#3. You can turn any healthy activity into an addiction.
Some years ago, a regular day in my life was composed of,
- Half a bottle of whiskey.
- Tons of fast food.
- Around 10 cups of black coffee.
- An unspecified number of tequila shots
- Two packets (minimum) of Lukie Strike.
- Too much p*rn.
I have lived this live style from seventeen to thirty-something.
Thank God, today I’m clean.
But those years at the edge taught me some unsettling lessons I want to share with you.
1. Hypersensitivity is the trigger.
Back to the beginning of my toxic behaviors, I was a Hypersensitive kid, harmed by a world that doesn’t tolerate intensity.
I did not feel love; I felt passion.
I did not feel fear; I felt panic.
I did not feel joy; I felt euphoria.
I did not feel sadness; I felt depressed.
I did not feel anger; I felt rage.
The kid I was, learned fast to low the level of intensity with all kinds of substances.
The kid I was, discovered that when you feel too hard, you need empty those emotions from inside yourself to keep going.
The child I was, transformed himself into an addict to feel less, suffer less, and release all the shit he carried inside somehow.
Lesson: when you get high, you are trying to feel less. — Understanding this is key to recovery.
2. The more you repress your emotions, the more your addiction grows.
Back in 1998, when I started drinking, society preferred you to drink than to express your feelings.
Society wanted productivity, not mental health.
In fact, expressing your feelings in public was a cowardly thing to do back in the 2000s.
And because I was young and easy to manipulate because, as any kid, I wanted to fit in society, I muted myself for more than a decade.
Big mistake, my friend.
When you mute yourself, the resentment grows, and when you don’t have more space in your heart, those bad feelings become like a Cactus and prick your soul.
And then, your addict behaviors grow to numb the pain, to mute your mouth even more.
You expend the week working, and by the weekend, you become Jonnie Deep playing Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Soon, you don’t have enough on Saturday night and drink alone on a regular Monday after work.
Lesson: whatever you repress, expand. And if you can’t handle you will numb it. So be free to express your feelings because it’s better to face rejection than to reject yourself and use drugs to deal with it.
3. When you become an addict, you hang out with liars.
Darkness hates the light. And if some of your true friends want to help you, you immediately take them out of your life.
When you are an addict, you don’t want anybody to open the window to let the sun in again in your life.
You don’t want to listen. You don’t want to take off the veil. You don’t want to face the truth. So you hang out with liars.
You isolate yourself gradually, which may be the beginning of the end.
Lesson: let the people that love you help you. Even if you feel that those people hate you, because, usually, it’s the addiction who sees things that way.
4. You can turn any healthy activity into an addiction
When you are addicted and stop using, you realize that you can become obsessed with almost anything and turn it into a substitute for your old bad habit.
After quitting drinking, I started running a half marathon every f*cking day to get high with dopamine.
And it’s not that I was going to become a triathlete or want to emulate Forrest Gump; it’s just that I needed the dopamine rush after a run to numb me up.
And that can lead to mental disorders such as bigorexia.
Lesson: never let your guard down, even if you have not consumed what you are addicted to for a long time, because your addiction may be disguised as a healthy habit. But it can end up destroying you just the same.
Last words
Now I’m clean, But it wasn’t easy; you can’t get rid of all your addictions at once — at least I couldn’t — I started with giving up alcohol, then tobacco, p*rn, then fast food, and now I’m giving up caffeine.
But the point is that it is possible to get out of self-destruction.
And I hope some of what you’ve read here today will help you heal.
A virtual hug
AG
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