Is It OK to Replace One Addiction With Another?
The answer depends on what we mean by addiction.
A common criticism of recovering addicts is that they’ve “just replaced one addiction with another.” However, depending on the context, this phrase can have radically different meanings.
Sometimes, the person being criticized has replaced their substance addiction with another substance addiction. For example, they’ve quit using cocaine but started drinking alcohol every day. This is, clearly, a problem.
However, the phrase is also used to describe someone who has gotten sober and begun to devote a lot of time to a new hobby. For example, they’ve stopped drinking and started going to CrossFit six times a week. In these latter cases, “replacing one addiction with another,” isn’t such a serious issue at all.
In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share my experience with both of these types of “replacements.” First, how I replaced my drinking habit with another substance, and second, how I replaced it with a healthy hobby.
Replacing One Substance With Another
When I was in my twenties, I was addicted to two substances: Alcohol and nicotine.
I got drunk nearly every day, and I was also a pack-a-day smoker. Both habits developed in my late teens/early twenties. I tried to quit both of them many times over the years.
I was able to quit cigarettes first, but it didn’t last. After I quit drinking, I ended up returning to my smoking habit as a replacement.
There were about nine months in which I was completely alcohol and cigarette-free. Then, nearing the end of my first year sober, I went through one of the worst days of my life.
I was working as a lawyer at a public defender’s office. I had a high caseload with a ton of stressful clients. Everything was going wrong that day, and I was relieved to finally get home that night. However, as soon as I walked in the door, the woman that I had been living with for the past half-decade told me that she had decided to leave me.
That night, I thought about going back to drinking, but I went back to smoking cigarettes instead.
For the next two years after that, I was back to being a pack-a-day smoker. I kept trying to quit, but it was even more of a struggle than the first time around.
The cigarettes were filling the void that alcohol had left in my life. I was using them to deal with stress and forget my negative emotions.
I was smoking all day long, and whenever things went wrong, I’d start smoking even more.
In a way, I was lucky. I could have replaced alcohol with a more destructive drug like heroin or cocaine. Although cigarettes are incredibly addictive, they don’t annihilate your life in the same way as these other drugs.
Going back to smoking was an unhealthy response, but it wasn’t going to destroy me—at least, not in the short term.
With that said, I still knew that I needed to quit. To stay sober in the long run, I needed to develop a healthier approach to sobriety. I didn’t want to forever remain dependent on a substance.
I probably don’t need to spend too much time explaining the problem with continuing to smoke. These days, we all know the dangers of cigarettes.
If I continued to rely on smoking to get me through the day, I’d surely end up ruining my health. I’d likely get lung cancer, which is sadly quite prevalent in my family. I’d also end up paying an insane amount of money over the years to support my habit.
Fortunately, I kept working hard to re-quit this second addiction. Although I spent years going back and forth between smoking, nicotine patches, and attempts at going cold turkey, I finally stopped smoking (and using nicotine replacements) in September 2019.
Replacing a Substance With a Healthy Habit
Smoking wasn’t the only habit that I picked up during my first year sober. I also started running.
As funny as it sounds, I ran fairly regularly even during the two years of my sobriety that I was a pack-a-day smoker. When I stopped smoking, I started running even more.
These days, I run a lot. Not every single day, but at least five, and sometimes six, days a week. I normally run for about an hour at once. Some runs last as long as two hours.
In many ways, I depend on my running habit. It drastically improves my mood in both the immediate and long-term time frames. When I’m feeling depressed, a run can turn things around right away.
If I go a few days without running, I notice it. I don’t get cravings to run, but I do miss it.
I’ll also sometimes prioritize my running over other things in life. I know how happy it makes me, so I make sure to set aside time for it, even when I’m busy.
Does all of this mean that I’m addicted to running? No—at least not in the same sense of the word “addicted” that we use when talking about substance abuse.
Running is an important part of my life, but I don’t have an irresistible compulsion to go for a run each day. My running habit doesn’t get in the way of living a fulfilling happy life. Running improves my life instead of destroying it.
Sure, I run a lot, but to say that I’ve replaced my alcohol addiction with a running addiction is misleading. It relies on equivocation—a subtle shift in the meaning of the word “addiction.”
When I say that I was addicted to alcohol, I mean it quite literally. If I were to ever say that I was addicted to running, it would be mere hyperbole and exaggeration.
The criticism that I’ve “replaced one addiction with another” makes sense when applied to replacing drinking with smoking, but it falls apart when applied to my running habit.
In the latter case, running does not play remotely the same role in my life that alcohol did. It’s actually just the opposite.
While alcohol was a destructive force, running is constructive. While alcohol destroyed my health, running has improved it. Alcohol worsened my mental state, but running has brought greater clarity.
I’ve seen a lot of clickbait articles that talk about recovering addicts becoming hooked on exercise. While there may exist a small minority of people who truly develop unhealthy relationships with exercise, that’s simply not the case for most of us.
A positive, healthy habit isn’t a “replacement” for addiction. Instead, it’s a valuable part of our sobriety.