This could probably be split to multiple categories.
For things like heroin, there is a pre-existing potential in my body to get addicted to it. (Which does not exist for some other things. For example, if I tried to eat chalk, it would probably just be disgusting.)
For things like sugar, the addiction was already activated. Now I have an internal conflict about eating or avoiding sugar, which luckily I do not have about heroin (yet). I couldn’t agree to stop eating sweets forever, but if there is a version of me in the parallel universe who never tried sugar, I envy them.
For things like social networks, it’s like the more I use them, the more I want to use them, but if I manage to stop using them for a week, it is relatively simple to keep avoiding them. So it is a kind of addiction that can easily be extinguished. (As opposed to the sweets, where I can stay a month without them, and yet I keep dreaming about them every day.)
Then there are urges that happen on their own, such as hunger or sexual desire.
Then urges that evolve as a result of conditioning. If I imagine a society where people wear green scarves during sex but otherwise the color green is taboo, I would probably be strongly excited by the color green.
tl;dr—there is a difference between
my body spontaneously develops a desire
a desire can be introduced by the environment, but then it remains internalized (and it either already happened to me, or it did not)
a desire needs to be reinforced by the environment (and it either is happening, or it is not)
This could probably be split to multiple categories.
For things like heroin, there is a pre-existing potential in my body to get addicted to it. (Which does not exist for some other things. For example, if I tried to eat chalk, it would probably just be disgusting.)
For things like sugar, the addiction was already activated. Now I have an internal conflict about eating or avoiding sugar, which luckily I do not have about heroin (yet). I couldn’t agree to stop eating sweets forever, but if there is a version of me in the parallel universe who never tried sugar, I envy them.
For things like social networks, it’s like the more I use them, the more I want to use them, but if I manage to stop using them for a week, it is relatively simple to keep avoiding them. So it is a kind of addiction that can easily be extinguished. (As opposed to the sweets, where I can stay a month without them, and yet I keep dreaming about them every day.)
Then there are urges that happen on their own, such as hunger or sexual desire.
Then urges that evolve as a result of conditioning. If I imagine a society where people wear green scarves during sex but otherwise the color green is taboo, I would probably be strongly excited by the color green.
tl;dr—there is a difference between
my body spontaneously develops a desire
a desire can be introduced by the environment, but then it remains internalized (and it either already happened to me, or it did not)
a desire needs to be reinforced by the environment (and it either is happening, or it is not)