Overcoming an addiction can be difficult if we focus merely on our will power creating the change, so why not focus on changing the underlying beliefs that created the addiction in the first place?
What is a drug addiction? Is it a craving that is beyond your control? Or is it a belief you don’t have control? Is anything beyond your control in reality?
If you say my behaviour is beyond my control, then you’re basically saying you can not control your thoughts, words or actions. What creates or feeds an addiction other than your thoughts, words and actions? You’re either thinking or speaking about this addiction being out of your control, thereby, causing you to behave inappropriately.
What would have happened if you lived your entire life saying I will never have an addiction problem, since I have discipline and will power. I don’t care to put harmful drugs in my body, since I care about my physiology.
If you say your thoughts and words hold power, would you be in the same place today? Talk yourself into a new way of thinking about the addiction, and about your beliefs about the addiction. You talked yourself into creating this addiction, so now the job is to talk yourself out of it. The problem is you don’t believe you have control over this dependency, so you create a reality out of your control.
This addiction may be caused by overwhelming emotions that you’ve been trying to avoid all these years through drugs. It’s your way of numbing the pain. You take this drug and you’re distracted from your emotions, which causes you to feel less for the moment. You suppress it over and over again through the same drugs and you never deal with the emotions to begin with. Then you say this addiction is beyond your control because you can not face this turmoil inside of you.
The drug impairs your mind and you revert to behaviour that gets you in trouble, and then you have all this trouble that you brought on yourself. You then say I brought this on myself through my own stupidity and I could have changed all of this by making better choices. You then blame yourself and you feel guilty for bringing this turmoil in your life.
If you created this addiction, then you can change it through the only means that created the addiction to begin with, your thoughts. Start declaring I can do it, and sooner or later you’ll be living your new beliefs and acting on it. Overcoming an addiction can be difficult, but you have two options, believe it’s within your control or believe it’s the forces of nature deciding for you.
Don’t give up if you have a few trials and errors. For every new beginning and anything worthwhile, there are detours and challenges along the path, but they all lead you back to wellness and happiness.
You may say I just like to get high, I love the feeling. I just like to get drunk, I love the feeling. One doesn’t negate the other, you can still be addicted to the feeling or craving. However, you adopted a belief that you have poor discipline and poor self-control. You’ve adopted a belief that you don’t care what you do to your body.
Ask yourself this question. If you cared deeply about your longevity, about your physical and mental wellbeing, and you knew street drugs were harmful for you, would you use them regardless?
Besides just going through the motions, why do you want that high so much? Do you believe you can’t be happy on your own terms, or have fun without the high? Another reason for using drugs may be that you’re mentally ill and you feel you need this drug to reduce the overwhelming fear or despair.
Why not visit your doctor and let him prescribe you an actual medicine that would alleviate your symptoms? Do you believe street drugs will help your condition? Which one do you think will be more effective, street drugs or the medicine?
Furthermore, If you want to overcome this addiction, don’t be too preoccupied with the surface. Surface would imply trying to overcome an addiction through sheer will power. Why does sheer will power work sometimes and other times, it’s not enough. We need to change the underlying beliefs which says, “I just have poor discipline, and I’ll always struggle with this. It’s just my reality, or disease.”
When you behave in a certain manner for a long period of time, you begin acting on autopilot, not paying any attention to why you’re doing something, and then you conclude it’s out of your control.
Have you ever had a day where you had many things to do and everything kept on piling up and you said I’m just not with it today? I can’t focus and I’m not feeling very well, but I can’t put my finger on it. How can you focus on the source of the problem when you’re focusing on everything but the source?
The only way to truly heal is to quiet your mind, change your thoughts and create a new belief. What happens when you quiet down and you’re still? Are you preoccupied with anything other than your thoughts? What is the primary reason of your addiction? Isn’t it your thoughts?
The answer isn’t medicating yourself through drugs and alcohol. The answer is to go to the source, which is your thoughts and God.
Acknowledge that you’re going to face this reality and not avoid it until your life spirals out of control, and dare to say I CAN DO THIS!