All addictions, whether to substances, people, or activities, are essentially psychologically similar. They operate according to the same psychological principles and have similar patterns, causes and solutions.

An addiction can be thought of as being a powerful, sometimes overpowering involvement, to which you turn for security when you fail to find better gratifications in the rest of your life.

And the more that you turn to the addiction, the more primary it becomes as being the mainstay of your life. And yet the more you rely on it, the more negative experiences it produces in your life, and the more you need to return to the addiction.

When people turn to an experience, any experience, for comfort and pleasure to the exclusion of meaningful involvements in the rest of their lives, they are engaged in an addiction.

Addictions can range in severity from the relatively trivial to the fatal, and the broad group of commonly encountered addictions can be divided into 2 categories:

• Substance Addiction
  • Alcohol
  • Cocaine & other substance and/or drug addiction
  • Food
  • Smoking
  • Vaping
• Activities / Behavioural Addiction
  • Gambling
  • Internet
  • Sex (e.g. porn addiction & fetish addiction)
  • Shopping
  • Spending
  • Work
  • Hobby/Pastime
  • Sport

Some people have theorised the cause of addictive behaviour to be, for example:

• That some people have inherited their addictive behaviour through their genes, from parents, grandparents and ancestors.
• Or that some people have an 'addictive personality'.

Both theories are unhelpful to the addict who is trying to escape an addiction - because they psycholoically disempower the addict from doing anything about their addiction:

"after all, what's the point in trying to change your addictive behaviour, because you can't change your DNA, genes, or personality" 

is how the reasoning goes. So, unsurprisingly, the addict isn't motivated into any effort into changing their behaviour - and they remain in the grip of their addiction.

As an addiction therapist my job is to help people to quit their addiction by removing their need to continue with their addiction and by building the sound psychological foundation that must be in place so that they can successfully quit their addiction by addressing the cause of their addiction

Psychologically, with most addictions the driving force is largely that of instant gratification - where the short term pleasure of the addiction wins out over the long term disadvantages that are a consequence of continuing with the addiction. And, in general terms, the long term consequential disadvantages may be very severe and harmful to relationships; and finances; and/or to health - and potentially fatal.

Addiction will never be cured by a pill. Indeed, when you truly understand addiction, the idea of a pill for curing what is a psychological dependency makes no sense.

Like so many human problems, with all addictions there are two main elements to consider, the cause and the effect. By using Therapeutic Hypnosis a two pronged approach to the problem can be taken and, while dealing with the effect, the habit itself, we can also find and deal with any other subconscious causes and triggers that are present and continuing to drive the addiction.

This therapy is easy for the client to do and is a powerful way of changing the person's perception of their addiction, and changing their addiction from something that they perceive as being desirable, to something that they just don't want to do any more.