Something that might start as fun can become addictive over time and turn into a one-way trip to hell. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, the addiction will always kidnap the mind’s ability to manage the drug of choice. A drug of choice is anything that a person uses to escape the unwanted empty feeling — the invisible hole. It could be alcohol, digital games, drugs, food, gambling, nicotine, pornography, shopping, sugar, work, or anything that provides a momentary high.
An Escape to Nowhere
The problem with addiction is that there’s a huge price to pay for the few moments of pleasure that one receives. Not only wasted time, health, or money, but also at a great cost to one’s self-esteem. It is impossible to be powerless over actions that hurt oneself or others without suffering consequences.
A person can ignore guilt for a long time by compartmentalizing their behavior, but eventually, that storage space becomes overcrowded. At that point, self-loathing becomes overwhelming.
The worse a person feels, the greater the need to self-medicate. The addiction demands more of the same or switches from one drug of choice to another; drugs to alcohol, alcohol to pills, cocaine to porn, work to food, food to sex, etc.
A Self-Made Fortress
Each addiction is another building block walling the addict into isolation. The desire to enjoy loved ones, hobbies and interests are lost. Eventually, the addiction has consumed its user rather than the other way around.
All pleasure is gone; there is merely a sense of meaningless existence. Emotional and physical health are failing. Walled into a maze of despair and demand, totally unconscious to the path out, the person continues to satisfy the needs of the addiction — a few moments of numb oblivion in exchange for one’s life.
Freedom by Facing Fear
Fear of stopping is doused with more of the very thing that has taken away all sense of sanity and joy.
Yet, at any time, the addict could easily stop the insanity and walk out of the maze by simply realizing that the prison is self-imposed. The suffering is the direct result of believing that destroying the body and mind is pleasurable.
No addiction could ever replace the natural state of love with which you were born. That state is still inside of you. It might have been covered up with pain, but you need only face that pain for it to heal and become a meaningful part of your life’s story — a story that could help others.
The Lie That Feeds Your Silent Suffering
Your addiction will tell you that you will miss it, you can’t live without it. You will only miss it as long as you listen to this lie. What are you going to miss? Something that is stealing your health, your loved ones, your entire life’s purpose? The isolation? Will you miss living in a prison that is sucking all of your life force and energy?
When you decide to listen to the voice of love, you will face the lies of addiction. You will see what your addiction is doing to you. You will hear the thought that tells you to ‘go ahead,’ and you will realize that this is the voice that has owned you. It promised you a feeling in exchange for hell.
Choose freedom. By doing so, you will only want to share your life with people who care about you and have experiences that enrich you, not ones that kill you. In choosing freedom you give yourself a promise of giving up hell for heaven.
Are you ready to exit the addiction maze of hell and re-enter your life?
You can start right now by deciding that you are worth saving.
Can you relate? Please share your comments or insights below. I’d like to hear from you.
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About the Author: Dr. Donna Marks believes that the current models for diagnosis, treatment, and addiction have failed. Her mission is to help save at least 10 million lives by 2030, through education and prevention. She has been an author, consultant, educator, public speaker, licensed psychotherapist, instructor of A Course in Miracles, and addictions counselor in private practice in Palm Beach, Florida, for more than thirty years.
If you want to connect with Dr. Donna Marks and find out about her tools and programs on how to Reclaim Your Power Over Addiction, visit her website, https://drdonnamarks.com/
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