| Ouch. Addiction is a form of cyclic preferences... you love/crave/indulge X then you hate/feel-the-repercussions-of X then you love/crave it again, over and over. Often the X is not quite what you think it is. It's not the alcohol, but the joy of going out and having a wild night and losing control and escaping from the voices that haunt you. Or you might be addicted in a sense to food, eating it because you want to feel something during a dull or pained existence. Hard drug addicts report that they started using the hard drugs to feel special, but then they had to take them to feel normal... The fallacy is, the body, including your brain, does not have high-water marks—fixed notches in its chemical feedback loops saying “that is okay, but if it goes over this level then that will be too much.” No, the body adjusts what it thinks is normal based on what it normally sees. Every moment you spend above the high-water mark, the body adjusts the high-water mark upwards. Good addiction recovery protocols, even 12-step, do not rely on self-control. You should also not rely on self-control. It's like being tired while driving, the faculty that monitors the problem is being impaired by the problem. “I’ve got this!” you say as you nod off. You need to build a wall that would actually be harder to climb over. “Don't even buy the sweets—when you crave chocolate you should be faced with the dilemma, I could go all the way to the store, or I could eat a banana right now.” It sounds like nothing, going to the store is such a little thing... but that is often enough. Delete accounts. Delete credit card numbers from your phone and browser. Lock cards up in a physical box and put the key on the other side of the house. But most importantly, understand your pain. Seasons change in life. Every change of seasons requires grieving the outgoing one before you can celebrate the incoming one. Have you properly grieved? Have you given yourself space? Can you talk to yourself like you would to a ten-year-old? No “I’m so awful, I’m so stupid”—you wouldn't say that to a kid who made mistakes!—but just “hey, that sucks, we are gonna fix this together, I have your back.” Understand that you are probably gambling to feel things... find happier things to feel. “I love getting out with fresh air... Whenever I feel those urges, maybe I can get out into the fresh air first.” Be especially suspicious of people and places that can pull you back in. One of the biggest things that 12-step programs do is give you friends who are outside of that scene that you were in. People who understand and aren't judgy, but who somehow still you don't want to disappoint. It's not too late to build up community around yourself, or at least to find it. Old friends, neighbors, coworkers... even like some folks playing D&D weekly! Some weekly routine that is just for you and speaks to your deeper connection to community. Be very suspicious if there are others in your life who “can't believe you're spending time with them instead of me!”—if that happens you are in codependency and you need that external community in those boundaries more than you can possibly imagine right now. Sorry. This is like my second long rant on HN, I probably need to take a break... |