When you are addicted to something, whether it’s a substance, an activity or a person, it seems as if nothing can replace it. You go to sleep at night thinking about it. You wake up in the morning thinking about it. If you don’t have it for a day, it feels as if the whole world could fall apart.

Many day traders are addicted to the adrenaline rush they feel when they place a trade. Being a workaholic is a serious addiction, where you feel you are only functioning normally if you have a heavy work-related and stressful schedule. Addiction is incurable. Most people reading this column are addicts of some sort. The safest way to end an addiction is with a “methadone”: replacing an addiction with another, hopefully milder form of the original.