What Is Your Addiction?
Long-term substance use taught me that free will is a simple virtue, but it isn’t as easy as how psychedelics make it.
Earlier this month, I received an email from a NAN fan. While it contained a lot of amusing information, there was a little veiled request towards the end of the email: "I was going to ask some people on how to break from addiction. You came to mind again."
The following Monday, I had intended to write a NAN as academically accurately as possible. Fortunately, I could not, as I was tied up with some extra work throughout the weekend. The week after, I intended to do the same but had my cycling accident. So, I started to look at just voicing the episode lazily.
Much later into the second week, I asked myself why I was hell-bent on providing a distracted answer to a question that needed a respectable amount of attention. I started seeking contributors and eventually got Mark to write on addiction. I have edited their submission as little as possible for two reasons: a) they wrote as they would have spoken in person, and I want you to experience the imperfection of the beauty b) if I had to do heavy editing, I would be putting a lot of myself into this and I do not intend to interfere with their process.
Here is what they wrote, I believe you will find it enjoyable as I did.
Have you ever felt close to something? Really close that you could do nothing without it? Yes, we have all been there. However, there is a different experience. Perhaps it might just be love or, in this case, simply addiction. Addiction, like everything human characteristic, develops gradually with time, and the more you learn to submit to whatever roots such 'perversion,' the more you get addicted. Everyone is addicted to different things, places, food, style, and substance.
What are you addicted to?
Let us begin with a short story. From the jump, I thought it would be my first and last time. I had an easy strategy on how I would divide the pill into two, take one half, and wait till something kicked inside me. They say it takes roughly 45 minutes before you begin to feel any effect, but I didn’t have to wait that long. I could’ve sworn that from the point of swallowing, I felt it rallying all the nerves in my body, and my heart beat the jungle drum. I loved how I felt and immediately indulged the other half in completing the square. An hour later, everything changed, and I wished to just lay somewhere with clean ventilation. My strategies for a stable mind were lost.
Years later, I would later find out that substances do not work that way — that drugs require a great deal of patience. And, for years now, I still have not mastered that patience. As a matter of fact, there is no mastering. Anyone can be dependent on anything, perhaps the most detrimental to human life is substance addiction. Addiction is simply described as a strong inclination or impulse to do something.
Long-term substance use taught me that free will is a simple virtue, but it isn’t as easy as how psychedelics make it. It became more complex when I could no longer exercise my choices without feeling something melting my thoughts, controlling my speech or urging me to move. And as age swept by, I only wanted more. Now, I crave [the drugs] all the time that the slightest restraint costs so much effort and difficulty.
The human brain seeks comfort at all times, and it is perhaps what can save you from addiction. It is the pursuit of comfort that got me addicted, and it is the same pursuit of comfort that is keeping my hand from emptying my pockets for an ounce or a pill here or there. Two months ago, I read about how self-determination and intentionality inform a blissful human life, and the fascinating thing is its expanse. The first act of intentionality was accepting and admitting my addiction. This simply carved a doorway of solutions. The second act was taking responsibility for my actions and my life, which is currently helping me wade through whorls of intense drought. It is very easy to blame your addiction on some disorder without origin, but much easier to confront the hows and whys that influenced your volition.
Here, accountability should not merely be an obligation but a habit. Choices make every human unique, and they shouldn’t be made on a whim.
This is a simple list of steps:
Admit there is a problem.
Seek professional help/support.
Take responsibility and stay away (out of sight is out of mind).
Adopt styles to say NO.
Here are some extra materials on overcoming addiction that you may find useful:
How to Overcome an Addiction by Very Well Mind;
How to Overcome an Addiction: 16 Tips for Recovery - wikiHow
How to Break an Addiction: A Guide to Overcoming Addiction by American Addiction Centre
TEA
The past couple of weeks has been a scheduling nightmare for me. It has been such an unending nightmare that although I received this entry early enough to meet yesterday's publishing time, I could not commit to its execution.
As this is a pointer to what the coming months hold for me, I have started to reassess my commitments and prioritizing the things most essential. NAN is between needs and wants; neither top of the list nor at the bottom of the table. I am considering either suspending NAN indefinitely or making it a reader-crowdsourced monthly publication (you write, I edit and publish -- the paywalls leave indefinitely). While I figure out which model works best, I can assure you that the rest of the year is unlikely to get more than two NANs out of me. And that's being very optimistic.
When I have decided what model to adopt, you will be the first to know. In the meantime, I will appreciate your thoughts on that. Send a dm on Twitter. Or
Until the next NAN, be kind to yourself and the world around you; be patient with yourself and others; love yourself and the people around you; do not give up on things that matter to you unless giving up will provide you more peace and security.