We’re familiar with substance use disorder—using means that you’re fixated upon a specific substance, like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, painkillers, and so on. A substance addiction means that you can’t stop using your specific drug of choice.

But a process addiction is a little bit different. When you can’t quit a specific behavior that’s otherwise a normal part of daily life, that’s a process addiction—and those can be quite tricky to treat, given that there’s no withdrawal drugs to treat behaviors that are otherwise typically moderated.

Here’s a few examples—

Sex Addiction: This includes having an obsession with acquiring multiple and new sexual partners, and participating in sexual acts as often as possible, often, many times on a daily basis. This can prove to be dangerous due to the higher risk of contracting a sexually transmitted illness (STI), and a sex addict might put themselves into precarious situations if they’re using a dating app like Tinder to meet up with total strangers, especially if they are doing so regularly and recklessly.

Love Addiction: Not unlike sex addiction, love addiction is characterized by seeking out multiple partners, but rather than sexually focused, a love addict is fixated on the experience of dating someone for the first time. They do this over and over, and rather than committing themselves to a relationship, they might be dating multiple partners at the same time, and putting themselves into a precarious situation where they’re not being honest with themselves, or their partners.

Food Addiction: A food addiction is just what it sounds like—and can be significantly disruptive to one’s daily life and mental health. A food addict binges on huge amounts of food, and might seek out more and more of their preferred foods as they become more tolerant to the “effects.” Like the other forms of process addiction, food addiction can be accompanied by a type of “high,” which they’ll continue to seek out. They might spend inordinate amounts on food; they might be unable to have a normal dinner out with friends without coming home and binging.

Process addiction can become an obsession start to affect every aspect of the addict’s life, interfering with school or work, relationships, health problems, legal problems, and preventing the addict from engaging with others. When it comes down to it, a process addiction can be a very difficult disorder to treat, but it’s crucial that the addict get the important help that they need.