No, You Don't Have 'An Addictive Personality.'

I was watching a streamer today who dropped a very common phrase, stating that they had an ‘addictive personality’ but had not gotten an addiction to gambling even though they had gambled occasionally. I presume they believe they ‘have an addictive personality’ due to active nicotine addiction and past experiences of drinking alcohol excessively, and probably their unhealthy ideas about food and diet, mistaking cravings for carbs and calories as an addiction.

Many people too also feel ‘addicted to sex’ but, as I establish in my book Fuck Portion Control, there is no such thing as sex addiction and instead the compulsion that so called ‘sex and love addicts’ feel is a biological mating response to being colonized by opportunistic pathogens to increase the chances of mating before the portended expiry of the adult organism because, in evolutionary terms, such illnesses would have resulted in a higher rate of mortality than what we experience today with our advanced food, sanitation, and medical systems.

The real problem with the idea of having ‘an addictive personality’ is that this concept assumes personal control over addiction responses, which is not possible, as addiction is both a psychological and neurological condition over which we do not have any control (that does not mean we can’t get better, though!), based on flawed prejudices desiring control over mortality. In fact, many of us have been indoctrinated to believe that we should have control over biology, but our mind innately understands that is impossible to do, so we feel compelled to master control over something over which we absolutely cannot, and this eternal impasse then heaps even more stress on our already stressed mind and body and our addiction behaviors get worse, not better, since we are demanding of ourselves something which is literally impossible.

The reality of life and addictions is that we do not need to control such things. They are outside of our ability as a mortal human animal, and are instead a design of the Universe in which we experience the limitations of mortality as the experience of being alive, which does and must contain experiences of weakness, loss, and failure as much as it does also success, love, and happiness. Most of us chase the sensation of feeling good in a compulsive and obsessive desire to avoid all disappointment and loss, but we cannot do that anyway, and it is more effective to come to terms with the parameters of life and living rather than fight them, because we do not actually have the ability to alter them. If we did, we would be God.

The way to handle addictive behaviors is through self-care behaviors for both the body and mind. As I mentioned, so-called behavioral ‘addictions’ like a compulsive sex drive or gambling are not actually addictions, but are instead innate adaptive responses to the environment which require that the underlying problems like pathogenic colonization or poor conceptions of self-worth and life be resolved as discussed in both Fuck Portion Control and The Perfect Child. Many people also mistake cravings for sugar as an addiction, but sugars are actually required for our metabolic respiration and the production of ATP which is our primary energy molecule. Often when advising addicts I would describe to them the requirements for getting well, such as taking sufficient sugar daily, and they would refuse to do that and continue suffering addiction to drugs and alcohol because it is impossible to abuse and neglect the body without consequences.

Actual addiction to substances is also fairly easy to resolve if you follow the steps outlined in my Addiction Recovery Guide which even contains a technical, downloadable PDF for institutions and recovery centers to follow for more successful recovery programs. This guide is just an outline of what my book discusses, and is NOT a replacement for reading my book, the entirety of which is also required for fully understanding the biology behind addiction. But in practice it takes far less work and effort than might be assumed, certainly easier than what you are probably doing to self-medicate and the consequences which arise from addiction behavior.

So no, there is no such thing as an ‘addictive personality.’ It has nothing to do with who you are, but instead the limitations of human biology and our shared mortal condition, and having compassion for our human condition by practicing self-care behaviors is the path for resolution.