Addiction Is Avoidance Of Life And Relationships
If you're not addicted to something, you probably know someone who is.
Addiction and everything that comes with this disorder is on the rise. Everything from tobacco use to the inability to put down your smartphone falls into this category.
https://behavioralhealth-centers.com/blog/american-drug-use-trend-on-the-rise/
Drug use is obviously viewed as the worst kind of addiction because of the enormous impact on individual health and society as a whole, but other types of addiction can be just as detrimental.
Lets say you've managed to kick your alcohol and smoking habits, but now you spend most of your time in front of a screen playing video games or gambling online. You may have removed the most toxic elements in your lifestyle but have you really improved your situation overall?
These are what I call the shifting sands of addiction. People who are susceptible to this problem tend to switch from one form of addiction to another in some kind of weird replacement ritual, usually with the intention of swapping out more harmful habits with more benign ones.
For example, do I need to remind the health freaks (usually ex-unhealthy lifestyle consumers) that you can be addicted to exercise, radical diets and fasting in ways that potentially damage your health just as much as other types of addiction?
https://www.labrada.com/articles/the-hidden-dangers-of-extreme-exercise/
Why The Compulsive Behavior?
The underlying physiological, psychological and societal issues that lead to substance abuse, chronic disease and even a total retreat from social responsibilities may actually have more to do with a growing desire to avoid stressful situations in everyday life.
This was clearly measurable during the Covid plandemic, government-imposed, detrimental lockdowns. Workers were conditioned to hate the workplace (even more than usual) and live in fear of public places. Many retreated into their personal space, remote working and descending into a world of self-indulgence.
The lack of normal routines, face time, lack of exercise, increased consumption of junk food at all hours, and isolation obviously lead to an increase in mental health issues and the need for prescription or illegal drugs to manage anxiety and other symptoms of a captive population.
In other words... avoidance of life itself became more prevalent and has even emerged as a new model in the workplace. The side effects of this new model are increased addiction to all manner of drugs and activities.
Animals have displayed similar behavioral patterns when cooped up in caged environments or suffer from extreme stress. They resort to bizarre, repetitive, soothing actions and even start taking drugs if they are made available.
https://projectknow.com/blog/can-animals-get-addicted-to-drugs-the-same-way-humans-do/
One of the key elements that can make all the difference in understanding why addiction and compulsive behavior emerge under stressful conditions is the issue of avoidance.
Many people live in a constant state of denial about this and admitting to this problem can open up pathways to treatment and a full recovery from harmful substance abuse or cripplingly repetitive compulsive behavior.
It all begins with acknowledging that many of us avoid situations in our daily lives that make us feel uncomfortable, nervous, fearful, or angry. At other times, we may simply want to avoid conflict, standing up to an abusive boss or co-worker, or being who we truly want to be in front of others.
Every time we resort to avoidance, even for the sake of convenience, we are reinforcing behavior that can lead to substance abuse, compulsive gambling, online gaming, sex or pornography addiction, food addiction, addiction to work, and even addiction to exercise and shopping.
If we look carefully, we can see a pattern of avoidance of what most people consider to be wholesome aspects of human life.
Not everyone is the same.
Not all of us can be pursuing the same goals.
But in general, a stable family and work environment with strong, healthy relationships where people are held responsible for their actions gives us the best possible chance for a life free from vice.
And even then, when everything appears to be perfect... things still go wrong. Sometimes it happens at high school, sometimes at college, university, or in the workplace. Seemingly perfect individuals from seemingly perfect backgrounds go off the rails for no apparent reason.
But maybe something was missed.
Maybe something was lurking underneath the surface.
A neurosis waiting for a specific trigger or just falling in with bad company.
Sometimes that's all that's required.
But one should still ask... why is the vulnerable individual vulnerable?
Why after one wild experience do they return to it and get locked into a vicious downward cycle of destruction?
Is it all just dopamine?
If so, then the therapy needs to be all about reconstructing the positive building blocks that were obviously not fully in place up to that point.
The dopamine highs need to come from natural activities, everyday achievements, positive interactions with others, and a sense of belonging.
And more, everyone needs to help in rebuilding these relationships and responsibilities that make life possible. These are the foundations of any life. All else is mere filling of time with repetition and mind-numbing activities that drown the soul.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/addiction
Seek balance in life... moderation in all things
Addiction can start off as a mild annoyance, but more often than not develops into a life-destroying menace.
In the modern age, and our particularly jarring New Normal, people find themselves losing interest in the mainstream psycho-drama that is acted out for general consumption every day without fail.
The state-run fearmongering campaigns produce more and more drop outs and addicts as the months roll by, almost as if by design, with Big Pharma rubbing their hands at the prospect of increased sales of antidepressants, tranquilizers, opiates, and other "consumables."
For this class of drug pushers... it's Business as Usual.
But even when the masses are not specifically turning to toxic substances for "comfort," other ugly symptoms begin to manifest.
Relationships fail. And even those that manage to hook up fail to have children. Maybe they listened a little too closely to the globalist propaganda telling them that planet Earth is full.
Can we call this addiction to ideology?
Addiction to ideology and virtue signalling becomes a visible problem among those on the left in the same way that addiction to religious dogma becomes a problem for people on the right.
Addiction to prayer or begging to God for the return of a savior is just as harmful to individuals and those around them as the incessant need for leftists to always back the globalist depopulation agenda in all its variant forms.
In my opinion, all of these "addicts" need to enter a program for cult exit counseling. Maybe the whole world needs a little bit of this "medicine" since we are all programmed from birth to be "good" citizens or more accurately, unaware, obedient, slave units.
https://www.theravive.com/therapedia/deprogramming
The endless scrolling on an endless number of digital apps will be studied one day by future psychologists and anthropologists in an attempt to understand why and how the human species was so easily enticed and entranced by one tiny handheld device known as a smartphone.
They'll study the people that walked around urban and rural environments oblivious to the world around them, falling down open manholes, bumping into each other and lampposts, walking out into busy traffic, falling off the edge of the world.
They'll also take a close look at the news junkies, the always-on streaming channels, podcasters, video gamers, TV watchers, online shoppers, online poker players, online porn addicts, and all manner of modern day afflictions wondering "How on Earth did they get themselves into this mess?"
And the answers will probably suggest that traditional values had been abandoned, humans had become detached from "real life" activities such as hunting, gathering and farming in favor of cubicles and corporate legalese.
Isn't is obvious to everyone by now that maybe humans are simply not designed or well-adapted to living in urban or even suburban environments.
Isn't this why we currently see a massive shift towards rural and coastal living as people seek out stress-free, wholesome lifestyles away from the nightmarish hell-holes that globalist-run megacities have become?
Doesn't it make sense that the more you turn life into a soulless pursuit of money, fame, bling and superyachts that everything turns to shit?
These lifestyles are exactly what the youth are subjected to every day in their Instagram feeds, their online content, the music videos etc.
It all starts by tearing down these fictions.
And while we're at it, maybe we should start to shine a light on the biggest traffickers on the world stage — the global elite and their puppet governments and militaries that run all kinds of drugs, human, and weapons trafficking around the world whether legal or illegal.
It's all big business and endless profits for these scumbags. They don't care about the lives they ruin, the collateral damage they leave in their trails, or the state of the world after their passage through it.
And there's only one way to put an end to the madness.
Stop consuming their products.
Get clean and live a healthy, balanced, productive life.
As a species, we need to stop avoiding doing what's right.
We need to rid ourselves of the parasitic influence that attempts to destroy life and all that is good.
We need to nurture every aspect of life so that individuals everywhere can flourish and develop their full potential.
We need to provide the safety valves and off ramps to make sure that young people are not tempted by and get trapped in the distractions and the pitfalls that inevitably lead to life's dead ends and the misery that lives there.
If we can do this, we can reduce suffering in the world, some of the worst suffering that exists.
Addicts and the people in their lives go through long, protracted periods of anguish and mental pain. Solving this problem is of utmost importance. Bias and stigma must be thrown aside. Cities need to be cleaned up and reformed. Drug peddlers at all levels need to be arrested and made to break rocks in the hot sun for the rest of their miserable lives.
The "Boring" Option
For many addicts, normal life is boring and a turnoff. They will go down any other path to avoid being "normal" or settling into a boring routine.
Remember when Ray Liottas's character in Goodfellas essentially lets us all know that his biggest fear in life was being a schnook, a nobody, an average person.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Goodfellas
That's the feeling that a lot of addicts have before things get really bad. This is the reason that a lot off kids fall of the rails, join gangs or turn to the "wild side" looking for fun.
The fear of being a regular schnook led Henry Hill down a path of extreme substance abuse and paranoia almost killing him in the process.
"Fun" ain't always what it's cracked up to be.
Just ask all the people who overdose on alcohol and drugs every Saturday night at today's universities. It's supposed to be fun, not a breeding ground for mass addiction training.
At some point, we need to reestablish what life has to offer for all types of people. It can't be based on a "one size fits all" model any longer. We need to ensure that potential addicts are provided with healthy ways to explore being "different."
Addiction: The Time Destroyer
Time flies by when you're indulging your addictions whether it's binging dozens of series on Netflix, or diving down Internet rabbit holes chasing conspiracy theories for months on end, or chugging down all the latest podcasts, or playing for hundreds or thousands of hours in your favorite online role-playing game.
Others get wasted on potent weed or trip balls with DMT all because some popular celebrity advertised this crap to a whole generation on his super-popular podcast.
Anything to take the edge off life, right?
Cause life can be shitty at times. But with good people around you and a desire to overcome the traps, anything is possible.
More than any other time in history, we are faced with an endless list of excuses that serve as a get-out clause for life in general.
It's almost as if they are being constructed and provided as off-ramps for people who struggle at the first sign of stress or difficulty in any endeavor — an escape valve for all those who can't face the bullshit of the nine-to-five corporate hellscape.
It's certainly understandable that many people feel the need to drop out when you look at the modern world of work, the economy, and the lies embedded at every level of society.
There's only one conclusion you can reach when you pull back the curtain and see the world of work for what it really is... a slave system that was developed by the higher-ups — the Elite Master Farmers — to put you in a trance, to extract wealth from you as a biological work unit, and to give you the illusion of choice, to make you believe that you are NOT a slave, but love working for the "greater good" whatever that's supposed to mean.
Aldous Huxley once said that...
"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society." ~ Aldous Huxley
https://www.azquotes.com/author/7118-Aldous_Huxley
In other words, a well-adjusted citizen is actually the one who is insane and not the individual who feels out of place in the artificial environment of the modern world.
He also said that...
"People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." ~ Aldous Huxley
Well, isn't that exactly what is playing out in our reality today?
We are being served "opium" of many kinds to keep us distracted and docile.
It's All Fake!
We live in a system that pulls the wool over our eyes to make us docile and accepting of the con. If some people have a problem adjusting to the program then heavily-indoctrinated, slave-like professionals called doctors medicate the tricky customers so that they can continue to be productive slave units in the artificially propped up global economy.
I'm not sure what's worse at this point... to be slotted back into the Matrix complete with partial chemical lobotomy or to completely drop out of society, be shunned by everyone you once knew, permanently adopt the label of "denier" and become a pariah who gradually loses their mind in isolation.
Ok, I'm exaggerating about the last bit, but it gets damn close I can tell you. Gradually realizing that much of your existence is based on lies can be, should be an incredibly liberating life experience. But it helps if there are others around to smooth the ride, others who may have gone through the experience already, and those who are only just beginning down this magical path.
Having a new focus can certainly help shift the sands of addiction too. Previous vices may suddenly drop off as if they had never existed only to be replaced with thousands of hours of Internet "research" fueled by gallons of daily coffee intake.
But when does it stop?
When does the constant shifting to new replacement activities end?
Can it ever end?
I would say there comes a point in time when your own consciousness becomes aware of the repetition.
For example, when I was consuming hundreds of hours of gaming, almost zoning out, completely detached from "real life" there came a moment where I just sat, controller in hand, unable to react to what was happening on the screen any longer.
Something in me was trying to stop the cycle of addiction. It was like an awakening. I could suddenly see myself sitting there, just another slave unit hooked up to the Matrix, not directly working for it, but still hopelessly and mindlessly consuming the output of the One Machine.
So that was the end of button-mashing and chasing down loot in artificial environments for me. I still play the occasional casual "point and click" adventure or time management game while listening to a podcast, but even these games can suck time away from other activities.
My goal is to, one day, be free of all addictive behavior. Anything that alters bodily functions, injects dopamine just for the hell of it, creates detrimental routines and habits that conflict with life's responsibilities and relationships will be done for.
It's time to shake off addiction of all kinds.
How does it end?
The cycle of addiction ends when you make the decision to take back dominion of your life and daily habits.
Imagine that toxic addictive substances were all suddenly removed from the planet. What would happen?
Everyone would have to go cold turkey. That's what would happen. No pussyfooting around. No recourse to alternatives or replacement addictions. Just allow nature to take its course.
Go crazy for a little while, sleep a lot, then... breathe.
Maybe for the first time in your life.
If you've had this experience, you'll know what I'm talking about. You don't need to be coming off hard drugs to experience withdrawal of some kind, to varying degrees until finally you reach that milestone, where your whole body starts to relax.
Finally, your body and your mind are thanking you for taking a step in the right direction.
You feel... clean.
More than pharmaceutical products (although I don't dispute they may be necessary in some cases), I think establishing good routine, breathing exercises, learning to meditate, exercising sensibly, taking care with diet and monitoring digestion, nurturing healthy relationships and generally developing a positive, optimistic attitude to life go a long way in defeating the vicious cycles that manifest in our lives.
Whatever your personal path, I think it's fair to say that it can be a far more enjoyable ride if one can be rid of toxic bad habits and addictive behavior.
It's clear that many who are stuck in addiction fear life without the use of these substances and social crutches.
Turning to face life head on without fear could be the most important decision you make in your life.
Tiny steps towards that goal could be all that's required to turn things around.
Tiny steps that release you or your loved ones from internal strife.
Tiny steps that eat away at the chains of addiction potentially opening up a world of achievements, a life full of joy and balance, dare I say... a blissfully "boring" life without all the "drama" and ups and downs, a clean life that rewards its participants with natural pleasure and feelings of contentment.
I sincerely hope that we can all learn to move in the direction of greater charm and bliss in our lives. Many people desperately need a helping hand. Sometimes help is rejected, but other times it can be the spark that moves mountains.
Need help? Know someone that does?
A useful thread on Reddit...
https://www.reddit.com/r/addiction/
Also...
SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
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