Pretending Your Addiction Is Therapy

A young woman smokes weed every night to quiet her anxiety. She calls it self-care. A man drinks a bottle of wine alone each evening. He calls it winding down. A teenager spends twelve hours a day on social media. He calls it socializing. None of them are doing therapy. They are feeding an addiction and calling it healing.In this episode, I uncover how modern therapeutic language has been hijacked to justify addictive behaviors. The word self-care originally meant deliberate actions to maintain physical and mental health. Now it means anything that provides temporary relief, regardless of long-term consequences. The word coping originally meant managing stress without worsening the underlying problem. Now it means any behavior that numbs discomfort, even when that behavior creates new problems.The result is a culture where addiction is celebrated as authenticity. Where a joint before bed is mindfulness. Where a bottle of wine is self-compassion. Where doomscrolling is staying informed. The therapy industry has inadvertently provided the vocabulary that addicts use to rationalize their dependencies.Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play because calling your addiction therapy does not make it less addictive. It makes it harder to quit.