We all experience some type of self-control failure (SCF) in our daily lives. Given the common underlying mechanisms with addictive disorders, we wanted to test the hypothesis that a generally higher susceptibility to SCFs in daily life predicts more addictive behavior, or vice versa. At baseline, 338 individuals (19-27 years, 59% female) from a community sample participated in a multilevel assessment. This included a clinical interview on addictive behaviors (quantity of use, frequency of use, DSM-5 criteria; n=338) and ecological momentary assessment of SCFs (n=329, 97%). After 3 and 6 years, n=240 (71%) and n=170 (50%) participated in both assessments again. Controlling for age, gender, IQ, and baseline addiction level, random-intercept cross-lagged panel models revealed evidence of a positive relationship between SCFs and addictive behavior at the between-person level, but no evidence of a predictive relationship over time. Further exploratory analyses revealed evidence for a positive relationship between (potentially) addictive SCFs and addictive behavior, whereas a negative relationship was found for non-addictive and motivational (no attempt to resist) SCFs. In summary, addictive behavior is characterized by more SCFs, while there is no evidence of an unspecific predictive relationship. A novel hypothesis from these results is that non-addictive and/or motivational SCFs increase the use of preventive self-control strategies or interventional self-control, which in turn reduces addictive behavior.