Chapter Five: Your Pros & Cons

         In this chapter, were going to evaluate the benefits and the detriments of your addictive behavior. You need to know exactly what your substance is doing to your life that is causing you to want to quit. You also need to know how few the benefits actually are. You might think that you already know this, but putting it down on paper has real power, and seeing the pros and cons side-by-side can have a major impact. So grab a piece of paper and a pen, or open up your smart phone or tablet and begin making a list.

The Pros 

          So, in this exercise you are going to sit down for about 15 minutes and carefully think about exactly what benefit your substance offers you. If you write that there are no benefits then you have failed. If there were no benefits, you wouldn’t keep doing it and so you need to be honest with yourself and actually write down the things that the substance does for you. 

           For example, a smoker can truthfully right now that smoking relieves their stress. Of course, that stress is usually caused by the withdrawal from nicotine in the first place, but smoking does lower the stress levels. Think carefully and write down as many truthful benefits as you can.

The Cons 

          Now you are going to sit down and spend about the same amount of time coming up with the negative things that your addiction is bringing you. This will probably be a bigger list than your pros list by a whole lot. Of course, that’s the goal of this exercise.

         But don’t put down things that aren’t actually true because it just tells your subconscious mind that you’re not taking it seriously and you’re not planning on actually quitting when you come to your quit date and that it’s perfectly acceptable to start using again whenever you choose. Write down all of the negative things that you can think of and then look at the two lists side-by-side.

Put Them up Somewhere 

          Now, print them out if you are able to, or write them on a piece of paper if you can’t and post them somewhere that you’re going to see them every single day. You need to remind yourself constantly that there almost no benefits to using your particular substance of choice and that there are lots and lots of good things about quitting.

          On hard days, it is going to be worth having something on your wall that constantly reminds you of why you are quitting in the first place. Don’t take these lists down until you get to the point where you’re not thinking about your addiction every day.

Chapter Four: Make a Commitment to Quit

                The previous chapters of this book have dealt with understanding what addiction is rather than how to overcome it. That’s because you need a solid understanding of how addiction works before you can start the process of treatment. This chapter will be the first in a step-by-step series on how to overcome your addiction in the first aspect of that that we will discuss is making a commitment to quit.

Define Your Commitment 

                 Before you actually make a commitment, you first need to figure out what commitment means to you. It is very easy to say to yourself that you will make a commitment to quit if what you are really saying is that you will give it another try, even though you don’t expect it to work. This is where a lot of people run into a problem with their commitment. They are actually making a commitment in the sense that is intended. What you need to do is make a commitment where you promise yourself you are going to do everything in your power to quit, without fail, without excuses and without the rationalizations that have caused you to start again in the past.

Set a Future Date 

                 The object here is to set a date in the future when you’re going to quit. Don’t make that date tomorrow. In fact, make that date have significance of some kind. For example, if your birthday is coming up next month, that would be a perfect time to quit. Picking an arbitrary time to quit doesn’t signify that you’re actually committed. If you choose the day that means something, it is going to be harder to justify starting again with the idea of setting a new date in the future. 

Tell Everyone 

                 If you are planning to quit on a certain day then you should make it an event, and you should definitely reinforce the fact that you won’t be able to avoid quitting on that day by telling friends and family members who support you in overcoming your addiction that you plan on quitting on that particular day and remind them as it gets closer if you have said it for a future time that is way down the road. 

Make Your Commitment Count 

                If your commitment doesn’t mean anything to you then you are going to have no problem breaking it but if you make certain rules – such as giving yourself rewards after you have been able to achieve certain goals with your commitment, or giving yourself punishments for failing – then you might be able to have more success because your commitment will have strings attached to it that will make it much harder to ignore. 

Chapter Three: Reasons People Fail at Overcoming Addiction

                       In the last chapter, we discussed the addiction cycle and how getting trapped in it sort of feels like a fly that is caught between two panes of glass with no way out. This is obviously one of the major reasons that people fail at overcoming their addiction but it is by far not the only reason. In this chapter, we will explore some of the ways that people place destructive roadblocks in their own way to prevent them from escaping their addiction.

Back to the Cycle 
               
                   Most of the time, the reason that people fail at overcoming addiction is that every time they come to the end of their cycle it starts over again. It’s like driving along the highway from one side of the country to the other, and desperately needing to stop and use the restroom but you cannot find a single exit ramp. The cycle of addiction – and the way it traps people – is the main reason that people fail at overcoming their addiction. But it is by no means the only reason.

They Don’t Really Want to Quit 

                    One reason that people fail to overcome their addiction is that they really don’t want to quit. In other words they haven’t reached that rock-bottom point that we discussed earlier. Any experience substance abuse counselor will tell you that until someone hits rock bottom there is no chance of helping them. Of course, this is quite a common reason that people really don’t want to quit – they know that the drug or other substance is affecting their life, but they haven’t seen major destruction yet and they are enjoying the feeling that they get from it. This is how every addiction on earth begins.

They Have a Destructive Environment 

                    One of the reasons that people fail at overcoming their addiction, is that the environment around them – which they have built during their addiction – is so destructive to getting clean or sober that they simply don’t have the willpower to resist.

They Don’t Have Any Help 

                  Another problem is that people don’t seek out help from those who actually can provide assistance. For example, they don’t seek out a substance abuse counselor, they don’t ask their family members to support them as they try to get clean and they don’t have any friends that are not also addicts.

The Physical Withdrawal Symptoms Are Impossible to Endure 

                     In rare cases, the physical withdrawal symptoms from a drug may be impossible to endure. For example, coming off of heroin can be an extremely painful process that should be supervised by medical professional. There are treatment centers that can help with withdrawal symptoms in drug protocols like methadone.

Chapter Two: The Addiction Cycle

                  If you have ever sought out treatment for your addiction, or even read alcoholism or substance abuse guides on the subject you might have heard of the addiction cycle. This addiction cycle applies to every type of addiction, not just alcoholism or drug abuse, and breaking this cycle – or understanding how to break the cycle once you get into it – can be the key to overcoming your addiction for good. We will explore exactly how the addiction cycle works and what you can do to break it as well as how to customize a general addiction cycle to fit your own particular problem and help you overcome it.

Why the Addiction Cycle Is so Insidious 

                 So, why is the addiction cycle so difficult to break? The answer is both extremely complex and very simple. The reason that the addiction cycle is so unmanageable is that it self-perpetuates. What that means is, the end of the cycle gets the beginning of the cycle going again – and this can go over and over and over until a huge outside force comes in and breaks it. In substance abuse and alcoholism treatment they call this “hitting the bottom” or “getting sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Let’s go over the addiction cycle step-by-step. 

The Emotional Trigger
               
                The addiction cycle starts when you have that emotional trigger that makes you want to drink or smoke or shoot up or even, go shopping or gambling. It is that emotional problem discussed in the last chapter that starts the cycle.

The Craving  

               The next stage in the cycle is the craving. When you have your emotional moment it triggers the craving. For example, if a person experiences a problem in their life, they will use that addictive substance to cope with the problem. In fact, an addict will use their addictive substance both to cope with tragedy and to celebrate happy circumstances. 

The Ritual 
         
              From there, a person will fall right back into their same addictive pattern – they will begin their old behaviors and associate with their old friends and fall right back into the cycle. 

Reinforcing the Behavior 

             When they begin using once again, they will be reinforcing that behavior. Each time they go around the cycle it is going to reinforce their addiction a little bit more and eventually, they will begin to feel guilty and go on to the next stage of the cycle.

The Guilt 

            When someone feels guilty about their behavior, and about the fact that they are using once again, the solution to coping with that guilt seems to be to continue using, which puts them right back into that addictive cycle from which it is so difficult to escape.

Chapter One: What is Addiction?

    In this chapter, were going to explore exactly what addiction is and why it is
so powerful that it has gripped 1 out of every 10 people in the United
States. We will discuss some of the causes of addiction and how the
experts are defining it based upon the symptoms. This is useful for anyone
who is has wondered if they are addicted to a particular habit and where
the line is drawn to define someone as an addict.

The Definition of Addiction

               What you need to understand about addiction is that the word has several
different definitions. For example, physical addiction is the actual
physiological sensations that your body has when you don’t have the
substance that it is addicted to. Let’s take cigarettes for example; if
someone is addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes and has been smoking for
any length of time, quitting will cause them to experience physiological
sensations like irritability, a desire to eat, jitteriness and most of all, a need
for nicotine.
                 But addiction is also used as a measurement of how much tolerance the
body has built up against a particular substance and an even further form
of physical addiction is the difficulty of an addict to resist the temptation when they receive cues – such as a smoker, even years after they quit,having the urge to smoke because they smelled someone else’s cigarette.

Psychological Addiction
 
                  Psychological addiction is a little bit more complicated. Psychological
addiction can best be defined as the need to fill a hole in someone’s life or
to make up for something else. Emotional addiction happens whether or
not a person has a physical addiction, and in fact, people will often switch
from one addiction to another because they are trying to solve an emotional
problem with something that just doesn’t fill it.

The Bottom Line

                 The bottom line here is that there are no easy definitions for addiction. If

you have a fair idea of what addiction is by reading the information in this
chapter you will be on the same page as most of the psychologists and
experts on addiction that are out there, giving things definitions.
 

                 To put it in the most simple terms possible addiction is: the physical desire

to partake in addictive behavior and the physiological factors that come
with it such as withdrawal symptoms and tolerance or the emotional state where you need to take part in addictive behavior to fill some emotional
need.

               As you go through this book you will learn more about addiction and you
may have a much more personal (and perhaps more accurate) definition
afterward.
 

Introduction to Addiction

        When you are suffering from an addiction, it can feel like your entire life is out of control and you have no power to stop yourself from using again and again. When you are addicted to something, it can also feel like you’re completely alone and have nowhere to turn. These are all common mindsets for someone who has an addiction to any substance, whether that is food, cigarettes or other tobacco products, alcohol, prescription or illegal drugs and even sex. But neither are you alone in your addiction nor do you have to be a slave to addiction for the rest of your life. That’s exactly why this book exists.

You Are Not Alone 
             
                 It is very easy to feel like you are the only one who is experiencing your particular addiction – or the level of addiction you’re experiencing – but the truth is, there are millions of others who experience exactly the same things that you do. That’s because addiction affects more than 10% of the United States population. That means if you were to get on a typical city bus there are probably two or three people on that bus – besides yourself – that are suffering from some kind of addiction. Don’t fool yourself either; having a food addiction or being unable to quit drinking alcohol is the same as an addiction to a drug or any other substance. Addiction is addiction, no matter what the substances.

You Can Beat Addiction If You Try 

               You have probably heard this in some form or another before and you probably don’t believe a word of it. That’s because you know that in the past you have tried to get over your addiction yourself and have failed – and you know that it was a sincere effort and that you were actually doing your best.

                No one here is disputing that. But what you need to understand is that every single person who is ever been addicted to anything – in the entire world, throughout thousands of years of human history – has had to make an effort several times – sometimes thousands of times – before they finally succeeded. Just because you have tried in the past and haven’t succeeded doesn’t mean that your future efforts are doomed to failure. In fact, the more times you tried in the past, the better the chances are that you will be successful this time.

Don’t Lose Hope 

             Use the tools in this book to give yourself another chance to get over the addiction that is affecting your life. You actually are in a minor percentage of people who are trying to get help with their addiction. Although 1 out of every 10 people is addicted to something, less than 10% of those addicts  actually try to seek treatment. You obviously want to succeed and that makes a great deal of difference.