You don't need a name for it before you can work on it. The NHS defines addiction as [not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/), and the same page says it's possible to be addicted to just about anything. Four moves work whatever the behaviour is. Pick one today.
Your thing counts, even with no name for it
Most writing about compulsion assumes you already know which word applies. Alcohol. Gambling. Drugs. Porn. So if your thing is checking your bank balance forty times a day, or picking at your skin, or reading the news until 3am, you end up with advice written for someone else and a quiet sense that you're making a fuss.
You're not making a fuss.
The NHS puts it in one line that covers everyone: addiction is not having control over doing something to the point where it could be harmful to you. The same page lists gambling, work, the internet, shopping and sex alongside drugs and alcohol, and it says [addiction is a treatable condition](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/).
Two more lines from that page tend to land hard. Not having it causes withdrawal symptoms, or a come down. And an addiction often gets out of control because you need more and more to satisfy a craving and reach the high. If you need more of it than you used to for the same relief, that's the pattern.
What is actually recognised, and what isn't
Here is the part nobody tells you, and it's worth knowing before someone tells you your problem "isn't a thing".
Only two behaviours have addiction status in the international diagnostic manual, ICD-11: gambling disorder and gaming disorder. In the UK, gambling is the only behaviour with its own NICE guideline, [NG248 on harmful gambling](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng248), last reviewed in January 2025. Everything else, including whatever you're doing, has no diagnostic status at all.
The category is genuinely disputed by researchers too. A 2015 paper by Billieux and colleagues, [Are we overpathologizing everyday life?](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4627665/), warns that "recent publications have suggested that nearly all daily life activities might lead to a genuine addiction", and that atheoretical, confirmatory research "may result in the identification of an unlimited list of 'new' behavioral addictions". That's a fair warning. Slapping the word addiction on every strong habit helps nobody.
But read what that argument is about. It concerns how researchers name new disorders, not whether your life is being eaten. The absence of a diagnosis is not the absence of a problem. Take the behaviour seriously and hold the label loosely.
A self-check that works for any behaviour
The most useful scaffold available comes from how the World Health Organization defines gaming disorder. It's built on three features, and none of them mention gaming specifically, so they transfer. Read each one against your own behaviour.
- **Impaired control.** Can you decide when it starts, when it stops, and how long it goes on for? Or does it start on its own and stop when something interrupts you?
- **Increasing priority.** Has it moved up the list? Ahead of sleep, work, meals, people, things you used to want to do.
- **Continuation or escalation despite negative consequences.** You already know it's costing you. Money, skin, sleep, a relationship, your attention. And it hasn't stopped or it's got bigger.
- **Impairment.** Is it doing real damage in your personal, family, social, working or study life? Not embarrassment. Damage.
- **Duration.** For a formal diagnosis, [WHO says the pattern would normally have been evident for at least twelve months](https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/addictive-behaviours-gaming-disorder).
Three or more of the first four, running for months, is worth acting on. It isn't a diagnosis and it can't be. It's a way of telling yourself the truth, in language you can then say out loud to a GP.
One honest note on the science. Everything known about the brain circuitry here comes from drug research, and the same circuits are implicated in behavioural compulsions rather than proven to work identically. Anyone who tells you exactly what happens in your brain when you check your balance is going past the evidence.
If you want a longer version of the boundary question, [habit or compulsion, how to tell](/guides/other/habit-or-compulsion-how-to-tell) walks through it slowly.
The four moves
These transfer because they act on structure, not on subject matter.
Name the behaviour precisely
Not "I have a problem with my phone". Write the actual sequence. "I open the banking app, check the balance, close it, and open it again within two minutes, from about 7am, thirty to fifty times a day." Precision does two things. It gives you something you can count, and it stops the shame from expanding to cover your whole character. A named behaviour is smaller than a vague one.
Find the cue
Almost nothing starts from nowhere. For a week, write down the sixty seconds before it starts: where you were, what you were holding, who you'd just spoken to, what you felt. Most people find two or three reliable triggers and are surprised by at least one. [Writing your own trigger map](/guides/other/writing-your-own-trigger-map) gives you a format for this.
Add friction
Put steps between the cue and the act. Log out. Delete the app and use the browser. Move the tweezers to the car. Give the card to someone else on Fridays. You're buying seconds, not building a wall, and seconds are usually what's missing. This is the move with the widest reach, and it has [its own guide](/guides/other/friction-the-one-move-that-works-for-everything).
Tell one person
This is the hard one and the one that changes things. Secrecy is doing a lot of work in keeping the behaviour going, especially when the behaviour sounds trivial said out loud. Pick one person and give them the precise version you wrote in move one. You don't have to promise them anything.
Where to take it
For a compulsion with no name, [SMART Recovery UK](https://smartrecovery.org.uk/) is the most natural UK route, because its groups are scoped to problem behaviours generally rather than to one substance. Meetings run online and in person. Their line is 0330 053 6022.
A GP is the other route, and the precise description from move one is exactly what makes that appointment work.
If you want to talk to someone anonymously about any type of addiction tonight, the NHS points to [Samaritans, free on 116 123](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/), any hour.
Renovyn lets you track a compulsion you define yourself, which helps when nothing on the standard list matches what you're doing. It's a tool for keeping count and staying honest, not treatment.
Common questions
How do I know if I'm addicted to something?
Run the control test rather than looking for your behaviour on a list. If you've lost control over when it starts and stops, it's moved ahead of other things that matter to you, and it's continued or grown despite clear costs, that's the pattern the NHS and WHO both describe. The name of the behaviour doesn't change the answer.
Is it an addiction or just a habit?
A habit runs on autopilot and stops fairly easily when you decide to stop it. A compulsion resists the decision, comes back with a pull you have to sit through, and keeps going after it starts costing you. The clearest test is what happens when you try to stop for two weeks.
My compulsion isn't a real diagnosis. Does that mean it's not serious?
No. Only gambling and gaming have behavioural addiction status in ICD-11, which reflects how slowly diagnostic manuals move and how contested the research is. It says nothing about how much of your life the behaviour is taking.
What if I have more than one of these?
That's common, and one compulsion often grows as another shrinks. [What cross addiction means](/spaces/what-is-cross-addiction) covers the pattern, and it's worth tracking both at once rather than treating them as separate projects.
Sources
- [NHS, Addiction: what is it?](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/). The control definition, "addicted to just about anything", withdrawal and craving, treatability, Samaritans on 116 123.
- [WHO, Addictive behaviours: gaming disorder](https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/addictive-behaviours-gaming-disorder). The three-part pattern and the twelve-month duration used as the self-check scaffold.
- [Billieux et al., Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4627665/). The research-side caution about naming new behavioural addictions.
- [NICE NG248, Harmful gambling: identification, assessment and management](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng248). The only UK guideline covering a behavioural addiction.
