Why “Addiction” Is Not About Weakness, It Is About Survival
One in three adults will experience a period of problematic coping behaviours in their lifetime and over 70 percent of women report using food, work, shopping, alcohol or digital distraction to manage chronic stress rather than pleasure.
These patterns are rarely about addiction in the way we are taught to think about it. They are about survival.
When the nervous system is under sustained pressure, it looks for relief, regulation and control wherever it can find it. The body does not ask whether a coping strategy is healthy, it asks whether it works.
This is why the “tree of addictions” metaphor resonates so deeply.
What we see on the surface, overworking, emotional eating, scrolling late into the night, people-pleasing, wine to unwind are branches. They are behaviours. But branches do not grow without roots and roots do not thrive without soil.
For many women, especially those carrying responsibility at work and at home, the roots are familiar. Shame, fear, neglect, trauma, abandonment and loneliness. These experiences recalibrate the nervous system.
The brain becomes threat-focused, cortisol stays elevated and dopamine-based behaviours become shortcuts to relief. Over time, coping hardens into habit.
What is less often discussed is how this transfers directly into the workplace. Survival coping shows up as perfectionism, over-functioning, difficulty resting, fear of visibility, people-pleasing leadership, burnout cycles or identity being fused entirely with productivity.
Work itself can become a socially rewarded addiction. Being praised, promoted and protected, even as the body quietly pays the price.
Menopause intensifies this dynamic. Fluctuating oestrogen affects dopamine regulation, sleep quality, emotional resilience and stress tolerance. Behaviours that once “worked” stop working. What was manageable becomes overwhelming.
Many women interpret this as personal failure, when it is in fact a physiological and neurological shift layered on top of years of unaddressed survival strategies.
This is why trimming the branches is never enough.
Cutting back hours, deleting apps or exercising more will not resolve what the nervous system is still holding. Healing requires working with the roots and acknowledging the soil. Workplace culture, racialised stress, gender expectations, caregiving roles, silence around menopause and environments that reward endurance over wellbeing.
HealthTalk is not about labelling ourselves. It is about understanding ourselves. When we shift from “What is wrong with me?” to “What did I adapt to?” the conversation and the healing changes.
If this resonates, you are not alone. Share what landed for you or simply sit with it.
