Thoughts on Overcoming Addictions
Stinking thinking leads to drinking! That’s a famous saying in Alcoholics Anonymous and is so true. The moment you let your guard down and start feeling sorry for yourself, you are a sitting duck. Anyone can stop drinking, it’s staying stopped that’s the biggest challenge you will ever have in your life.
There are many addictions in life that create a great challenge for many of us - such as eating, excessive alcohol abuse, smoking, caffeine, drugs including prescription drugs, chocolate, etc. If we really want to do something about them, we can – but what?
Preliminary steps include firstly recognising that one has an addiction. Without this awareness, (and often one can remain in denial), it is almost impossible to start on a meaningful journey. So the first step is to admit that there is a problem and the second step is to say, and really mean it, “yes, I do have a problem and I want to do something about it.”
So the sufferer of the addiction must want to address the addiction and overcome it. Often there may be a need to involve counselling which can be a most beneficial treatment, either on a one-to-one basis, within a group setting or a combination of both. There are many self-help groups available like, Overeaters Anonymous, Co-Dependency Anonymous (for toxic relationships) and Alcoholics Anonymous.
There is a plethora of self-help groups to become involved with to help you overcome your emotional addiction. There is Gambling Anonymous and a group called GROW to help people suffering with mental health problems. Keep looking and you will find the one that suits you, plus it’s free.
Psychotherapy can prove to be useful, combining cognitive and behavioral therapies. To discover the underlying reasons for the addiction is extremely important along with finding the triggers for wanting to indulge in the addictive behaviour. This will lead to ways of avoiding these triggers and the development of coping mechanisms for cravings.
By utilising your own guided imagery, otherwise known as “creative visualisation” to incorporate visualising coping mechanisms, means that you can develop a new habit (the one you want) over a bad habit (addictive behavior).
In an attempt to explain what I am talking about in the paragraph above I will use a practical example like "Quit Smoking"!
Smoking has been proven to be addictive and yes, you can overcome the addiction and quit smoking. Whatever approach you choose to take, be it cold turkey or gradually reducing smoking you can give it up and stay free from the bondage of smoking addiction.
You may use a combination of tools like patches, active meditation (creative visualization), and self-help groups using the 12 Step Program and active meditation to help you change your thinking to change your feelings (emotions) to ultimately change your addictive behavior.
One of the main reasons that people smoke is perhaps as a social prop or maybe because of the perceived benefit from nicotine as a relaxant to manage stress.
The opposite is medically true. Indeed nicotine is actually a poison and highly toxic, not to mention carcinogenic - check it out by Googling it. Smoking burns oxygen and you have less oxygen in your system which actually induces stress. The belief becomes “When I smoke, my hands will stop shaking”. The belief is like a habit which takes effect every time, however smoking, in fact, increases stress.
I used to smoke and gave it up over 30 years ago. It was one of the hardest things I had to do but I did it and still feel that sense of accomplishment today. I don’t think I would be alive today had I not stopped killing myself with 40 cigarettes a day.
I went cold turkey and drove everyone else crazy in my household. My father died from emphysema and I was heading the same way but had a lot of trouble stopping. It is easier to tell other people what to do and very hard to put it into practice yourself. I had to practice what I preached.
What happens in “active meditation” is that you gradually form a new habit in your deeper subconscious mind – where habits are housed. In other words you gradually expand your comfort zone with a new habit. You will make the new habit of Not Smoking more important than the old habit.
Will you remember that you had the old habit? Of course – and you’ll drown the old thoughts with the new ones of Not Smoking.
I’d like to give you an example of “mind over matter”
Active meditation is a process of mentally picturing your desired outcome. It is an easy process that produces relaxation, distraction of the conscious mind, heightened suggestibility and increased awareness, allowing access to the subconscious mind and to the imagination. It also produces the ability to experience thoughts and images as real. Hence, it is the opposite of trying to blank out all thoughts, which is very difficult to achieve and does not have the desired result of visualising yourself slim and happy.
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Here is an example for you. As you read the words, it is not the print or the words that make change happen, it is how you interpret each word that makes all the difference.
- Imagine you’re in front of a large lemon tree.
- The lemon tree is full of green leaves and large yellow lemons.
- Imagine you can see the bubbly texture on one particular lemon.
- See yourself reaching up to that lemon and take it in your hand and twist the lemon off the tree
- You can feel the cool bubbly texture and the weight of the lemon in your hand.
- In a moment you will close your eyes and imagine cutting the lemon into quarters.
- You then bring the lemon up to your mouth and as you squeeze on the lemon, you suck the juice.
- Visualise the juice of the lemon spraying over your hand and running down your arm
- So go ahead now, close your eyes and imagine you are holding a lemon quarter and you are sucking the juice.
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