What Your Addiction May Really Be Trying to Tell You

By John Corbett, Psychologist

We often imagine addiction as something that happens to other people.

Someone whose drinking has cost them their job.

Someone whose gambling has left them in debt.

Someone whose life has visibly unravelled.

The reality I encounter in clinical practice is often very different.

Many of the people I meet are highly educated, professionally successful and outwardly functioning well. They lead teams, raise families and maintain respected careers. Yet behind closed doors, they quietly describe something else.

"I don't know how to relax without a drink."

"I reach for my phone every few minutes without thinking."

"I know I'm exhausted, but I can't stop working."

"I don't even enjoy it anymore. I just feel compelled to do it."

These conversations reflect a broader shift in how we should think about addiction.

For much of the past century, addiction was viewed primarily as a problem of substances.

Today, psychologists increasingly recognise that many addictive behaviours share something fundamental in common: they provide temporary relief from psychological distress.

The object of the addiction may differ.

Alcohol.

Prescription medication.

Online gambling.

Social media.

Shopping.

Work.

But the psychological function is often remarkably similar.

Each offers a temporary escape from discomfort.

That discomfort may take many forms.

Anxiety.

Loneliness.

Emotional exhaustion.

Chronic stress.

Uncertainty.

Or simply the inability to switch off after another demanding day.

For a short time, the behaviour works.

It calms the nervous system.

It distracts the mind.

It provides relief.

The difficulty is that relief is not the same as recovery.

As the brain begins to associate a particular behaviour with emotional regulation, it gradually learns to depend upon it.

This process rarely happens overnight.

It develops quietly.

Almost imperceptibly.

One drink becomes two.

Checking emails after dinner becomes working until midnight.

Scrolling social media for a few minutes becomes an hour.

The behaviour gradually shifts from being a choice to becoming the brain's preferred coping strategy.

One of the more striking developments I have observed in recent years is the number of high-functioning professionals who do not recognise this transition.

As both a psychologist and an Australian-trained lawyer, I have spent many years working alongside professionals whose careers demand precision, responsibility and sustained performance.

These environments reward competence.

They reward resilience.

They reward the ability to keep going.

What they rarely reward is psychological recovery.

Many successful people have become exceptionally skilled at performing under pressure.

Far fewer have learned how to recover from it.

Instead, recovery is outsourced.

A drink to unwind.

Hours spent online.

Compulsive exercise.

Endless work.

Retail therapy.

None of these behaviours is inherently problematic.

The more important question is whether they have become essential.

Psychologically, this distinction matters.

• The issue is not whether someone drinks alcohol. It is whether they still know how to relax without it.

• The issue is not whether someone checks their phone. It is whether silence has become uncomfortable.

• The issue is not whether someone works hard. It is whether stopping has become frightening.

  
  

These are subtle differences, but clinically they are significant.

Perhaps this is why I rarely begin by asking clients how much they drink or how often they gamble.

Instead, I ask a different question for addiction.

"What does this behaviour do for you?"

That question often changes the conversation entirely.

The answers are rarely about pleasure.

"They help me stop thinking."

"It's the only time I feel calm."

"I don't know how else to switch off."

"I finally feel like I can breathe."

Those answers tell us that the behaviour itself may not be the primary problem.

It may be attempting to solve another one. None of this means every coping habit is an addiction. Nor does it suggest that everyone who enjoys a drink, spends time online or works long hours has a psychological disorder. Clinical assessment requires careful evaluation of severity, impact and loss of control. But I do believe we have become too quick to judge behaviours and too slow to ask what they are communicating. Because addictive behaviours rarely emerge in isolation.

They often reveal something about the person's emotional world long before they become visible to everyone else.

Perhaps that is the conversation we should be having. Not simply asking how we stop addictive behaviours. But asking why so many successful, capable and intelligent people increasingly feel they need them in the first place.