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You don't understand your actions. Do these words describe your life? You do things you don't want to do. You fail to do the things you wish you did. You find yourself eating more, gaming more, smoking more, using more, looking more, shopping more, or working more than you want. You may find yourself doing the very things you hate. You are using substances that are destroying your body, looking at that which is twisting your mind, wasting your time, or gambling away your hard earned money. Yet, you areen't doing the things you really want to do. Anyone can become entangled, trapped, chained, dependent, enslaved, addicted, or whatever word you wish to use, when they go their own way. The term addiction is thrown around a great deal in our culture. The term is synonymous with dependence. How do you know if you are dependent upon a substance or activity? When you are addicted to a substance or activity you experience tollerance and withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance is when you want increasing amounts of a substance or activity to experience the feeling or the "high" you felt as you began using the substance or engaging in the activity.