[Test] How do I know whether I am caught in an addiction?

If we take an addiction to be simply a habit with mostly negative consequences that seems difficult, if not impossible, to stop, then working out whether or not we have one gets fairly straightforward:

1. Frequency: is there a systematic habit in place — daily, every evening, every weekend?
2. Consequences: if so, does that habit have negative consequences for me and for the people around me? Health, isolation, conflict, avoiding certain situations, handling difficult emotions, tiredness, trouble concentrating, and so on. If they are hard to pin down, have a look at the piece on the consequences most addictions share.
3. Difficulty stopping: is this habit easy to interrupt? If the answer is yes, have we actually done it in the last two or three months?

As with a toxic relationship, it is by becoming gradually aware of everything harmful about the habit that we generate both the desire and the resources to leave it.

If we have not seen that a habit is running us, or what it is costing us, or if we would rather steer clear of the subject, the trap closes on us little by little — until something wakes us up, most likely pain.

There is an idea introduced by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher in the psychology of change that I find very apt here, and especially so with addiction: we change when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing.

So we start looking for a way out when we realise the negative consequences have grown too large — larger, at any rate, than the wellbeing the habit was supposed to deliver. Knowing what those consequences are is what lets us see whether we are keeping up habits that cost us on several fronts.

And there is a fourth factor that matters in identifying an addiction: its function. In other words, is this habit trying to answer one or more specific needs — winding down, feeling free, getting relief, bearing or handling boredom or frustration, forgetting something traumatic, getting to sleep, switching the mind off, getting energy back?

To help you work out a little more precisely whether or not you are living with an addiction, here is a very simple test: a dozen questions and an explanatory assessment at the end, based on your answers.