As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain. I'll share mine, what I did to get deaden it, and how I finally healed it. I'm 31 now, have a wife, exciting job, close friends, and most of all, I'm happy.
My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but the damage was done.
I used video games, porn and promiscuity to deaden the pain. That distracted me from starting a career, and I ended up living on the street for six months.
I tried pretty much everything to heal myself.
* What did not work *
- Religion; God did absolutely nothing to my pain away. Religious counselors were
very judgmental and made me feel worse, and their advice just caused new problems.
- Cults; They had interesting teachings that were partially very entertaining,
but Ashtar Sharan had nothing but a Galactic shrug to offer my very real suffering
(I would have been prepared to actually believe in Ashty had he actually helped me,
but it was clear that he did not)
- Meditation; It helped, but only temporarily. When I missed my meditation session the
pain came right back, and I grew distant from the world.
- Yoga; Like meditation, it did help, but it took such great lifestyle changes I just
didn't feel like me any more. I'm a child of the West, and Yoga is radically different.
- Sex; obviously, sleeping around is a great distraction and can be genuinely fun, but
when it's addictive it hurts in the end and you draw other people into your drama.
- Counseling; Wallowing in my pain with a guy who think everything is a fascinating
freak show made things much worse.
* What worked partially
- Cannabis; Smoking weed actually worked better than meditation to give me temporary relief.
It also made me confused when used heavily.
- New Age; There is a lot of partial truth floating around, if you avoid the obvious marketing
ploys. "Think And Grow Rich" is pretty good, and so is "The Science of getting Rich". Basically,
the idea is to sit down and think about stuff you want in detail. It has a similar calming effect
to meditation, and can lead to actual creative problem solving. It did not, however, significantly
heal my hardest pain points. But the idea of "you can reach your goals" kept my trying.
- Pressure point tapping; EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is pretty good, it can stimulate
and permanently remove some trauma. It has its limits though, and I felt like an neurotic idiot tapping
my wrists all the time.
* What really worked
- Philosophy; Getting a genuine core philosophy and actively deciding my values gave me a lot of strength.
- Openness; being extremely honest about my shortcomings with deserving people lead to a form of intimacy
that makes the trauma not seem so bad any more.
- "Taking the pain"; This is not the same as sucking it up. It is feeling like crap, and accepting that I
am feeling like crap right now, without suppressing it. Practicing this takes the "fear of the fear" away.
This is probably the real benefit of meditation when done properly, but I didn't need to sit on a cushion to do that.
- Self-acceptance; This one is the kicker. I no longer slapped my wrist for slacking on the job, or being
not as nice as I could be. Paradoxically, this lead to me not slacking on the job, and being nicer. It also
helped find my niche, where my shortcomings don't matter.
- Dimethyltryptamine (DMT); An illegal psychedelic drug, it has been used as indigenous medicine for centuries.
This is the only way I have been able to permanently release my worst and oldest pain points. I stopped smoking
spontaneously after a couple of trips, and have noticed a sharp raise in my productivity and overall wellbeing.
Obviously, this is just my story, but I hope that some points might help you, or someone else.
"As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain"
Could you please give ideas how to id that pain?
To be personally specific, my mother never told me positive things, always comparing me to some perfect ideal, and I also was beaten up for not good grades. These seem a "perfect" explanation from what I've read, but still I don't really see them as the cause of my procrastination, addictions, and feeling tired, sometimes down, and with no energy. ..So, any ideas how to id my pain, if I have one? Thanks.
I'd recommend journaling. It helped me to look at a bunch of feeling words [1] and write down how I am feeling.[2] Then ask why. Finding the answer to why may take a while. Also, there are several layers of why. (Ex. "Why do I watch lots of movies?" "Because it feels sort of relational and kind of numbs the loneliness." "Why?" "Because it is difficult for me to do actual relationships" "Why?" "I think maybe I don't really know what love is and so I act self-oriented." "Why?" "I don't feel like I've have received unconditional love" [loose example from my own life recently])
After you id the pain, if it's because someone hurt you, you need to forgive them, otherwise, you'll get bitter. If the pain is old, you may need to look for the bitterness (expressions of cynicism, complaining, criticizing, and anger may be good areas to explore). It hurts to give up the bitterness and anger, but in my experience life is a whole lot more enjoyable if you forgive people. If I'm honest about it, the times that I am bitter or angry at someone are really miserable.
If your pain is caused by absence of love, I don't know what to do about that yet. As a Christian, I feel like regularly experiencing God's unconditional love is key to fully healing our pain, but I have not walked completely through that yet.
[2] It helped me to write letters to God honestly expressing how I was feeling, including about him, it provides a concrete framework. If you do this, it helps to assume that he is a loving father (since that is what he claims to be), otherwise you might just transfer your anger to him and end up equally stuck.
For people that can't relate to Christianity, and still need some help with the "forgiving" thing, I can recommend compassion meditation, aka Metta meditation.
It's not quite entirely secular either, because it often has roots in Buddhism. Still, you can easily practice it without needing to adapt any Buddhist teachings. I'm not a Buddhist and I don't desire to become one, but some of the practice is quite useful :)
I'm just pointing it out because I really agree with prewett, that forgiving (all sorts of things and people) is a very powerful and positive thing to do. Much more so than I expected before I practiced Metta meditation for a while--it was just one of many different series of meditation types/styles we did with our meditation group. It's had a very profound and long-lasting effect on me, also quite different/orthogonal to the benefits one gains from typical mindfulness meditation. Which I can also recommend btw, but the effects of the compassion meditation seem that more tangible, like it taught me things. Maybe that's just me though.
Therapy can help a lot for these problems. Therapists are trained to recognize unconscious reactions of their clients and then bring those reactions into consciousness, so they can be dealt with by the client.
If you want to do it yourself (not recommended), the first step is usually to notice patterns in your behavior - what do you try to avoid, when do you fall into addictions, etc. Also compare that to what other successful people do - do you find that some things are trivial and no big deal to other people, but cause you to turn into a blubbering mess? You're looking for intense anxiety here, which is why this is so difficult to do yourself - most people instinctively shy away from things that make them anxious, but here you have to deliberately seek them out.
Then, once you've got a clue to where the problem might be, you're looking for a thought that seems to skitter away every time you think of it. For example, I had an issue with needing to be certain about everything, and everything needing to be cut & dried facts. The idea that I may not be perfect, that there were some things I didn't know and never would know, was completely anathema to me. So every time I found myself in such a situation, I'd immediately try to force certainty, either by learning as much as I could and jumping to a conclusion, or by avoiding the situation entirely. When I tried to hold the idea of not being perfect in my head, my psyche would rebel, and thoughts would pop into my head like "That's for weaker minds. I wouldn't be myself if I didn't know everything."
Once you've got the thought that always tries to skitter away, hold onto it and face it directly, no matter how much your consciousness rebels. Usually they'll be some sort of intense emotional reaction - you'll start crying, or you'll want to punch something, or you'll feel like your life is ending. That's why movie dramas (eg. Good Will Hunting) often have some teary scene at the therapist's office. Naturally, you will probably want to be in a safe, private place for this.
You'll want to hold onto that thought until you feel completely spent - it doesn't actually take long once you've IDed the issue (20 minutes to an hour is my experience), but it's exhausting. You should feel "lighter" afterwards though, like your body has been through rough exercise but your mind is freer and no longer weighed down by whatever was troubling you.
Good luck. It's much easier with a trained therapist - or actually, I wouldn't say easier in the sense of "less painful", but you spin your wheels less on false theories about why you are the way that you are.
My pain comes form severe bullying; I got beaten up literally every day as a child for three years. After that, I finally got transferred to another school, but the damage was done.
I used video games, porn and promiscuity to deaden the pain. That distracted me from starting a career, and I ended up living on the street for six months.
I tried pretty much everything to heal myself.
* What did not work *
- Religion; God did absolutely nothing to my pain away. Religious counselors were very judgmental and made me feel worse, and their advice just caused new problems. - Cults; They had interesting teachings that were partially very entertaining, but Ashtar Sharan had nothing but a Galactic shrug to offer my very real suffering (I would have been prepared to actually believe in Ashty had he actually helped me, but it was clear that he did not) - Meditation; It helped, but only temporarily. When I missed my meditation session the pain came right back, and I grew distant from the world. - Yoga; Like meditation, it did help, but it took such great lifestyle changes I just didn't feel like me any more. I'm a child of the West, and Yoga is radically different. - Sex; obviously, sleeping around is a great distraction and can be genuinely fun, but when it's addictive it hurts in the end and you draw other people into your drama. - Counseling; Wallowing in my pain with a guy who think everything is a fascinating freak show made things much worse.
* What worked partially
- Cannabis; Smoking weed actually worked better than meditation to give me temporary relief. It also made me confused when used heavily. - New Age; There is a lot of partial truth floating around, if you avoid the obvious marketing ploys. "Think And Grow Rich" is pretty good, and so is "The Science of getting Rich". Basically, the idea is to sit down and think about stuff you want in detail. It has a similar calming effect to meditation, and can lead to actual creative problem solving. It did not, however, significantly heal my hardest pain points. But the idea of "you can reach your goals" kept my trying. - Pressure point tapping; EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is pretty good, it can stimulate and permanently remove some trauma. It has its limits though, and I felt like an neurotic idiot tapping my wrists all the time.
* What really worked
- Philosophy; Getting a genuine core philosophy and actively deciding my values gave me a lot of strength. - Openness; being extremely honest about my shortcomings with deserving people lead to a form of intimacy that makes the trauma not seem so bad any more. - "Taking the pain"; This is not the same as sucking it up. It is feeling like crap, and accepting that I am feeling like crap right now, without suppressing it. Practicing this takes the "fear of the fear" away. This is probably the real benefit of meditation when done properly, but I didn't need to sit on a cushion to do that. - Self-acceptance; This one is the kicker. I no longer slapped my wrist for slacking on the job, or being not as nice as I could be. Paradoxically, this lead to me not slacking on the job, and being nicer. It also helped find my niche, where my shortcomings don't matter. - Dimethyltryptamine (DMT); An illegal psychedelic drug, it has been used as indigenous medicine for centuries. This is the only way I have been able to permanently release my worst and oldest pain points. I stopped smoking spontaneously after a couple of trips, and have noticed a sharp raise in my productivity and overall wellbeing.
Obviously, this is just my story, but I hope that some points might help you, or someone else.