Having an Addiction is Worse Than You Think.
Trust me, I am speaking from experience when I say that addiction is corrosive and worse than you think. Here is why…
Many people save dates that contain relatively important events like the day of their salvation, the day that they had a near-death experience,
or the first time they traveled abroad.
But I have never been good with dates. I rely more on emotions for remembrance. That’s probably why I love writing.
I relay emotion in stories and written words.
And I have a short story to tell about my tumultuous battle with addiction.
It is mid-afternoon of a restless Monday, and I am lazing on my phone. At least, I think it is Monday.
I am mindlessly scrolling through YouTube consuming content to satisfy my brain’s nagging need for dopamine.
But deep down I know where this is heading to.
I have been in this same position so many times that I know what I will end up doing.
It is like seeing a movie you have watched so many times that you can recite the end credits. But how long have I lasted for this time?
A few days? Weeks? It feels like it’s just yesterday that I decided to quit this.
The leave of absence seems to get shorter every time. While the relapse period seems to worsen and lengthen every time.
Why am I like this? Why do I like this habit and hate it at the same time?
I blame my cousin. Yes, it’s his fault that I keep up this excessive self-stimulation.
It’s his fault that I took his phone, without his knowing, and saw what I saw, visual erotica.
It’s his fault that I kept going back to watch that video.
It’s his fault that I am an addict. It is, right?
He is gone now but I still watch what I watched and do what I did. He doesn’t tell me what to do so why should I pin this on him?
Why should I pin my shortcomings on another person?
And not on what I see on social media. Or on having unrestricted access to the internet. Or on my lack of self-control.
I have always lacked discipline. I can’t discipline my body, my mind, and my genitals.
It is getting to the point that I am starting to hate myself.
Staring up at the vast whiteness of my room, these thoughts were flooding my head.
Post-nut clarity, I think that’s what they call this. I need help. I can’t continue like this. This cycle has to end.
I hated myself. It’s true. I needed help, something to break me out of the cycle of addiction. As many other people do. While I found solace in God,
I am here to assist other people struggling with addiction.
In a bit, I will tell you, from my first-hand experience, why having an addiction is worse than you think.
Hopefully, this will start a chain of events that will lead to the eventual break from the hold of addiction.
But I need to make something clear first.
While the word addiction is usually associated with negative habits, it can be used to represent a relatively positive activity.
For instance, you can be addicted to writing, reading, and jogging, but they don’t generally lead to negative outcomes. But for the context of this post,
I am talking about negative habits. Now that that’s out of the way,
Here are the reasons why you have to break free from addiction. From the lips of a former addict. (More like from the pen).
Addiction is autocatalytic.
Have you ever wondered why addictions and bad habits, in general, are hard to break?
You always find yourself repeating the same thing wanting to change something, like I did in the story. Well,
It is because these habits and addictions are self-perpetuating. Engaging in the habit triggers further instances of the same behavior.
It is autocatalytic.
For instance, let’s say someone has a procrastination problem.
The act of delaying a task somehow reinforces the tendency to procrastinate in the future.
Leading to a cycle where procrastination begets procrastination.
But why?
I mentioned something about dopamine in my story.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure and reward in your body.
It gives positive reinforcement to a pleasurable behavior making you more likely to repeat that behavior, to have that same pleasurable experience.
You may think dopamine is the only cause of addiction. While it plays a major role, I like to think it is pleasure that drives addiction.
Your quest for pleasure is the real reason for your addiction.
It gets worse though, the more you engage in the behavior the more tolerance you develop which leads to you requiring more of the behavior to get the same level of pleasure or satisfaction. (A mouthful I know).
And this just further reinforces the cycle.
This is the true autocatalytic nature of addiction. A downward spiral of endless pleasure.
It is your Greatest Time waster.
People don’t understand time. We think we do but we don’t. It’s an unmovable, unstoppable, and incessant force.
We can’t possibly hope to control time. It controls us.
The best thing we can do is make good use of our time.
People think they have all the time in the world but then time moves faster than they think.
Some think time moves too fast but then it moves slower than they think.
Time is paradoxical in reality.
That’s why you can’t afford to waste your greatest, scarcest, and most uncontrollable asset on the negative cycle that is addiction.
Addictions are bad. It’s no doubt.
But I won’t want you to feel hopeless and helpless.
I got ya. Just wait for my next posts. I will be going through how I got out of my addiction.
A step-by-step walk-through.
But in the meantime, you can read my last post here.
Till the next post.
If you agree with what I have said clap for me. (It means a lot).
But if you disagree tell me why in the comments. Much love.
