[seadan83]

Chemical dependency I believe can confuse the brain, where it actually does think you need the drug to live.

It can be very hard to avoid booze or cigarettes. They are everywhere. Potentially throughout all of a person's social group. Maybe at home if spouse or parents smoke.

As a former smoker, changing diet was easier for me than to change a smoking habit

[tsimionescu]

While you're chemically addicted to a substance, yes, the body thinks you literally need it to survive. The point is what happens after you break the chemical addiction, you go through withdrawal, and can function again. The brain stops feeling you need it in that same way after this process. But it's almost impossible for someone who went through alchohol or nicotine or opioid withdrawal to ever consume that again and not relapse into addiction.

If the same logic applies to a "food addiction", then discontinuing the drug that helped you go over the initial addiction is going to be almost impossible, since you can't abstain from food.

[seadan83]

Withdrawal can often be both a mental and chemical process. The desire to do something and constantly thinking about it can be just as much habit as it is chemical.

We are mostly on the same page I think. To the point though, re: food - it is not all equal. Fast food, ice cream, fried food, candy, chips- it is quite different from cooking your own meals and snacking on things like fruit, veggies and hummus (etc..)

Similar to your first point, I can't buy ice cream because I have no self control over it. (I would not say I have a food problem, it would therefore be a lot harder for others I believe)

While I agree "you can't abstain from food", it might be a bit overly reductive. Not all food is responsible for 'problem' eating. Similar to near absolutely (or absolutely) avoiding booze/nicotine, there might be similar foods that must be avoided. Which comes back to habits, changes to how a person snacks, when they eat, how long is spent in food prep,more grocery store trips, how they shop in the grocery store (etc)

[seec]

I think smoking is particularly hard because most of the really bad effects come much further down the line. You can smoke for years (even tens of) without much problem and if you do some sports even the cardio/breathing effects are largely mitigated (I know, this is what I do).

So, it's easy to only think about how good it makes you feel at the moment.

But alcohol will show nasty side effects rather sooner than later, it will show on your face, you will feel liver problems very fast and since you are in a secondary state when inebriated you will seem out of place when not in that state.

Both of those substances have the particular effect that if you use them repeatedly over a short (1-2 week) period of time in moderate but sustained quantities, you will get chemically addicted. This is nasty and the reason why every parent tries to make this fact known to their children (more or less successfully depending on method).

Food addiction in my opinion is very different, it comes purely from psychological factors and should be very easy to correct on time. It's not something that comes around in 1 week or 2. Even if you overeat 1000 kcal (1/3 more than the average of 2000) over the course of 2 weeks, you would only gain 2kg of body fat at worse. It's really a very long sustained process to really become obese, it's not like chemicals that can get you in 2 weeks max.

While it's hard to lose what you gained (you basically need to starve a little bit) it's not that hard to make adjustment to life choice to avoid making the situation much worse.