What a great topic, Isha, its one that I have been thinking a lot of lately.

Addictions.

Addictions don't have to be "self destructive" to be an addiction and feeling calm and happy it what causes all addictions. To have an addiction all one has to do is to engage in a behavior that causes certain brain receptors to receive neural chemicals that it really, really likes. These receptors the build up a tolerance for the chemical which means it needs more and more until it can't take any more. But if the receptors stop receiving the chemical it starts to go trough withdrawal causing a negative feedback to the body. Addictions that come from something internal like the self generated feelings from CDing are harder to recognize and are harder to break then an external substance like alcohol

Cross-dressing feels really really good doesn't it? It probably felt even better years ago when one first started. Now one does it just to feel normal, just to get through the day. If one stops dressing one feels grumpy and irritable. I don't know how many times I have read on this site some form of "When I first started it was all about the thrill then as I grew older it just became about feeling comfortable, like myself, and when I tried to quit I became a mean person". This is a classic addiction cycle, whether it's booze, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, heroine, sex, food, or anything else. It hard to see as an addiction because no CDer looks like the what one thinks of an addict.

Whether the result of all this is negative or positive to living is irrelevant to it being an addiction. It is how this addiction effects an individual's life that matters, and this of course varies from person to person. I would say the high failure rate for CD quitters is due to there being far fewer dangers to falling back. An alcoholic has t fear things like liver damage, black outs, getting into criminal activity, etc...

I believe it is possible to quit CDing with the right motivation to a certain extent. Just like a recovering alcoholic might have stopped drinking the temptation to go back will always remain.