My Definition

When dependence becomes a problem

Problems arise when this natural baseline is:

- mismanaged(poor self‑management or external mismanagement),

- distorted(short‑term relief at the cost of long‑term damage),

- or hijackedby structures that profit from keeping people in dysfunctional loops.

At that point, dependence shifts into what we commonly call addiction:

→ Addiction, in my definition, is a management error of dependence–

→ a functional defect in how we relate to what we need, want, and use.

This can appear in many forms:

- substances,

- behaviours,

- relationships,

- work,

- money,

- digital environments, and more.

A different way of seeing the “gameboard”

A helpful way to picture this is a gameboard:

- The board is made up of all the dependencies we inevitably live in.

- The rules are the social, economic, biological, and psychological constraints we cannot simply ignore.

- Our moves are the ways we manage ourselves within this board: how we use substances, habits, relationships, and systems.

Many people feel like pawns on this board – moved by forces they do not fully understand. Others operate more like queens – with more options, but still subject to the same basic rules.

In both cases, when self‑management fails or is overloaded, dysfunctional patterns emerge.

Why this matters for intervention

If we define addiction as a management error in a fully dependent environment, several things follow:

- We no longer need to mystify the condition.

- We can respect existing medical and therapeutic frameworks without being bound to their language in every case.

- We can design interventions that:

- analyse the concrete “gameboard” of a person,

- identify where management fails,

- and work on regaining functional autonomy, step by step.

This is the lens through which I look at dependencies in my 1:1 work and in my conceptual projects.