Addiction - Chemical Dependence or Habit?

In this essay I will attempt to explore the causes of addiction. "Everyone engages in addictive behaviours to some extent because such things as eating, drinking, and sex are essential to survival and highly reinforcing," says G. Alan Marlatt, Ph.D., director of the Addictive Behaviours Research Centre at the University of Washington. "We get immediate gratification from them and find them very hard to give up indeed. That's a pretty good definition of addiction." (Rodgers 1994:1)
Many people experiment with potentially addictive drugs. …