Addiction

Addiction is rooted in our attempt to create one or more of these outcomes… 

• Calm or distract the mind when our thinking is unhelpful and is creating pain.

• Manipulate our brain chemistry so life feels more interesting and exciting.

• Block uncomfortable sensations and feelings that arise in our body and our experience.

While addictive behaviors reduce the short term pain we experience in both the mind and the body, the longer term utilization of these activities often undermines our ability to align our actions and our values (do the important stuff).  Addiction also increases our belief that there is nothing we can do to change how we can work with our mind and our body.  We begin to feel stuck because the ways we calm and soothe ourselves is also causing us to feel like we can’t move forward.

As we manipulate our brain chemistry we begin to create a new normal, where our old life without our addictive behavior feels boring and uninteresting.  We begin to tell ourselves that we could never live without these addictive habits and that stopping them would only make things worse.  This narrative, while not true, only further serves to keep us stuck in our addictive patterns.

As we sink deeper into our addictive patterns, we lose our ability and willingness to feel the sensations and emotions that arise in our body.  These messages are critical for interpreting our experience and helping to guide us, but as we get further removed from our felt experience in our body, we become more lost and confused about how to care for ourselves, how to respond to others, and how to respond to our environment.

The way out of the trap of addiction is to become more skilled in applying the Five Essential Practices. 

These practices help you to more effectively work with your thinking and to feel more calm and confident in your body in a wide variety of experiences.  These skills also support you in being able to step away from your addictive patterns.  There is a symbiotic relationship between the Essential Practices and sobriety – the practices give you a real shot at stepping away from the addictive pattern, and in a complementary way, this abstinence allows greater opportunity to practice, apply and refine the essential skills.