You see I have an obsessive mind. I obsess over things. Now I obsess over relapse or I do not know if it is cravings or what.
Post three in this thread..
Addiction Guide
Your obsessing over use. Try writing down what use was actually like and then compare it to the fantasies that circle through your mind. I bet you will find they aren't really similar at all. if you do this start in the morning of a day when you were dependent, focus solely on how you felt the whole day through. Addiction fantasies spin glimpses or slivers of very inflated positive experiences from the drug use.
They are not accurate real memories of even that sliver in time. The utterly leave out feeling awful and miserable 95% the time from the use. If you can write an real account of how you feel the whole day when you were dependent and useing you will see that its Hell and no ware close to the crap the addiction is pushing on you. Once we have a real picture of what a day of use was really like then its kinda hard to fall for the nonsense lies it can board us with.
Its an attempt to motivate and convince you to decide to use and solve the problems needed to do do this. Think of it as a super TV commercial.. just like in the commercials everyone is smiling, the family is always good looking and happy like the won the lottery, the house is always spotless, the food from the restaurant is absolutely perfect.
That is not real life.. They are fantasy's created in an attempt to manipulate you into purchasing something. Same thing with the
fantasizing and obsessive thought over useing the drugs.. its commercial in your mind that intent is to manipulate you into useing.
But it isn't real life.. real life use of a drug we are addicted to is awful.
Hey NSA I do not understand man if I am an addict would not I have been just predisposed to this no matter what happened in my past? And if it is something from my past that is causing the thoughts what are ways to deal with it?
Certainly genetics have been clearly shown to play a significant part in addiction. I also do feel that in many cases an addict will find a way to become an addict. This is backed up to some degree buy relatively stagnant overall rates of addiction, for long periods of time despite changes in economic conditions, despite changes in law enforcement efforts and funding levels, even in places were drugs have been decriminalized (and this is one seemingly undeniable reason the utterly failed at helping anyone but law and prison workers pockets drug war has to go.)
Rates seem to stay stagnant as drug availability, variety, and tastes fluctuate greatly. Kinda seems like the people who are predisposed to be addicts just find something to be addicted to out of whats available at the time. I also think with the current spike in opiate addiction may raise these generally stagnant rates, but if this does happen then I think it may due to the fact that anyone can develop a strong physical dependence to opiates if taken for a long enough time. I also feal that people who are not addicts, but are physically dependent to opiates, will have behavior that mimics that of addicts but will have little trouble staying clean once they finally kick. But I'm wandering off topic here.
Even though this sounds kinda doomsday and could be taken that we are destined to suffer from this for life I don't feal this is the case at all. I think that its important to look at what being genetically prone to be an addict could be. Could it be that we have a fundamentalist difference in the reward pathway.. could be. But I think its much more likely that we as addicts have a genetically pass way of thinking and looking at the world that has been good at driving us to success in life. Humans are driven to do things for many individual reasons, but I feal they overwhelmingly fall into two main categorizes.
I think that the two huge categories that encompass why we ultimately are driven are to try and achieve positive results or pleasure and to avoid or try and relieve negative results or suffering. I think that we as addicts have a genetic linage and thus are personally driven by the need to try and escape suffering. When I talk about success in life I mean the ability to survive and reproduce and not the ability to find lasting happiness or peace.
We as addicts are often restless, rarely satisfied, anxious, perfectionists, grandiose thinking, independent, stubborn, people, who often question our own value and have a tendency to determine our value based of accomplishment, status, and wealth and thus are extra drive in these areas, people who can have a hard time ever having enough or accomplishing enough, who if we are able to stay clean or under control are likely to be quite successful and known to attempt and accomplish truely amazing feats in life. I belive we are often driven to this by the very feelings and emotions that often make us miserable. This powerful drive to try and find the elusive peace and happiness, the recognition we covet, to finally be able to feal good about ourselves and our lives, our "inability" to ever be satisfied, combines with our seemingly out of place optimism, stubbornness, ability and need to think for ourselves, and our balls, resulting in all the amazing accomplishments that we as addicts can achieve.
Just because we may be born with these traits does not mean we are stuck with them or need to develop coping skills for life. Its was a pretty amazing thing when i realized that we ultimately have control. Once a person is able to do this they start to transition out of their thinking being manipulated by emotion to instead determining their emotion with their thought .
Our experience in life is determined by our perception of it. Our perception is determined by our thoughts. We control our thoughts. So we control our experience in life.
By altering the way we choose to think we can change the way we are genetically predisposed to experience the world.
The problem comes in when we use a substance to try and alleviate the negative feelings and emotions that can drive us to such great success. Because just as these characteristics have the power to drive us to such heights in search of peace, they also have the power to drive us into hell and the grave when they combine with dangerous, addictive, tolerances creating substances.
I think its pretty well accepted that anyone can become addicted. It's just that we seem to have some strong underlying parts of our genetically transferred personality that make this almost assured once we seek relief in a substance. Since we seem to always be seeking relief in some manor I think its pretty hard to avoid taking this step at some time in our lives. The we usually use to the point of addiction, who's own symptoms end up enhancing and strengthening the very negative aspects we were useing them to try and avoid.
In the begging it was great right.. we felt this was the key to life.. but soon enough the brain tries to return to homeostasis.. so it makes the feelings and emotions we were trying to avoid much more powerful to try and compensate and over come the power of the drug. As this is going on we also have tolerance to the drug happening. So it ramps up the very thing we were seeking relief from and takes the power away from the relief we administer. We also get so "lucky" in that, since the brain is a interrelated system, we get the treat of physical dependence along with this with many drugs. The lets not forget the dopamine reward pathway and the addiction that we create by constantly and greatly stimulating this and ending up with a resultant drive to use our drug of choice. A drive as powerful as hunger or thirst, that presents itself like the sex drive.. we don't feal it all the time, but if that system recognizes an opportunity for us to use, then bam we are triggered. But also like the sex drive if we don't see any opportunities for a long time it will also begin to drive us to find some opportunities.
So what a mess rite.. We seem to have a genetic drive to success in life based of trying to escape suffering. This drives us to try a potentially deadly substance fro relief, which works well at first, but instead ends up making the whole situation worse as well now requiring us to take it twenty four seven or it will make the same miserable suffering we were trying to escape ten times as bad as well as making us feal like we got run over by a bus, while crossing a magical street where the weather is constantly fluctuating between to damn hot and to damn cold, while we are having a flare up of chronic fatigue, restless legs, and have come down with the flue. White the last little prize of acquiring a drive, akin to the almost irresistible drive we have to perform necessary functions in life, that is constantly scanning all the sensory input we receive for even the slightest opportunity to achieve this goal. Where on it will try and cause us to obsesses, crave, and fixate on getting that goal at all costs. If we avoid the opportunities, it will wispier sweet nothings about how if we get that goal we will feal like a God, it sends us vivid fantasies which it tries to play of as memories of amazing experiences associated with past use, it even tries to push our buttons in our sleep by bringing us as close as possible to use and then pulling the rug out from under our feat right at the last second, finding infinite and very creative ways for something to go wrong preventing any dream use.
The addiction controls your emotions and they are not to be trusted. to check then simply see if they lead to a desire to use. If they do then think the whole situation through again and see if its logical. Many times it will not be. A good example of an ilogical situation and emotion common to addicts and thus constituting addict thinking is when you see some one so guilt and shame strike when the examine some of interactions and their consequences that were done in active addiction. You often hear something like I can't belive I did that and look at all the awful things that resulted, im such an awful person, I don't deserve to or want to live, I'm a monster, I want to and need to use because I can't stand thinking about me, what i did, and the awful things that resulted. I deserve or need to, Im worthless so who cares, I'm a monster and deserve to be in addiction, etc etc.. if the end result is a desire, justification, rationalization to USE.. throw up a red flag and think it back through cause your getting played.
Many times but not always the situations they are talking about does not in any way shape or forum warrant anywhere near the level of emotional response it is getting. The argument can almost always be translated into I can belive or deal with all the damage I have done by hitting myself in the head with a hammer, so I need to, deserve to, and am going to go hit myself in the head with a hammer. If it ends in a desire, justification, excuse, reason, to use.. flag it and think it back through and identify the nonsense it tried to slip past you.
If we learn what addiction is and identify and can recognize the weapons it uses to try and manipulate us then we will no longer get played by it.
STILL NEED TO EDIT THIS>>
