You want to stop doing something and you try and you fail and you try again and you fail again and again and you start hating yourself for not being able to do it. It’s like driving a car without breaks. No matter how much you want to stop, you will not be able to do it.
Some of the justifications that are mistakenly thought to be the reason for addiction are:
Lack of self-control.
Self-inflicted.
Poor personal behavioral choices.
This proposition ignores the fact that for us to be able to exert self-control, we require the proper function of the areas in our brains that regulate our behaviors.
Addiction is any behavior that leads people to compulsively engage despite seriously harmful consequences. It is a source of temporary relief or pleasure but in the long term causes harm and you can’t give it up despite the negative consequences. From this perspective you can understand there are many addictions. Addictions to drugs, sex, internet, shopping, food.
Some of the justifications that are mistakenly thought to be the reason for addiction are:
Lack of self-control.
Self-inflicted.
Poor personal behavioral choices.
This proposition ignores the fact that for us to be able to exert self-control, we require the proper function of the areas in our brains that regulate our behaviors.
Addiction is any behavior that leads people to compulsively engage despite seriously harmful consequences. It is a source of temporary relief or pleasure but in the long term causes harm and you can’t give it up despite the negative consequences. From this perspective you can understand there are many addictions. Addictions to drugs, sex, internet, shopping, food.
Fully-fledged one dimensional personality
Think about it this way. When you start out you are not an addict. You are just someone who’s bored to death, somewhat self-destructive or some combination of both. So what happens when you decide to take a drug (alcohol, heroine, cocaine, methamphetamine etc.)
STEP 1: The first thing you need is a set of rationalizations e.g. “I’m too drunk to know any better” or “the future is not worth living anyways” or “to hell with this”. You take the drug and it strikes you with a dopamine hit and exactly those circuits grow.
Dopamine is the incentive and motivation chemical. It flows whenever we are motivated, excited, vital, vibrant, curious about something. When an addict shoots cocaine or meth or almost any drug, they get a hit of dopamine. So the question then becomes, what happened to their brain? Why do they need an external source of dopamine? Why are some people vulnerable to being addicted? Just like food is not addictive but to some people it is.
STEP 2: That externally induced hit of dopamine over a period of time creates the addiction. The addiction is a manifestation of a full-fledged one dimensional personality with its own perceptions, emotions and motivations that wants one thing and does not care about anything else.
And so, the you that used to be there, will still be there when you are not craving but as soon as you get sight of something that’s associated with meth, or whichever drug, that little monster that you grew inside of your head is going to pop up and shut the rest of you down.
Addicting means it grows an addicted personality in your head. That’s why it’s so hard to get un-addicted. It’s not just a matter of getting rid of the craving. You can have someone isolated for three days and they will not be going through withdrawal anymore. Show them one of their meth friends and the craving’s back because that system is in their head and it’s alive.
STEP 1: The first thing you need is a set of rationalizations e.g. “I’m too drunk to know any better” or “the future is not worth living anyways” or “to hell with this”. You take the drug and it strikes you with a dopamine hit and exactly those circuits grow.
Dopamine is the incentive and motivation chemical. It flows whenever we are motivated, excited, vital, vibrant, curious about something. When an addict shoots cocaine or meth or almost any drug, they get a hit of dopamine. So the question then becomes, what happened to their brain? Why do they need an external source of dopamine? Why are some people vulnerable to being addicted? Just like food is not addictive but to some people it is.
STEP 2: That externally induced hit of dopamine over a period of time creates the addiction. The addiction is a manifestation of a full-fledged one dimensional personality with its own perceptions, emotions and motivations that wants one thing and does not care about anything else.
And so, the you that used to be there, will still be there when you are not craving but as soon as you get sight of something that’s associated with meth, or whichever drug, that little monster that you grew inside of your head is going to pop up and shut the rest of you down.
Addicting means it grows an addicted personality in your head. That’s why it’s so hard to get un-addicted. It’s not just a matter of getting rid of the craving. You can have someone isolated for three days and they will not be going through withdrawal anymore. Show them one of their meth friends and the craving’s back because that system is in their head and it’s alive.
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