Tag: sobriety

I think a lot about addiction. You know you have them. Things that you need to do. You may want to stop doing them, but then, there is a feeling. An urge, a thirst, something you cannot control, and it takes over you. If the stars are right, you cannot think, you cannot sleep, you cannot do anything else, unless you give in to it. And if this description reminds you of the “Dark Passenger” from the Dexter tv series, you are right. It is a story of addiction. You can motivate and justify it all you want, but you cannot control it, and there is always a price to be paid, a sacrifice, that you need to give for your giving in.

We all know the contributors to addiction in society: alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs and substances, but they don’t need to be substances. Social media, porn, video games, sex are just as addictive, if not more, because we tell ourselves “it does not harm my body, so it’s not that bad“. There’s also the addictions that people consider to be good, like workaholism and coffee (yeees, it is an addiction), and the ones we forget are addictions, like sweets and junk food, but they are addictions nonetheless. Why? Because:

Every action you do compulsively is an addiction

But what is compulsion? A quick dictionary search gives you this definition:

Psychology.,  a strong, usually irresistible impulse to perform an act, especially one that is irrational or contrary to one’s will.

But I have some beef with the definition of a compulsive behaviour as one that is “irrational”. I have the following claim, that I have hinted at in the title:

Every addiction is rational.

Wait wait wait, we understand that we rationalise addictions, but them being rational? Well, they are, and it will make more sense when I’ve finally finished my series of the 4 bubbles of life. But for now, I’ll work on intuition with examples:

You’re in a social situation. You are stressed and insecure, you want to be included in your friend group. Everyone drinks, you’ve seen your family drinking, it’s a relaxed social occasion, so of course you drink yourself. To fit in. Lo and behold, one of your friends lights up a cigarette. Then he directs the pack at the rest of the friend group. A few guys casually get one cig from the pack, and one of the girls decides to say no. She looks uncomfortable, there’s the tiniest twinge in the eyes of everyone that has taken a cigarette already, you hear the tiniest of sighs. You hear what everyone else is thinking “does she think she’s better than us?”. You panic. The pack is in your face. You want to be accepted by the group, everyone else other than her has taken a cigarette. You are stressed, because you saw what reactions she caused. You don’t want to make the others feel bad, you want to stay, you see so many people do it, so it must be alright. So, you take one.

You see? Perfectly rational.

From their point of view.

From the things that were important at that moment in time.

Priority shifts & Why they’re so difficult?

You’ve likely said “I’m sorry” when you’ve done something accidentally, when you’ve caused something that you did not mean to happen.

But did you ever apologise for who you are? For an aspect of yourself so deep, and so engrained, that you believe in it with every fiber of your being, and you believe it is right? If you did, you lied.

We are hardwired to believe in things, to try to win arguments, to enforce our opinions with more opinions that agree with ours. As the internet and social media has loved shedding light into us, we are more likely to appreciate things that we agree with already, and we will keep doing them longer. We don’t like to be lectured, so if we come across things that disagree with us slightly, we will not engage.

But life changes, shifts focus. People come and go, jobs change, we stop being students, we no longer have our parents to cook for us. And when these changes occur, we struggle. We are struggle-averse, we do not like to change. People stay in abusive relationships, in jobs that they do not enjoy, they study things that do not interest them, because the change from one to another is difficult. It could be rewarding, but it could be just as bad or worse, so we’d rather rationalise our situation in life.

So why are people so surprised, then, that an addictive substance, or behaviour, that actively harms us is so difficult to get rid of, when we do things that harm us on a daily basis that we don’t even enjoy?

At least, our addictive substance gives us the feeling of pleasure. The tingling sensation, the familiar smell (I was going to say good smell, but it is very subjective, isn’t it?), the mouth watering from anticipation. Then the catharsis of going through with the habit.

It’s our way to escape the stressors of this world. To quiet the mind, and focus on a single thing. If we didn’t have it, the stress would hit so much harder. You’d think to yourself “why do I live anymore, if I can’t have my cup of coffee?”. You don’t eat to live anymore, you live to eat.

And people have done things for years, maybe decades, by the time some external stressor is telling them to stop. And yes, external. It won’t come from them, it will come from their spouse, from their friends, from their doctor, from their boss, from their aching chest, head, nose, veins, eyes, everything.

Something will happen to them that will tell them to stop. But they will not stop yet. Because then they need to meet the realisation:

I have wasted my life on this.

This means money, time, physical health, real friendships or relationships, activities, nutrients and behaviour that could be good for them but instead, they threw their life and vitality away on some bullshit. And that life will not come back.

You’ve made your choice, and you lost.

So you can do the change, and see where that leads you. Or you can double down, the external stressor pulling you deeper into your escape mechanism.

Possible escape strategy: understand the “whys” and how they apply to your life

If you suffer from an addiction that you are aware of, this may not work for you. And that is ok, it didn’t work for me either, not at first. Different machines require different fuel.

But let’s see first if I can cure you of your alcohol addiction. Have an open mind, have a drink, see if you can fit this logic within you.

What is alcohol:

Alcohol is a psychoactive, toxic and addictive chemical compound, found in various drinks (and sometimes food), that can relax you connection to your brain’s frontal lobe (the decision-making part).

The direct benefits are:

• less inhibition
• less stress (no more overthinking)

With the following downsides:

• brain damage
• caloric surplus
• possible addiction
• other health conditions, like damaged liver, etc.

I have the following claim for you: alcohol should be drunk. People have been drinking it for the whole of human history, and for good reasons!

The logic of alcohol:
Alcohol helps you make friends faster.

This is the main reason it has been used throughout history. People from different tribes, different cities, different nations, heads of state, the loneliest peasant, they had alcohol to share with guests. If you don’t have much time, but you have a lot of friendship to kickstart, it is the perfect drug.

For your guests, and for yourself. To prevent overthinking and kickstart trust. We are all friends here already, and we just don’t know it, so a drink helps clarify the matters early.

But for any other situations, alcohol does not make sense. Why do you drink alcohol when you are:

• Surrounded by friends at a social gathering?
• At a family dinner?
• Alone on the couch?
• Celebrating anything with friends and family?

Does it mean that you do not trust your friends and family, and you need it to open up to them? Maybe you did at some point, but why do you need it at every occasion you meet them? Why do you need it when you’re alone? Why do you need to drink it with your spouse and child at home?

Does it relax you? Ok, fair enough. But what about all other things that can relax you, like hanging out with your friends and family? Which, from what I understand, that is when you are already very likely to drink? Think about it. This tells you something else:

The problem is not the alcohol. The problem is you, or your “friends”. You feel stressed with them, unless you have a drink? Try not drinking with them, see if they’re still your friends. Then there’s more things you have to motivate, and you’re afraid.

You’re afraid of letting the ball roll, and see what else it hits in your path.

END PLAN

I trust you can extrapolate, from what you’ve seen above, a general plan of action for your own addiction, whatever that is.

You may not have planned to give up alcohol today, and maybe you didn’t. But this logic (or something similar to it at least) made me do it cold turkey, and many people whose life was completely ruined by it. They gave alcohol a logic, and they realised that logic does not apply to them anymore.

But there is a final note that I didn’t even plan to address, but it just made sense given my earlier discussion.

Final note: do not fear stress

Stress is a feeling that we do not like. We want to avoid it. The more we have it, the worse our life feels.

And we avoid it however we feel like it. And for many, they avoid it by escaping into something that dulls the stress.

But stress is not something to fear. Ok, it is, but not in the way of “it is here, I need to fight it”.

Do not fight it. Flow around it. “Be like water” would say Bruce Lee, and he would not talk only about fighting.

When you feel a certain stressor from life, it’s your life telling you that “we have a problem here”, which asks you to act! You can fix the problem, like a light bulb that is busted, and you just need to replace it. You can dull it, like work problems which never go away, and you can use alcohol or cigarettes, or coffee and cocaine to work harder on the problem. Those are perfectly viable options to reduce stress.

But you may not be aware that you can avoid the problem altogether. Your work place may not give your life true meaning. You don’t feel like your work has meaning, or is enjoyable, or you don’t think it helps people as much as you want. You can justify that “someone needs to do this”, or that “it’s very well paid”, and then use the money you get to buy things to dull the pain of working there.

Or, you can do something that you find meaning and enjoyment from, and you will never work a day in your life.

And all your stress will go away.

Don’t get me wrong, it is hard. And the struggle may increase the amount of stress that you are going through. You are in danger of falling even deeper in your escape mechanism, and the other side is not perfect.

But let’s think together about it. I am a romantic, so this logic gives me hope, that at some point in the future, people will be able to do what they want in life and thrive. Stress will be a thing of the past, and when there is no stress, there is only life.

And of course, the pains of life that we take enjoyment in creating.