Other forms: addictions
Addiction is being unable to stop taking or doing something harmful. Not a lack of willpower — a change in how the brain works.
Medicine treats it as a condition rather than a failing, which matters, since shame keeps people from asking for help and the old moral framing did enormous damage. It takes to. Substances and behaviours both qualify, and gambling addiction is now formally recognised. The adjective addictive describes the thing and addicted the person. Dependence is the clinical term for the physical half of it.
1nounaddictionA compulsive inability to stop using a substance or doing something harmful.
“He was open about his addiction from the start.”
Latin
addictus
English
addict
English, today
addiction
Built from
From addict + ion; compare Latin addictio (“an adjudging, an award”). addict Borrowed from Latin addictus. Latin addictus, past participle of addīcō (“deliver; devote; surrender”), from ad- (“to, towards, at”) + dīcō (“say; declare”)
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA