How long does it take to form a new habit?

Habit is all about the relationship between repetition and automaticity. If a person starts a new behaviour and repeats it every day how long does it take for that behaviour to become automatic (habitual).

A person smokes marijuana everyday for a year. He then stops smoking marijuana = the new behaviour. How long will it take for the non smoking to become habitual or automatic. The answer is that there is not a linear relationship between repetition and automaticity. Instead the relationship results in an asymptotic curve as shown in this diagram.

The early days of the repetitions result in a quick increase in automaticity. After a time this slows and there is a plateau effect in the automaticity where more repetitions result in little increase in the automaticity.

A behaviour is generally regarded as fully habitual when a person reaches 95% of asymptote. A 100% is when further repetitions result in no more increase in automaticity and there is a complete plateau. Research suggests that the time to reach 95% of asymptote takes 66 days. There can however be considerable variation with a range from 18 to 254 days.

Hence it can be said that for one to become a fully habitual non marijuana smoker will take 66 days. At that time the fully formed habit assists the person not to smoke marijuana again.

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New book released soon

Working with drug and alcohol users, my new book should be out in a few months. Here is a video where I provide a brief monologue about the book. In it I talk about the dependent drug user and how there are three solutions. The dependent user is what is usually seen as the addict type of drug user unlike the recreational user.

As I note in the video the largest group by far are the recreational users but they rarely seek any drug counselling because the drugs do not cause them any disquiet. Instead it is one of the smallest groups (the dependent user) who use up most of the drug counselling resources.

With the dependent user the three solutions are:

Switching the addiction

Growing out of the addiction

Therapeutic solution (which is a variant of the switching the addiction solution)

I talk about AA and that as one way where the the user can switch the addiction from alcohol to the AA organization and philosophy. Here is a snippet from the book where I talk a bit about this.

“In addition Kelly et al (2009) notes other features of AA that are seen to make it more successful. "The main benefit of AA in aiding addiction recovery may lie in its accessibility and its long-term, 'extensive', focus."(p.254) People can have exposure to the therapeutic elements on demand and self regulate the intensity of their self dosing for as long as they desire. AA is also free, usually available everyday of the week most importantly during high risk periods of relapse, a close and at times intense relationship with the sponsor is also a central feature of the AA system. These features fit the criteria of a symbiotic relationship between a person and in this case an organization.” (end quote)

Children are taught to take drugs early on in life.

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