Module Intro: Redefining Addiction

Welcome to this module. Before we can break a habit loop, we need to talk honestly about what it actually is—and what it isn’t. A lot of the shame and confusion around shoplifting comes down to the labels we put on it. So let’s clear the air and put two very different ideas side-by-side: the standard medical definition of addiction, and what we call the normal learning model.

As we dive in, all I ask is that you keep an open mind to the science we’re going to talk about today rather than dismissing it out of hand. It’s totally normal if a part of you feels a little protective of the “disease” idea. Sometimes, our subconscious holds onto the disease model because it offers comfort—it tells us that our past mistakes weren’t our fault and that we were just sick. It’s completely understandable to want that relief! But sticking strictly to that label can also quietly trap you into believing you’re helpless to change. If you can let your guard down just a bit and explore how your brain actually learns, you might find a whole new kind of freedom and power waiting for you on the other side.

What Does the Medical Profession Mean by “Disease”?

According to major health organizations like the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), defining addiction as a “disease” means treating it as a chronic medical condition where repeated behaviors alter the brain’s reward circuits and self-regulation. Medical experts explicitly compare it to physical illnesses like diabetes or heart disease to explain that it stems from biological changes rather than a character flaw or moral weakness. The goal of this framing is to reduce shame and support clinical treatment, but it can also have an unintended side effect: it can make you feel completely powerless, leaving you to believe you cannot change on your own and must rely on outside experts to get better.

What Does It Mean That Addiction Is “Normal Learning”?

On the flip side, brain scientists who study how we actually pick up habits see things totally differently. They don’t think your brain is broken at all—they think it’s just doing what it was made to do, which is learn fast when there’s a big payoff. Shoplifting became a shortcut for your brain: it figured out that stealing gave you a quick release, whether that was a rush of adrenaline, an escape from stress, excitement, or a temporary feeling of being in control. Your brain builds this habit using the exact same machinery it uses when you learn to ride a bike, play an instrument, or type on a keyboard. And because you built this habit through practice and quick rewards—not because your brain is physically diseased—you can unlearn it the exact same way.

What I Intend to Show You

The point of this module isn’t to downplay how overwhelming or damaging compulsive shoplifting can be. It’s to completely change how you view your power to change it.

In this module, I intend to show you:

• Why the well-meaning “disease” model can make you feel helpless by convincing you that you suffer from a lifelong illness.
• How shoplifting follows the exact same rules in the brain as any other skill or habit you’ve ever picked up in your life.
• How shifting your mindset from “managing an illness” to “unlearning a habit” puts you back in the driver’s seat, giving you a clear, practical path to rewire your brain and take back control.

Part 1: How Addiction Was Erroneously Labeled a “Disease”

To understand why so many people feel trapped by compulsive habits, we have to look back at how society started viewing these struggles. Decades ago, calling addiction a “brain disease” was a well-meaning attempt to stop treating people as morally weak or bad. The goal was to swap out harsh judgment for medical care. But labeling a behavior as a physical illness brought a heavy hidden price: it stripped people of their personal agency—their fundamental power to make choices, take responsibility for their actions, and steer their own lives instead of feeling like helpless passengers.

When people are taught they have a permanent brain disease, their mind naturally concludes that they are powerless victims of something they can never cure. It creates deep shame and makes individuals doubt their own ability to change.

The core debate comes down to two opposing ways of viewing the problem: the disease model, which treats compulsive behavior as a permanent, medical brain defect that removes choice, versus the normal learning model, which sees the brain as simply doing what it was brilliantly designed to do—forming deep habit loops through repetition, emotional triggers, and dopamine-driven reinforcement.

Think of your subconscious mind like a prediction machine. According to neuroscientists like Karl Friston, your brain doesn’t just sit back and watch what happens to you; it’s constantly trying to guess what’s coming next based on what you already believe. As Dr. Mehmet Yildiz points out in his writing on subconscious mastery, if you convince yourself that you have a broken brain or a lifelong disease, your mind accepts that as your official rulebook. Your brain starts looking for evidence of your own powerlessness, setting you up to fail long before you encounter an actual trigger. When you tell yourself you’re fundamentally broken, your subconscious expects you to give in—making every sudden craving feel like a giant wave you have no choice but to drown in.

Several prominent experts and researchers have used direct words to challenge the disease model and support the normal learning view:

Marc Lewis, a developmental neuroscientist who struggled with addiction himself and wrote The Biology of Desire, highlights the flaws in the disease framework:

“If addiction is a disease, then it should have a cause, a time course, and possibly a cure, or at least agreed-on methods of treatment. Which means we can hand it over to the professionals and follow their instructions… But is addiction really a disease? This book makes the case that it isn’t. Addiction results, rather, from the motivated repetition of the same thoughts and behaviours until they become habitual.”

Gene Heyman, a psychologist who wrote Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, explains that real-world data shows people naturally move past habits when their circumstances and choices change, noting that:

“Drug use can alter a user’s brain, but that doesn’t mean the user no longer has a choice in how to deal with those changes. The user can learn to manage his or her cravings… People voluntarily do self-destructive things all the time. That in itself doesn’t mean their behavior is a symptom of a mental or physical illness.”

Maia Szalavitz, a neuroscience journalist who wrote Unbroken Brain, reframes compulsive patterns completely around learning and development:

“The reason I called the book Unbroken Brain is that your brain isn’t broken. You’ve learned something that is problematic.”

Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist and author of The Brain That Changes Itself, explains how neuroplasticity drives both our deepest ruts and our capacity to heal:

“The brain can think itself into ruts, with electrical habits as difficult to eradicate as if it were, in fact, the immutable machine of yore… [Yet] neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors — a phenomenon I call ‘the plastic paradox.'”

When you step away from the disease model and view your habits through the lens of normal learning, the power comes back to you. Just as your brain learned a loop through repeated triggers and emotional soothing, it has the exact same capacity to unlearn and overwrite those pathways through conscious choice and daily practice.

Watch this Why Addiction is A Learning Disorder & Why It Matters discussion to explore further how shifting to a learning model changes recovery.

Part 2: Why the Normal Learning Model Works Better

When you accept that a habit like shoplifting is just something your brain learned rather than a permanent disease you’re stuck with, everything changes. Instead of sitting back like a patient waiting around for a cure, you get right back into the driver’s seat.

Learned habits are flexible. Diseases usually need medical treatments or constant symptom management, but things you’ve learned can always be unlearned. Your brain built those old routines through repetition, emotional triggers, and quick rewards. That means it can just as easily build new routines when you give it new things to practice.

You are the programmer of your own mind. You are in charge of your own brain. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks about Habit 1: “Be Proactive.” That just means realizing you hold the remote control to your own thoughts and actions. You aren’t helpless, and you don’t have to stay on autopilot, repeating old habits that hurt you.

Shoplifting was something your brain picked up on default—it was just an automatic way to cope when you felt stressed or helpless. But building a clean, honest life won’t happen by accident; you have to do it on purpose. Your old habit was formed without much thought, but breaking it takes daily practice and clear choices. The good news? Since you’re the one holding the remote, you can turn off autopilot anytime you choose and start building a much better path forward.

This approach also gives you accountability without all the shame. The disease story often leaves people hiding in the dark, feeling broken or flawed at their core. The learning model brings everything out into the light. It lets you say, “I practiced a bad habit, I built a strong loop, and now I’m learning a much better way to live.”

When you switch to this mindset, you give your brain a fresh set of instructions. Brain experts like Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz show that your mind rewires itself based on whatever you pay attention to each day. When you stop looking at your urges like a permanent illness and start seeing them as old, learned habits, your brain stops treating those cravings like commands you have to follow. They just become background noise. The second you truly believe you can learn new habits, your brain starts expecting you to succeed.

To see why this learning framework is so effective, leading thinkers and authors emphasize how agency and practice change the brain.

In The Brain That Changes Itself, psychiatrist Norman Doidge highlights how our neural circuits respond directly to what we practice:

“Every time we learn something, we physically change the structure of our brain… Plasticity is a property of the brain that allows it to change its structure and function in response to experiential input.”

In Never Enough, behavioral neuroscientist Judith Grisel explains that the brain’s adaptations are natural reactions to chemistry and environment rather than a permanent physical disease:

“The brain adapts to whatever chemical environment we create for it to maintain balance, which means it can adapt just as powerfully toward health when we change our behaviors and inputs.”

In Rewire Your Brain, psychologist John B. Arden emphasizes the active role we play in building new pathways:

“You are not stuck with the brain you were born with. By consciously focusing your attention and practicing new behaviors, you can generate new synaptic connections and redesign your neural hardwiring.”

Part 3: The Complete Parallel (Learning an Instrument vs. Addiction [Behavioral Loop])

To really see how this normal learning model works in real life, it helps to look at something completely unrelated to shoplifting: learning to play an instrument like the guitar. When you first pick up a guitar, your fingers feel clumsy, your coordination is awkward, and every single chord feels frustrating and unnatural. Every movement requires heavy, conscious thought from the front part of your brain. Yet as you practice day after day, something incredible happens through neuroplasticity. Those physical movements become smooth, automatic, and effortless. Your brain builds a strong, efficient neural pathway—a habit loop—so that your fingers know exactly where to go without you having to map out every single note.

Whether you are mastering a musical instrument or falling into an addiction (behavioral loop), the journey follows the exact same predictable biological stages of a behavior loop.

In the cue and trigger stage, external sights, retail surroundings, or internal emotional states like anxiety activate sensory networks, signaling that a payout or emotional shift is nearby.

In the craving and dopamine surge stage, dopamine fires through reward pathways in anticipation of relief or excitement, creating the mental urge that motivates you to take action.

In the behavioral execution stage, motor circuits and habit centers in the basal ganglia take over to run the sequence smoothly and automatically, carrying out the shoplifting action or strumming the chord.

In the reinforcement and neural strengthening stage, the brain releases neurochemicals upon feeling relief or reward, stamping down the circuit, thickening the neural connection, and making it far easier to travel the next time a trigger appears.

Your brain is not diseased or broken during any of these stages; it is simply doing what it was brilliantly evolved to do: automating any action that is frequently repeated and emotionally reinforced.

To see why this parallel holds true, leading thinkers and authors emphasize how ordinary skill acquisition and habit formation share the exact same underlying brain mechanics.

In The Biology of Desire, neuroscientist Marc Lewis explains that the structural brain changes seen in addictive behaviors are identical to the normal learning patterns found in mastering any complex human skill:

“Addiction is not a disease. Rather, addiction results from the motivated repetition of the same thoughts and behaviours until they become habitual. Like other habits, addiction changes the brain, but those changes are normal, not pathological. Addiction arises from the same feelings that bind lovers to each other and children to their parents. And it builds on the same cognitive mechanisms that get us to value short-term gains over long-term benefits.”

In The Brain That Changes Itself, psychiatrist Norman Doidge highlights how our neural pathways solidify through repetition, whether we are practicing a musical instrument or reinforcing a behavioral loop:

“The brain can think itself into ruts, with electrical habits as difficult to eradicate as if it were, in fact, the immutable machine of yore… [Yet] neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors.”

In Rewire Your Brain, psychologist John B. Arden emphasizes that because these pathways were formed through practice and repetition, they can be systematically dismantled and replaced using that exact same learning machinery:

“You are not stuck with the brain you were born with. By consciously focusing your attention and practicing new behaviors, you can generate new synaptic connections and redesign your neural hardwiring.”

Recognizing that shoplifting follows the same rules as learning an instrument completely removes the mystery and the heavy shame. A musician does not beat themselves up for playing a wrong note or view themselves as having a diseased instrument; they simply adjust their finger placement and practice a new pattern. By viewing your habits as something learned rather than a permanent illness, you gain the clarity and the power to pick up a new set of mental chords and practice a different way forward.

Part 4: Faith, 12-Step Ideas, and the Learning Model

For many people working through recovery, faith and peer support communities play a massive role in healing. The 12-Step framework originally grew out of Christian roots, and millions of people still turn to both scripture and recovery meetings for strength. However, concepts like admitting you are “powerless” or taking on a fixed label like “I am a shoplifter” can sometimes feel confusing—or even like they strip away your power to change.

This section is written specifically for those who hold faith in a Higher Power or God. It shows how you can blend your spiritual foundation and 12-Step insights with the Normal Learning Model, keeping what strengthens you while holding onto your personal agency.

What “Powerlessness” Really Means

In traditional recovery, Step One asks you to admit you are powerless over your behavior. People often interpret this to mean that their brain is permanently broken and they can never trust themselves again.

Under the learning model, powerlessness means something much simpler: it describes how an automated habit loop works. When you are right in the middle of a strong craving or dopamine surge, raw willpower alone is no match for an automatic brain pathway. Trying to stop a triggered habit loop with sheer willpower in the heat of the moment is like trying to stop a speeding train with your bare hands. Admitting powerlessness just means recognizing that willpower alone cannot stop an automated brain loop once it is firing at full speed.

Admitting that limit does not leave you helpless or without power. Instead, it creates room to lean on your Higher Power for inner strength, while using the brain and learning tools God gave you to set up your environment, manage your triggers, and practice new responses when you are calm.

Faith, Responsibility, and James 1

Belief in a Higher Power was never meant to replace daily personal action, practice, or self-discipline. While God provides wisdom and spiritual strength, the daily work of rewriting a habit loop still requires active participation.

This mirrors the message in James 1:22–25, where the writer urges believers to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only,” comparing someone who doesn’t act to a person who looks in a mirror and immediately forgets what they look like. James points out that real, lasting transformation happens when you take what you have learned and actively put it into practice day by day.

Relying on God does not mean sitting back and expecting a miraculous fix while doing none of the work. It means taking active responsibility for building healthy daily routines, practicing better responses to stress, and honoring the capacity to learn that God built into your brain.

Your True Identity: Moving Past the Label

A common tradition in recovery groups is standing up and introducing yourself by your worst habit: “Hi, I’m John, and I am a shoplifter.” The original goal was simply to drop denial and be honest. But from a brain and psychology standpoint, declaring “I am a shoplifter” turns a temporary action into your core identity, making recovery feel like a miserable, endless fight against your own nature.

With the learning model, you are not defined by the habit loops your brain picked up along the way. If a guitar player hits a bad chord, they don’t say, “I am a total failure.” They just say, “I played a bad chord, and I need to practice a different pattern.”

More importantly, from a faith perspective, your foundational identity is never defined by a mistake, a habit loop, or a label like “shoplifter.” Your true identity is as a child of your Higher Power—someone created with inherent worth, purpose, and the ability to grow. Changing your language to “I am a child of God who learned a habit loop, and I am now actively unlearning it” separates who you are from what you did. It shifts your mindset from a permanent label to a daily journey of grace, learning, and growth.

How Experts View Identity and Healing

To see how we can respect support-communities while holding onto a learning mindset, experts highlight how shifting your identity opens the door to long-term change:

In Unbroken Brain, Maia Szalavitz explains how permanent labels can hold you back:

“Labeling yourself permanently by your worst habit can keep you stuck in the past rather than moving forward. When we view recovery as a learning process, we realize that people aren’t broken—they just learned a coping mechanism that no longer serves them, and they can learn a better way.”

In Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, Gene Heyman points out that your choices and identity are always flexible:

“Voluntary behavior is shaped by the options available and how we evaluate them… Describing someone as having a permanent illness often obscures the fact that as people’s environments, choices, and self-identities change, their behaviors change along with them.”

In The Biology of Desire, Marc Lewis explains why moving past fixed labels matters for brain growth:

“Recovery is not about suppressing a permanent defect for the rest of your life; it is about continuing normal brain development. As you build new goals, relationships, and identity pathways, the old habit loops fade from lack of use.”

Conclusion: Moving Forward with the Normal Learning Model

Stepping into recovery with the Normal Learning Model changes everything about how you look at your past, present, and future. You aren’t trapped in a story about being broken or sick for life. Your brain simply did what it was built to do: it picked up a habit loop through repetition, emotional triggers, and quick rewards.

Because your brain learned that pattern through normal channels, it has the exact same ability to unlearn it. Through self-compassion, simple daily choices, and a little practice, your brain can build new pathways. As you stop feeding the old habit and start practicing fresh ways to handle stress, those old routines naturally fade away from lack of use. You are back in the driver’s seat.

Reclaiming What You Control

When you step into this empowered mindset, you realize that while you might not stop an urge the split second it hits, you actually control a lot of the world around it:

• Your Space and Boundaries: You control your daily routines, where you go, and how hard or easy it is to fall back into old triggers.
• Where You Put Your Focus: Your brain builds wiring around whatever you give your attention to every day. You control which thoughts, stories, and goals you choose to feed.
• Your Healthy Alternatives: You get to pick new “chords” to play—healthy ways to relax, feel excited, de-stress, or connect with others.
• How You Talk to Yourself: You control the words you use. When you talk to yourself like someone who is actively learning and growing rather than a helpless victim—your brain starts expecting progress.

Focusing on these simple levers turns recovery from a scary, white-knuckled struggle into a daily practice of taking your life back.

Insights from Leading Researchers and Authors

To help ground this in real science, experts on the brain and human behavior explain how shifting away from the disease label brings back your power to grow:

In Brain Lock, psychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwartz shows how understanding habit loops gives us the power to relabel our urges:

“You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge, but once you realize that an intrusive urge is just a false message from your brain’s habit wiring, you gain the power to relabel it, step back, and choose a different response.”

In The Craving Mind, neuroscientist Judson Brewer describes how curiosity helps us step out of automated habit loops:

“When we get caught in a habit loop, we are operating on autopilot. By bringing curious awareness to the craving itself, we step out of the loop and give our prefrontal cortex the space to choose a new behavior.”

In High Price, neuroscientist Carl Hart highlights how behavior is shaped by our options and surroundings:

“When people have alternative choices, meaningful goals, and a sense of agency, their choices change dramatically. Compulsive habits are not static diseases; they are flexible behaviors that respond to changing life conditions.”

In The Little Book of Big Change, psychologist Amy Johnson reminds us that freedom comes from knowing you aren’t broken:

“You are not broken, and you do not need to be fixed. The habits you struggle with are simply misdirections of normal psychological and neurological processes, and as your understanding shifts, those habits naturally lose their grip.”