Addictive Agents

No, not secret agents, addictive agents. You know, those persons or things upon which we form an excessive dependency. The catalog of addictive agents includes:

1) Alcohol or drugs

2) Work, achievement, and success

3) Money addictions, such as overspending, gambling or hoarding

4) Control addictions, especially if they surface in personal, sexual, family, and business relationships

5) Food addictions

6) Sexual addictions

7) Approval dependency (the need to please people)

8) Rescuing patterns toward other people

9) Dependency on toxic relationships (relationships that are damaging and harmful)

10) Exercise and physical conditioning

11) Cosmetics, clothes, cosmetic surgery, trying to look good on the outside

12) Academic pursuits and excessive intellectualizing

13) Religiosity or religious legalism (preoccupation with the form and the rules and regulations of religion, rather than benefiting from the real spiritual message)

14) General perfectionism

15) Cleaning and avoiding contamination and other obsessive-compulsive symptoms

16) Organizing, structuring (the need always to have everything in its place)

17) Materialism

Adapted from the book;  SERENITY - A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery
by Dr. Robert Hemfelt & Dr. Richard Fowler
Published by Thomas Nelson Publishers