Addiction

Addiction is when a person has purposed themselves to pursue any habit to the point of excess. The clearest indicator of excess shows when someone trusts a purpose that the object is in no way capable of fulfilling.

While addicts’ actions are often vilified, most people don’t realize their ubiquity. Absolutely anything that gives us meaning runs the risk of becoming an addiction.

Habits are made of a trigger, method, and reward. An addict will desire a reward so much that they’ll perform every method possible just to attain a chance or hope of that reward.

The hope of something is always far less than its likelihood, so people will naturally push out almost everything else that isn’t a means to or part of their substance:

The entire experience devolves into the pursuit of a feeling which only the substance can provide. The substance may move around, but the mentality stays the same.

Every person risks an addiction, at any time, when they have unrestrained desires.

Acceptability

Most people have one form or another of substance overuse, though some are more fashionable or legal than others.

Addiction goes by many names. Anything that isn’t a virtue or loving others can become an addiction. Even pseudo-virtue principles like minimalism, efficiency, or restraint will become addictions when pushed too far. The only way virtue itself doesn’t become an addiction is by following all the virtues, though it may itself become an addiction to honoring rules.

Ironically, many addictions can create good consequences. These addictions are often notoriously difficult to detect because someone can hide their addiction through decades of profound success.

We only tend to notice addicts when they’re more addicted than us. Below a certain threshold, it’s all culturally acceptable.

Cultures will frequently share similar addictions, so most people end up believing themselves to be generally free of addiction to a substance while they cling desperately to something they never thought of as an addiction alongside their peers.

If someone has an addiction that’s also counter-cultural, they’re likely to be labeled as part of a cult.

Transitioning

Even when someone hates a substance, its power comes from how it fulfills needs, and any combination of few base sensations drive all substance abuse:

Addicts start by letting feelings overstep reality, then end up falling in love with something that can make them happy.

Unfortunately, that thing eventually consumes them. They’ll lose the ability to make well-reasoned decisions that may diminish the value of the substance, then will start dwelling exclusively on that substance for solving their problems.

We tend not to notice an advancing addiction because it takes over slowly:

  1. The substance consistently gives us the results we want.
  2. We trust the experience enough that we stop searching for anything else.
  3. As diminishing return begins, we increase our efforts to maintain that original experience. Very often, we’re fighting past trauma and working to feel “normal”, and the substance helps us with that feeling.
  4. At some point, we must make a sacrifice to keep using the substance. This is the demarcation between an extreme interest and an addiction. Whatever form of power it takes, we’ve now sworn our allegiance to that thing.
  5. We start small with our sacrifices and give up things we deem unnecessary by comparison. As the diminishing return scales, we progressively give up more to maintain the habit.
  6. While we continue with the habits of the substance, there’s a lead time between our decision and the consequences of that decision. We may need a few rent payments or a lost job before our lifestyle adapts to our decisions.
  7. At this point, everyone close to the addict will have noticed a change. Often, the addict’s old group(s) will react negatively, and the addict will have to find new friends who share the substance. A “functioning addict” can stay in this phase because they have competing purposes driven by a fear of losing their reputation. In this sense, they’re a public disgrace from a worse place.
  8. To run from all the pain of the bad decisions, addicts push themselves harder into the substance. They were running from life before, but now they’re running to the object that will “fix” their pain.
  9. Eventually, an addict will have to invest so much into the substance that they’ll devote everything to it.
  10. If the person doesn’t realize they have a huge problem and are willing to receive help for it, they’ll end up destroying their lives and everyone else around them.

Addicts never start off as addicts. As children, the decisions that begin their descent into obsession are typical children’s behaviors:

  • Children who want to fit in with others will sacrifice their virtues in the process.
  • A child will work to improve their image by stretching their stories, which is the basis for a future con artist or compulsive liar.
  • A child with anger issues can easily become an abusive father.

Symptoms

Every addict of every substance has a few shared characteristics:

  • They treat their substance with tremendous gravity and seriousness, often more than it was ever intended by the substance’s creators.
  • Addicts will congregate together in groups that endorse each other and share in the experience of consuming the substance.
  • They’ll frequently form myths and lore around their substance that justify parts of their lifestyle. Some will be theories that dismiss human error, while others will validate the ethical qualities of the substance. Group leaders will propagate those myths as fact.

People frequently use technology to enhance their addiction and create new ones. It’s almost a foregone reality that any free market will create more addicting things:

Addicts are self-destructive. They must restrain themselves, but are afraid of imagined pain that might come from holding back their baser desires. In that sense, they have the reasoning skills of small children. Since reality doesn’t respond well to mismanagement, they are some of the most traumatized people on the planet who bring more suffering upon themselves over time.

An addict who sold their soul to a substance will not find wellness until they learn restraint. The closest thing to “balance” they’ll understand is to cycle through obsessions before diminishing return can set in, and most out-of-control addicts can become high-functioning by quickly jumping from one substance to another.

It’s worth noting that an addict’s purpose is the driving force. If you remove a substance from an addict, but they don’t change their purpose from it, they’ll stay dry for as long as it takes until the next hit.

Recovery

The only hope for any addict is for them to face their pain directly. This requires taking a sober, blunt look at themselves. This is not easy, and the reason they’re enslaved by that substance in the first place is because they would rather postpone that pain a little longer than confront it. In a sense, it’s a type of cowardice that keeps them bound by the substance.

Our habitual nature makes dependence and difficulty in changing their situation more severe proportionally to how long we maintain an addict’s mindset, irrespective of which substance we choose.

There are several conditions necessary to break free from any substance:

  1. Accept we have a problem we can’t fix.
  2. Place something else at the center of our lives instead of that substance. Many religious leaders state that it’s a product of our need to be devoted to God. The one advantage of trusting God is that obsession with God creates a secondary obsession with all reality (i.e., God’s creative work).
  3. Find friendship with supportive people who will not drag us back into the lifestyle we want to break from.
  4. Maintain a sense of meaning in freeing ourselves in that substance: first by making amends, then self-improvement, then provoking other people to do the same.

Application

Most people are addicts, especially as they gain power to do what they want. We are often afraid to confront them, and shouldn’t be, but must stay aware of their substances when dealing with them.

As people devolve into substance abuse, they care about you progressively less. If you love them, release them to their desires to hasten their decline and, therefore, hasten any chance of recovery.