Feeding my addiction meaning how to#

I believed that drugs and alcohol were cure-alls, and that I needed them: Now, getting back to my substance use habit, I had to take responsibility for my beliefs about drugs and alcohol. In other cases the benefits can be big, like when going to college, which can result in more employment opportunities and job security that lasts a lifetime.Įverything we do is driven by our belief that it will bring us closer to some sort of happiness or benefit. In some cases the benefits are small, like when smoking a cigarette, which is an extremely mild stimulant that may provide a good feeling for a few seconds or minutes. I know this might be scary to people who’ve been taught that such habits have nothing to do with choice, but think about it-everything you do is because you believe you’ll benefit from it in some way. I learned that I could re-examine that belief once I acknowledged and accepted it. I learned that I was desiring it and doing it because I believed it was my best shot at feeling good. I learned to accept my substance use habits as a simple pursuit of happiness activity (rather than as a compulsion).

Feeding my addiction meaning how to#

After years of being taught how to fight the desire, and years of failure, I found a way to change my desire. I repeatedly gave up the fight and gave in to the desire.īut then I found a new approach. I took it for granted that I would always have a painful, overpowering desire for heavy drug and alcohol use. When I was abstinent, I didn’t have the thing I believed I needed to be happy and comfortable: heavy drug and alcohol use. But then I just ended up lacking bad things. I was resisting this desire so that I could stop bad things from happening in my life. Eventually, resisting would become too painful, too unfulfilling, and too unsatisfactory to maintain any longer. I was hanging on by a thread-resisting my desire to get high and drunk one day at a time.

I thought about it before, after, and during the support group meetings that were supposed to help me to resist the desire to get high and drunk. I thought about it when I met with my counselors and therapists. I thought about it when I got up in the morning. I lived with a painful desire to get high and drunk the whole time. Then I would wake up and do it all over again. I would trudge to work, then I would trudge home and hope that I could fall asleep quickly to end the misery until the morning.

I felt tortured and deprived when I was sober. These beliefs played themselves out quite predictably. I believed that getting high and drunk was really great, and I believed that sober life was complete drudgery. The worst part was that even with all of the painful effort it took to keep the drug and alcohol use going, and all of the painful consequences that were piling up, I was happier in that life than I was during the sober, trouble-free times. Along the way, there were a few periods where I cleaned up for six months, eight months, and almost a whole year one time, but nothing seemed to stick. I had spent five horrible years in and out of rehabs and support groups for my substance use problems. “Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.” ~Byron Katie