Addiction

When you’re addicted, it’s not about the substance or about enjoying or savoring it. In fact, you’ll never have enough of it because it’s about the act of consumption. When you are in the act of consumption, you are in the act of doing something. Having something to do so that you are distracted from reality and the present moment because when you're doing something you are taking some kind of action that is taking up your focus.

If you’re addicted, then subconsciously, you likely feel like the mess of your life or situation is too big or painful to clean up, so why bother even trying? You feel powerless and futile and like everything is just too messed up, so the only hope of everything not being horrible forever is to just utilize whatever the closest comfort is and continue to consume that so that you never have to truly be here.

Part of you is never truly here in the present moment, tasting or savoring life. So moments, minutes, days, months, years pass by with this consistent emptiness because your time is continuing to go on, but you’re never truly in it. You are absent, so your life becomes empty because it is devoid of you.

Whatever you subconsciously believe about your life, whether it’s too messy to clean up, too futile to even try at, or everything will just suck so why even bother -it feels so real and true but the thing is, you actually have no idea how things will be until you actually put one foot in front of the other and try. Based on your previous life experience, I won't doubt that you probably have every reason to think like that. To believe that life is futile, that your feelings are too painful, that everything is just too fucked. But have you really tried? Can you truly say to yourself that you have tried everything and given absolutely everything that you've got to figuring out how to move forward, beyond your current circumstance?

Maybe part of why you think it will suck so bad is because you think you don’t have time. Time to experience whatever it is that you’re doing at your own pace. You have to just get it done. That is indeed painful. Every waking moment spent having to just get something done is a shitty, obligatory way to have to spend your days, but you don’t have to do it like that. If you allowed yourself to truly breathe in the present moment, you’d see how much time you do have and how open the possibilities are and how when you “clean up your mess” at your own pace, you can find a way to dance with it however you’d like. If it feels shitty to do it too fast then you don’t have to. If you need a break you can take one. You have the choice to choose how you’d like to do things and when you breathe life in at your own pace, you become open to seeing the endless possibilities, new routes and ideas that surround you, all of which you have the choice to choose to entertain or not.

I have struggled with addiction myself, so I know the pain. Especially the emptiness that becomes your life. I have also experienced what it's like to feel fullness in the place of that emptiness and my life experience has lead me to find that things greater than what you could ever imagine await you if you go in the direction of something you haven't truly tried yet. Maybe you'll find out what doesn't work and you'll drop it and that will lead you to try another thing that does work. But there are endless things to try. For me personally, it was emotional transformation work. A lot of me was scared of this and didn't know how it'd turn out but it was better than the cliff I was headed for in life. Instead of consuming what I was addicted to, I decided to sit with and explore the feeling behind the craving and the need for that thing. What was I trying to get away from so badly? What was I so determined to not feel and experience? It was sure as hell painful, but going into those feelings, sitting with them and finally acknowledging them so as to release what was stuck inside me and see my life from a whole new vantage point has created such a dramatic change in me and has truly transformed my life. When you go into those feelings you can finally see how you really feel about your life and your circumstances. You get to see what you think or believe about your life that is making you want to consume something that allows you to not experience it. And if there's a reason for why you'd like to escape your life, there is also a resolution to that reason but the only way to even find out what that is, is to actually look at what's behind your addiction. Perhaps the resolution is much more possible than what you might think.