Rethinking Excessive Habits and Addictive Behaviors

Tony Bevacqua is an accomplished educator, corporate coach, social advocate and lecturer. He teaches college psychology courses, leads corporate wellness seminars and has a private practice in Los Angeles coaching people who have a desire to better understand their self-determining nature. He has contributed articles to the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and Addiction Professional Magazine. Tony believes we need to rethink the language being used to describe and label the problematic learned coping behavior someone has from excessive habits and addictive behaviors. He feels the words used to describe someone such as “alcoholic,” “drug addict,” “disease,” and “powerless” etc., are deficit-based and emotionally charged, and scare the majority of people away from help-seeking. He also feels these words get internalized and become habitually reinforced as negative self-talk. Conventional thinking believes medicalizing “addiction” as a disease would remove the shame and stigma of these types of behaviors, but Tony believes they actually contribute towards maintaining them. He also encourages the use of language that supports an individual with kindness, compassion and empathy and suggests ways in which this new perspective and approach, can help individuals improve the quality of their thinking which will improve the quality of their behavior. He also advocates for the responsible and ethical use of pharmaceutical drugs and psychiatric practices.  For more information about Tony please visit his website  http://rehabnomore.com