"Habits" are not the same as "addictions". I get the impression you are writing about habits as if they are the same.

Driving on the right side of the road is a habit I acquired by learning to drive and driving for many years in Canada. But if I go to England I must pretty f'ing fast discard that habit for a new habit of driving on the left side of the road - or be in a world of trouble. That takes conscious effort for a while. But driving on the right side of the road was never an emotional coping mechanism for me :-) It was a physical coping method for getting along with all the other drivers in an orderly society. (It get really messy when driving in a society where nobody follows any rules).

On the other hand (<- a replaced "habit" LoL), replacing one addiction with another may have a temporary advantage in that it could be a more "socially acceptable" or a "less obvious" addiction, but it still has the same devestating long term consequences. Addictions must be let go of, not replaced. And one of the ways to do that is to become conscious of the underlying (subconscious) dynamics of what the addiction is enabling you to cope with emotionally.