Addiction
Addiction isn’t an illness.
Flu is an illness.
Addiction can take many forms; drugs, alcohol, food, sex … the list is endless. But the primary addiction we are all in is an addiction to thought. The addict is looking for something to numb the pain, take the thoughts away or even to feel the way they felt before they ever started using, smoking or drinking. It’s difficult, when you’re in the middle of an addiction, to imagine how life will be without the addiction?
Addicts think that their drug of choice will make them feel differently, will change their state without recognising that when we look outside of ourselves for something to change our state we are looking in the wrong place. Because we are always, never an exception, feeling our thinking, the only way we can change our state is to let go of the thoughts we are having. Looking outside of ourselves to change something that is generated internally is never going to happen.

Addiction is always caused when we look outside of ourselves for our source of happiness. We have created the state of mind we are in with our thoughts, whether they are bored, lonely, unhappy, desperate or whatever flavour of thought you chose and then we look outside for something to change that feeling. We do this innocently, at that time this is our best shot at happiness, it doesn’t seem possible that we can be happy or peaceful without the thing we crave.
An ex-addict that I was working with told me that when he was in the grip of his drug addiction and he got the ‘clucking’ (the withdrawal symptoms) the pain and anxiety got incrementally worse until he scored. He said that once he had the drug in his hand, before he had even cooked it, the symptoms started to dissipate. When we discussed this, he was able to see that the drug didn’t change his state, the thought of the drug changed his state.
Your addiction, whatever it is, is always no more than 5% physical and 95% mental.
Let’s work together to free you of the thoughts you have about your addiction and what this means about you.
I started the first UK Wellbeing group sharing the Three Principles understanding with people rcovering from drug, alcohol and other addictions alongside those recovering from mental health issues.
I am occasionally employed to give classes to those in recovering at Centred Recovery, https://www.centeredrecoveryprograms.com, a non 12 step Three Principles centre in the United States
Get help with the Break Free from Addiction online course. Click here for details