Solving Addiction (With Compassion)

This writing helps you how to start solving your addictions for free by providing a framework to look at addiction through.

It will also help do two more things:

Answer whether or not you are addicted (not just to substances or certain foods, but also behaviours, like the overuse of screens or certain relationship patterns)

And, it will increase your self love and compassion for addictive behaviours, in addition to helping you solve them.

Ready, human?

Let's wrap our heads around addiction.

The human being has a delicate balance to maintain in order to get his needs met and love in accordance with his or her biology.

Think back to hunter gatherer times.

Were our ancestors addicted to survival?

Through hunting animals and finding food, how much of this is addiction to escape pain and suffering (of hunger, thirst, discomfort), and how much is just following biological instinct and nature's way?

Compare that to the helpless homeless heroin addict.

It's pretty easy to see that this behaviour is an addiction, whether it's because your intuition tells you or because you've heard of the idea many times before.

But where does "doom scrolling" and overuse of screens fit into this picture?

Where do subtle behaviours like "overindulgence on cookies" (or chocolate) fit into the picture?

Turns out that this requires a much finer, more nuanced understanding of the human biology, of addiction, and self awareness in order to come to your own conclusions.

To start, let us define addiction.

I'll borrow the brain of Dr. Gabor Mate, an internationally renowned expert in addiction, trauma, and mental health.

He defines an addiction as follows:

A behaviour that causes short term pleasure and in which one finds temporary relief in, and therefore craves, but causes negative consequences or harm in the long term, and one is unable to give it up.

Each one of the pieces of this sentence is a crucial "part" of defining addiction.

A few crucial things to point out:

First.

Long term harm.

If it doesn't cause negative consequences or harm in the long term, then we'd all be "happily addicted", and by definition, this doesn't make sense.

This is actually what rules out hunter gatherer survival as being an addiction.

We can say our ancestors were "happily addicted" to life - to survive and reproduce - thus, not an addiction.

Glad we got that out of the way.

Second crucial point:

The inability to give it up.

This symptom is a tell-tale sign of addiction.

You will experience this sign when you feel a conflict of your desire ("wanting NOT to succumb") about a behaviour with your actual actions (finding it impossible not to).

It's not that addictions are impossible to break, but you won't break an addiction by the sheer force of discipline or willpower.

It will take a conscious effort towards working on the root cause(s) of the addiction in order to truly break free.

That piece is outside the scope of this writing, and that's why there are books and training courses on addiction.

Third crucial point:

The characteristic of "temporary relief, pleasure, and therefore craving".

Part of understanding the root cause of an addiction means seeing that addictions are actually a solution to a problem, and not a problem in themselves.

The problem behind addictions are actually the underlying pain, from which we are using the addiction to "escape from".

It could be anything such as...

Loneliness.
Boredom.
Anger.
Sadness.
Hurt.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
Stress.

All of these emotions are unpleasant - and our body-mind is seeking to move away from them by indulging in a clever solution, the addiction.

And this is the key that leads to compassion for addictions.

Reframing your world view on addiction as not a problem but actually as an attempt to solve a problem.

Now, that's all nice, but how do we put this into practice?

The problem is not you - it's either your life circumstances or your mental conditioning.

There is so much underlying pain that only the addictive behaviour can make you feel better.

But if the problem comes from life circumstances and mental conditioning, then it can be undone, right?

Reprogrammed.
Rewired.
Healed.

One way to deal with the root of addiction is therapy (or any equivalent "subconscious" emotional inner work), but there is also another complementary way.

And it's free of charge!

Connecting values, intention, and self awareness to make steady progress.

It's important to have a key concept idea in mind.

When faced with a choice, every human being will always do what one believes is best given their current knowledge and circumstances.

Meaning: no human ever makes choices they believe to be any less than what seems like the best choice possible, given their circumstances.

This idea allows us to proceed in a way that will continuously give us insights.

In our day to day life, we can think of our actions in terms of a "flow chart" based on our values.

If your behaviour is in alignment with your highest values, all is well, and there is no problem.

Keep going.

If, however, your behaviour is misaligned with your highest values (or you aren't sure what your true values are in that specific situation), there is room for growth.

When the behaviour is misaligned, could be an addiction (however subtle it may be) getting in the way.

In the case when you don't know what your values are, it is an opportunity to reflect.

That reflection will either lead to new (or more clearly, more specifically, more subtly defined) values... Or insights about a misalignment as above and therefore an opportunity for growth.

Working with both of these requires "self-awareness".

When you pause for just 5 seconds and think about "observing yourself" as you read...

You can even do it right now... You can connect to your self awareness.

It's the "witness" who sees your thoughts come in and out.

It is self-awareness that will do the work for you.

It will contemplate your "intention" (what you wanted to do in the first place) with your "values" and it will check for those misalignments.

When misalignments are found, self awareness will lead to insights about how or why the misalignment came to be in the first place.

The more of those insights you have, the more you will be able to set the stage to and actually manage to break free from addictions.

All addictions are misalignments in values by definition because addictions are behaviours that cause overall harm in the long term.

The reason that addictions exist is to solve an even bigger (inner emotional pain related) problem.

And with more and more insights about the inner emotional pain problem, you will more and more be able to understand, have self-compassion for, and ultimately let go of, your addiction behaviours.

There is one thing you will never be able to escape in your life, no matter how hard you try, and that is: yourself.

If you are experiencing addictive behaviours, it's not your fault, but if you want to thrive and enjoy this life (even more), it is your responsibility as nobody else can do that inner work on your behalf.

Solving addiction for free by yourself may be a slower path than using the medical system or paying for professional help (therapy, healing, coaching), but it is certainly one more tool in the toolkit.

It's private, works non stop, and is a low hanging fruit that can be implemented and trained right away.

Of course, if you are also doing subconscious (therapy) work in parallel, you will make the fastest progress.

Stay compassionate, stay loving, and keep on going.

Towards a better future - onwards and upwards.

With love.

​