Addiction or Biologically Screwed? | The Gaslit Truth Podcast with Dr Teralyn Sell and Therapist Jenn Schmitz

I’m going to say something that a lot of people in the addiction world don’t want you to hear:

Addiction is not purely biological. And the insistence that it is? That’s gaslighting.

Yes, your brain is involved. But reducing addiction to a defective brain or a lifelong disease you’re powerless over isn’t just incomplete—it’s disempowering.

I see the damage of that narrative every day. People come in believing they are fundamentally broken. That they’ll always be one step away from collapse. They’ve heard it so many times, they stop questioning it.

But addiction doesn’t come from one place. It can involve a brain whose neurotransmitters aren’t optimized. Hormonal imbalances that impact mood and impulse control. Grief that was never processed. Trauma that lives in the body. Even psychiatric medications that shift how someone feels and regulates.

That’s not a simple disease. That’s a complex human experience.

When we tell someone “this is just your biology,” we shut down the real conversation. We ignore the grief. We overlook the trauma. We stop asking what actually happened.

That’s where the gaslighting comes in.

Because people know their addiction didn’t appear out of nowhere. But when the dominant narrative says “it’s just your brain,” their lived experience gets dismissed—over and over again.

That disconnect? That’s psychological whiplash.

The truth—The Gaslit Truth—is that addiction is complex, human, and deeply influenced by both what’s happening in the body and what someone has lived through.

And if we keep pretending it’s just biology, we’re not just missing the point—we’re keeping people stuck.

If this resonates, I go deeper in my latest episode. Tune into The Gaslit Truth Podcast—we’re talking about the things addiction that most people won’t say out loud.