substances overrides all reasoning. You could decide to stop and throw out all your substances but find yourself buying more a day later. Life without the substance seems scary and unmanageable—much different than a life without taking your shoes off before going inside.
Impact on Daily Life
Making your bed, brushing your teeth, and taking a shower all have positive impacts on your life. You give yourself a cleaner space, you improve your oral health, and you take care of your hygiene—all good things. Some habits may have no tangible effect on your life, like checking your phone in the morning. Habits also differ person-to-person, affecting their lives differently depending on their personalities and ways of living.
Addiction often has a devastating impact across the board. You may spend more time and money procuring and consuming substances, leading to job loss and financial crises. Your actions under influence could sever relationships, leading to divorce or being cut off from loved ones. In dire cases, substances and the actions people take when impaired can lead to legal consequences and death.
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Psychological and Biological Factors
Both a habit and an addiction affect your brain, but addiction has a stronger impact.
Brain Chemistry
Both habits and addiction come from neurotransmitters traveling through certain pathways in the brain. The positive results of habits (like saving money by shutting off your lights) reinforces them, much like the positive feelings from substances can reinforce their use. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, drives this feel-good sensation5 and encourages you to repeat the action.
With substance use, these pleasant feelings and the release of dopamine increase tenfold. That’s what most drugs are meant and designed to do—make people feel good and enforce repetition. They send a rush of dopamine through your brain’s reward system6, telling you to do it again because it has a positive result. As your brain adapts to the unnatural effects of the substance and overflow of dopamine, it learns to stop making its own. It becomes hard to feel pleasure any other way, causing cravings and urges to use the substance.
Psychological Dependence
Once you become addicted to a substance, procuring and taking it can consume your thoughts and affect your mental state. You may feel emotionally reliant on it to relieve stress, discouragement, or boredom. A habit doesn’t consume your thoughts—even if you like doing it, it’s not an absolute necessity.
Physical Dependence
Taking less of a substance or stopping altogether can lead to withdrawals, which is why many people in treatment need professional detox services. Depending on the substance and how long you’ve been taking it, withdrawal can include symptoms like7:
- Tremors
- Headache
- Irritability
- Flu-like symptoms
- Vomiting and diarrhea
- Insomnia
- Hallucinations
- Seizures
If you don’t make your bed in the morning, you know it won’t make you throw up or have a seizure. That’s another way habits and addictions vary.
Behavioral and Social Implications
Seeing someone pull out their phone in a slow checkout line doesn’t come as a surprise; you probably wouldn’t even notice it. But what if they took out a liter of vodka, or shook pills into their hands?
Social Acceptance
Habits are generally accepted and encouraged—online, you can find almost endless lists of suggested habits and books dedicated to building healthy habits. Addiction is met with stigma and seen negatively by the public. Those with addiction often hide their behaviors to avoid consequences and the stigma surrounding addiction.
Conversely, telling a friend you meditate with your morning cup of coffee would likely garner admiration and respect, casting you in a positive light.
Behavioral Flexibility
Integrating new habits, or stopping one, usually just takes a bit of focus and effort. They can become part of your routine in just a few days or weeks. Stopping an addiction, however, isn’t nearly so simple. It often requires professional help and detox services to safely undergo withdrawals. It can take months or years to mentally, physically, and spiritually recover.
Recognition and Diagnosis
How do you know if something you do is an innocent habit or problematic behavior?
Identifying Habits
Perhaps the easiest way to identify a habit vs. an addiction is to stop doing it and see how it feels. Do you think about it all the time and feel distressed? Do you feel sick not doing it?
You can also ask yourself how your life changes, positively or negatively, if you cut out the activity. Are you happier, are your loved ones happier? Do your relationships improve? If you notice a positive change, that’s a good sign your habit may have been a problematic behavior or an addiction.
Diagnosing Addiction
A medical professional diagnoses addiction; the information provided here or anywhere else online isn’t a diagnosis. But you can use online resources to identify your concerns and acknowledge your need for professional help. An overview of the diagnostic criteria for an addiction8 is as follows:
- Substance use becomes out of control, where you take more than intended and can’t cut back, despite wanting to.
- Craving the substance.
- Spending significant time getting the substance, taking it, and recovering from its effects (often in secret).
- Continuously taking the substance despite clear consequences at home, work, and socially.
- Substance use prevents you from fulfilling your obligations and responsibilities.
Treatment Approaches
Many treatment approaches can help you heal from addiction. Small behavioral changes and tips can help you break a habit, too.
Breaking a Habit
Several tricks and strategies can help you break habits like checking your phone when you feel bored, stressed, or need to pass the time. For example, you could leave sticky notes to remind you not to do something, limit your screen time, or sell/throw away the item to stop the habit.
Staying mindful of your behaviors and actions can also help you break a habit. You can modify habits with habit stacking4, which uses one habit (like brushing your teeth) as a launchpad for another (like checking your calendar afterward.)
Treating Addiction
Various treatment approaches for addiction offer healing to everyone. Generally, approaches include:
- Evidence-based
- Holistic
- Alternative
Personalized treatment plans usually blend these approaches to your specific needs so you can engage in evidence-based therapies, holistic services, and alternative treatments all together.
Therapy is often the cornerstone of addiction treatment, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Detox and medications also serve as important aspects of recovery, especially for more severe cases. In all stages of recovery, support groups can serve as an invaluable place to connect with others in recovery and build resilience.
Professional Help
Getting professional help for addiction is often vital to recovery. Many treatment professionals can help—your primary care physician may be the first step, who can then suggest next steps and refer you to other providers. This could mean you start inpatient treatment and detox, long-term residential treatment, outpatient levels of care, or therapy.
You’ll likely work with at least one therapist, along with medical professionals to manage withdrawal symptoms safely. You may also work with group therapists and providers specialized in trauma treatment, or another type of mental health condition.
Forming New Habits in Recovery
Addiction recovery often involves new habits, like dedicating time to attend support meetings, practicing self-care, and making time for your relationships. You may even add meditation, journaling, or exercise to your daily routine, too. New habits like these can strengthen your overall recovery and improve your quality of life.
Leverage the power of habits, now knowing how they come to be and how you can optimize your routines for your benefit.
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