What is Addiction?

Addiction is the inability to cease undesirable behavior.

It's a strange phenomenon in homo sapiens. In fact, besides cases when humans mess with incentive structure; it seems animals actually are so good at not getting addicted to things that it makes us look bad. Modern human life is very different from our primitive origins. Of course that doesn't mean that modern monkeys don't share similarities to us, some species have been recorded sharing overripe fruit. But I couldn’t find any evidence of addiction, that seems to be a human invention. But, why is this? Well, it probably has something to do with the aforementioned incentive structures.

So let's turn our attention to human society. Our modern world is full of those strange, enticing objects of desire. Porn, Junk food, high sugar foods. Online games and social media platforms seem to be adopting ever-increasingly manipulative design practices to hold your engagement, and gambling is becoming more unregulated than ever before. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allowing users to bet on literally anything — (yikes!)

So we've identified our problem, where to go from here? Well, living like the unabomber is a romantic aesthetic; but it’s hardly practical. Enter tiktoker and youtuber Caolite McClean: He’s changed his whole life around after some experiences that shook him. Now he makes motivational videos and encourages people to go outside and enjoy nature. In a youtube video, he describes this change that he cultivated within himself. He repeats the idea that addictions are ultimately just habits. He even goes on to say: “I’m addicted to the gym, I go to the gym a couple hours every day and if that was taken away from me it’d have a really bad effect on my life…I’m totally addicted to that, I’m addicted to going on adventures, I’m addicted to being outside, I’m addicted to all of these things. Addiction is just a thing that’s a part of your life.”

Habits are just repeated activities, and as it turns out; some activities are harder to stop doing than others. It seems as though a path out of addiction is to create rituals that serve your purposes.

References

Wild chimpanzees share fermented fruits
what they don't talk about when you change your life