Needle, Screen, Bottle, Scroll...

The many faces of addiction.

Read time: Approx 5 mins.

Addiction, as I’ve come to understand it—not just through textbooks or support groups, but around kitchen tables littered with empty coffee mugs and unspoken grief—isn’t some cartoonish villain lurking in alleyways, waiting to strike. It's far more insidious than that. More intimate, too. Addiction is the voice that gently coaxes you to check your email at 2 a.m. It’s the invisible hand that tightens your shoelaces before a five-mile run you don’t even enjoy. It's that third glass of wine, poured not in celebration but in resignation—to blunt the sharp corners of a day that never really started or ended.

Many conflate addiction with dependence…and while the two often dance together, they’re not identical. Dependence is the body’s adaptation to a substance, warning of a tantrum in the substance’s absence. Withdrawal is the tantrum itself—the migraine when caffeine is withheld, the tremor when you’re three days into smoking cessation, the restless irritability that follows a social media detox. But addiction is quieter. Smarter. It’s the mind’s negotiation: “Just one more time,” it whispers. It knows your patterns better than you do and wraps itself in whatever shape comforts you most—success, sacrifice, control, chaos.

I’ll use my own circle as an example…My mom, an almost-70-year-old worker bee, can out perform almost anyone in a ten-mile radius. And she does…daily. Her work is less about passion or community at this point, though, as many of her work friends have moved on to greener pastures or retired. Maybe it’s an escape route? A way to avoid the world awaiting her at home or the parts of herself she never had time to meet. Her health? I can’t be sure…but I’ve recognized both subtle and not-so-subtle physiological manifestations over time…Slowing down, though? Hell no! That would mean facing those inner demons tucked under decades of productivity and people pleasing (love you, Mom). I empathize. I know this pattern all too well, because it is, after all, my default mode of functioning (or, at least, it has been…).

My siblings…brilliant, accomplished, walking textbooks of excellence…are not exempt either. One's a PhD in chemistry and physics; the other, a top-tier gastroenterologist. Their excellence, though, has come at a cost. They are both survivors of eating disorders and the endless pursuit of achievement and accolades. It started in AP Chemistry and never really stopped. Straight A’s. Extra credit. Over-preparedness. Valedictorian. Their lives have been a quiet war with the idea that if they can just “do enough,” they’ll finally outrun the shadows buried beneath. They won’t. I know because I’ve tried.

My father-in-law? Selfless to a fault. Sleeps an average of 2 hours per night, commutes 50,000+ miles/year for work alone, and would drive you across the country if it meant saving you $150 in airline fares. The man quite literally worked himself to exhaustion in his youth, requiring hospitalization. In Japan, this has a name—karōshi. In America, we call it “dedication” and slap it on a mug. And yet, he returns to work every time...as if another few months will pad his retirement future, as if his paycheck holds the power to rewrite his childhood and prevent the uncertainty ahead. Sadly, it never seems to work out that way.

And then there’s me…the epitome of perfection. Just kidding…You can usually gauge how dysfunctional I am based on the content of my Substack articles :).

I used to believe I was above it—addiction was for other people, those who drank too much, sniffed tailpipes, or smoked things wrapped in tinfoil. But the truth is, I’ve chased validation through achievement, punished myself at the gym, and perfected the art of dissociation. I’ve stared at the ceiling, completely detached from the body lying below it, because sometimes being present felt like walking into a fire. I thought being empathetic made me healthy, but I’ve since realized much of that care for others was just a socially acceptable way to avoid facing my own hurt.

Psychedelics, especially psilocybin, helped tear down some of that illusion. I do believe in their therapeutic potential. They’ve been a reset button for my psyche, a defragmentation of the hard drive. Unlike other substances, they’re anti-addictive at a chemical level—use them again too soon, thanks to the rapid down-regulation of 5HT2A (serotonin) receptors in the brain, and you'll have quite the lackluster journey. But despite their enormous potential, I also see their many pitfalls…I’ve too frequently used them to run…To escape into the cosmos when life felt like a pile of sh*t. But eventually…life always called me back to do the dishes, pay the billls, engage with humanity.

Addiction wears many faces. It’s not just heroin and whiskey. It’s doom-scrolling and binge-watching. It's shopping. It's Botox. It’s the compulsive need to track your sleep, your steps, your heart-rate variability…even when you’re exhausted. It’s the $600 wellness routines, the $400/month in “natural supplements” and avoidance of routine healthcare maintenance checks, the biohacking fads, the intermittent fasting that started as a health choice and morphed into disordered binge-restrict-repeat. Because…autophagy…and some chiropractor who abused his credentials of “doctor” said so! It’s food engineered in labs to override our hunger signals, leading us to “numb,” rather than fuel. It’s the GLP-1’s used to combat that addiction and seemingly creating their own form of lifelong dependency. It’s pornography designed to flatten love into stimulus and curated bodies. Even meditation can become addictive if it's used not to connect with ourselves, but to avoid our pain and float past the hard stuff.

We live in a culture that profits off of our need to escape, then ridicules (and even criminalizes) our very attempt to do so. Social media apps are built like slot machines, with infinite scrolls and dopamine pings. Ultra-processed foods trigger reward centers with surgical precision. Alcohol has undergone one of the slickest PR makeovers in modern history. It’s no longer just “a substance.” It’s “pinkies-raised” sophistication in a bottle…a lifestyle badge…even marketed as a form of self-care with a garnish. The industry spends millions turning addiction into an artisanal ritual: craft beers with tasting notes longer than resumes, high-end cocktails that require a chemistry degree and a flamethrower to mix, and wine labels designed to look like they read Proust in their spare time. For me, it often comes off as snobby…almost performative. Socially accepted bragging about how refined your poison is, as if choosing a $200 bourbon makes the hangover less elegant. Meanwhile, it’s directly responsible for nearly 40% of traffic deaths and a staggering percentage of domestic abuse cases. Its withdrawal can be fatal—seizures, heart attacks—yet it’s legal, glamorized, and sold in childlike flavors. Psilocybin withdrawal? Nonexistent. Heroin withdrawal? Unpleasant. Alcohol withdrawal? Lethal.

Statistics across all areas of addiction are damning. Nearly 21% of the global population meets the criteria for food addiction. Up to 50% of children are showing signs of digital dependency. And yet, we criminalize drug addiction, treating it like a moral failing rather than a human response to a f**ked up world. We’ve set people up to fail…then wag our fingers like Dikembe Mutombo when they try to cope…

Workaholism is rewarded. Hustle culture is idolized. Cosmetic surgery is booming, not for health but for validation. There’s nothing creepier than a smiling mouth with a static face… Many people spend more time with their phones than with their families. We've normalized the compulsive, yet shamed the collapse that inevitably follows.

Let’s admit defeat…we’re all addicted to something. For some, it’s meth. For others, it’s approval. One addiction ruins families. The other gets you a raise. But at the root of both lies the same hunger to feel safe, to be loved, and to experience peace.

Recovery, then, isn’t just about abstinence. It’s about integration. It’s learning to stay present in moments that feel unbearable. It’s choosing connection over distraction. It’s learning to witness pain without numbing it. And when we fall off the wagon…and we will…t’s about returning the next day without shame.

We need to stop labeling addiction as a character flaw. It’s not. And likely…if we’re honest with ourselves…our judgement of others’ addictions are likely fueled by our blindness towards our own faults. Addiction is a mirror reflecting our deepest longings and unmet needs. And in that reflection, we don’t see weakness—we see the courage it takes to survive in a world that often doesn’t make space for our humanity.

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