Picture a respected financial advisor: impeccably dressed, managing millions in client assets, known for returning emails at midnight and taking calls on weekends. Colleagues admire her dedication. Clients praise her availability. Her firm celebrates her as a top performer. But her marriage is crumbling, she can't remember the last time she slept through the night, and she feels a gnawing panic whenever her calendar shows an open hour. Is she successful, or is she an addict?
We typically reserve the word "addict" for someone whose life has visibly collapsed under the weight of drugs or alcohol. But addiction is a disease that transcends any particular substance. It's a pattern of behavior, a relationship with escape and relief, that can attach itself to work, exercise, spending, relationships, or countless other pursuits. Understanding who an addict really is requires us to look beyond the stereotype and recognize the underlying disease that can manifest anywhere in our lives.
At its core, addiction is characterized by three elements: compulsive behavior despite negative consequences, loss of control over the behavior, and continued engagement despite clear evidence of harm. These patterns aren't exclusive to substance use. They reflect how our brain's reward pathways can be hijacked by any behavior that provides relief, pleasure, or temporary escape from discomfort.
Neuroscience has shown us that addiction involves the same brain circuits regardless of whether we're talking about cocaine or checking email. The dopamine system, which evolved to help us survive by rewarding beneficial behaviors, can't distinguish between a genuinely healthy pursuit and a destructive one. When we repeatedly engage in any rewarding behavior, our brains adapt, requiring more of that behavior to achieve the same effect and creating distress when we stop.
The distinction between healthy dedication and addiction isn't found in the activity itself, but in the relationship we have with it. A passionate worker chooses when to engage and when to rest. A work addict has lost that choice. The key question isn't "What are you doing?" but rather "Are you serving this behavior, or is it serving you?" When the answer shifts from the latter to the former, we've crossed into addictive territory.
Financial advisors face a perfect storm of conditions that enable and reward addictive work patterns. The industry culture celebrates extreme dedication. Markets operate across time zones. Clients have urgent needs and substantial assets at stake. Economic anxiety runs high, and the compensation structure directly ties income to availability and performance. In this environment, a 90-hour workweek isn't seen as a warning sign but as a badge of honor.
The rationalizations come easily. "My clients depend on me." "I'm building my practice." "Once I hit my targets, I'll slow down." "This is just what it takes to succeed in this business." These justifications sound reasonable, even noble. They mask the underlying compulsion driving the behavior.
But look closer at the consequences. Relationships deteriorate under the weight of constant absence and divided attention. Health declines from chronic stress, poor sleep, and neglected self-care. The emotional life hollows out, leaving only the thin satisfaction of checking items off a list. Ironically, cognitive function and decision-making ability decrease with exhaustion, meaning those 90-hour weeks often produce worse results than 50 focused hours would.
The parallels to substance addiction are striking. Tolerance develops—what once felt like accomplishment requires more hours, more deals, more recognition to generate the same sense of adequacy. Withdrawal symptoms emerge in the form of anxiety, restlessness, and irritability when forced to stop working. Denial becomes elaborate: "I'm not like those people with real problems. I'm just dedicated to my career." The family members pleading for change are dismissed as not understanding the demands of the profession.
Work is far from the only arena where addictive patterns emerge. Shopping and spending can provide the same temporary relief, the brief high of acquisition, followed by guilt and the need for another purchase. The boxes pile up, the debt mounts, but the behavior continues because it momentarily fills an internal void.
Exercise, universally praised as healthy, can cross the line into compulsion when someone cannot rest despite injury, when missing a workout triggers profound anxiety, or when the gym becomes a way to avoid facing difficult emotions or relationships. The behavior that started as self-care becomes self-punishment.
Codependent relationships represent another form of process addiction, where one person uses another person's problems as a way to avoid confronting their own life. The caretaker feels needed and valuable, but has lost themselves entirely in someone else's drama.
Technology and social media have created new frontiers for addictive behavior. The constant checking, the need for likes and validation, the inability to sit with boredom or discomfort for even a moment—these patterns engage the same reward circuits and create the same loss of control.
The specific behavior is almost beside the point. Gambling, gaming, pornography, food, or even spiritual practices can become vehicles for the disease of addiction. What matters isn't what we're doing, but why and how we're doing it.
An addict, then, isn't defined by their drug of choice or behavior of preference. An addict is someone who has lost the ability to choose freely in relation to a particular behavior or substance. It's someone who uses external things—work, substances, activities, people—to manage internal states they feel unable to face directly.
Addiction involves a fundamental loss of autonomy. What began as a choice becomes a compulsion. What once solved a problem becomes the problem itself. And crucially, addiction is progressive. The behavior that initially provided relief or pleasure gradually demands more while delivering less, yet stopping feels impossible.
Often, addictive patterns are rooted in unaddressed trauma, chronic pain, or a deep-seated sense of inadequacy or unworthiness. The addiction serves as both medicine and distraction, a way to avoid confronting what feels too difficult to bear. The workaholic isn't really addicted to work itself, but to the temporary sense of worth and the successful avoidance of emptiness that work provides.
Recognition that the common thread isn't weakness or moral failure but a disease that can affect anyone helps remove some of the shame that keeps people trapped. The high-achieving professional struggling with work addiction and the person struggling with heroin addiction are fighting the same battle in different arenas.
An addict is anyone whose solution has become their problem, whose coping mechanism has become their prison. It's the person who has lost themselves in a behavior they once controlled. Recognition of this pattern—in ourselves or others—is the crucial first step toward freedom. The good news is that recovery is possible regardless of the form addiction takes, and the path forward begins with honest acknowledgment and compassionate understanding, both for ourselves and for others who struggle. Are you an Addict? Contact me today for Professional Recovery Coaching.