IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND –
May 8, 2025 – Consider someone addicted to alcohol, drugs, or a behavior like gambling. Why do they continue, even when they say they want to stop? It’s a question that highlights a fundamental disconnect: the gap between intention and action.
This apparent contradiction aligns with clinical definitions of addiction and with brain disease models, which suggest that repeated substance use changes brain function, making drug use compulsive and automatic, bypassing conscious decision-making. These brain adaptations help explain why addiction is so hard to overcome.
But there’s another important piece to the puzzle. People often use substances for reasons that make sense to them—to feel good, to relieve stress, or to connect socially. These motivations don’t disappear just because a substance becomes harmful.
