Do you have any habits? Things that you do without thinking about them? Everyone does. We develop habits to reduce our “cognitive load” - the need to pay attention to something that we’d be better off not thinking about. Like shutting the front door when we come into a house or turning off a tap after washing our hands. Imagine a situation where you had to actively remember to pay attention to all the things you normally did automatically. You wouldn’t have time to think about anything else. Our brains develop a way of triggering automatic responses to our environment. This “stimulus-response” process is how we get to do things without thinking about them. Now think about a habit that you want to change. It doesn’t make sense to do it anymore, it is exposing you to risk or it is causing you harm. If the response to the stimulus doesn’t change, you end up with the same outcome of a goal you no longer have. Research suggests that people with substance use disorders have greater difficulty overcoming habitual responses to stimuli. This means that a series of relapses can occur because achieving new goals and making them habits is particularly hard. Simply put, it is harder for someone with a history of addiction to make changes compared to people with no history of addiction. Interestingly, there is no difference in learning new behaviours for people with addiction when you compare them with others. The problem seems to be as we adopt new behaviours it remains that much harder to shake off well-learned associations - the saying that ‘old habits die hard’ seems to be the case. But new habits can be learned easily and in a straightforward way. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that people with addiction histories, learn new things faster than anyone else. With the right training and practice, people with addiction can and will develop new habits. There is no need to think that having a long-term addiction is an inevitable choice that we can’t change. We could describe addiction as a goal-directed behaviour (something we have thought about and want to do) that becomes a habit-based process (something we aren’t thinking about but do anyway). Habit develops as a consequence of reinforcement. This takes place by repetition of the same behaviour until it becomes automatic. The difference between forming habit and addiction is that habit requires minimal effort and attention but addiction is long-term use of a substance or activity and the emotional attachment becomes more difficult to overcome over time. As far back as 1947 Kurt Lewin looked at ideas of how we respond to change and the role of groups in supporting the process. His approach was simple: a three-step change model which has formed the basis of much change theory ever since: 1 Unfreezing 2 Changing 3 Freezing