What is addiction?

Addiction is a craving for things such as drugs. When someone is addicted to something it means that the person is dependent on that thing to relieve stress, be happy, or maybe even to continue their lives. There are two types of addiction, psychological and physical addiction. Things such as computer games are psychological addictions, people who are addicted to games relieve stress and become happy when they play games. Drugs make people get addicted in both ways, physically and psychologically. Just like chocolates, drugs make people feel good psychologically and therefore people get addicted to it. Secondly, drugs contain an element that hooks people to it. One of the ways people get addicted to drugs is when they try drugs for the first time and they have this incredible high feeling. However, after this feeling's gone, drug users usually go way down in their mood scale until they crash. Therefore they use it again and again in order to feel high. However, to experience the same high feeling they must use more and more drugs because as their bodies get used to the drugs the body gains tolerence to the drugs.

Source: http://www.psychoactive.org.uk/cocaine/addiction.htm