I always felt that it was a habit rather than an addiction too. But, over time, the habit morphed into dependence and then into addiction. If one drinks regularly, for whatever reason, one develops tolerance to ethanol. With tolerance one needs more booze to accomplish the same thing. This leads to a positive feedback loop of ever increasing doses and ever decreasing results. My drinking increased until, in a moment of clarity, I realized it could kill me. So I decided to "break the habit". The physical and emotional effects of quitting quickly convinced me that it had become, in fact, an addiction.