A Brutal and Ugly Truth About Addiction I See No One Talking About

One everyone needs to hear

My food’s going cold but I still can’t find my Kindle. Furiously racking my memory, I roam around the house. “Just eat! You can search for it later”, my mom cries out but I’m adamant. I need to find it.

After another 30 minutes of pulling open drawers, flinging pillows, tearing away the bedsheets, and peeping under beds, I finally find it. Uttering a sigh of relief, I power it on and flipping through Brothers Karamazov, I pick at my cold lunch.

“Oh, God!”, remarks my brother, “You’re addicted to reading while eating”, with a lighthearted smile.

It makes me pause and wonder — actually yes. I was addicted. Thinking back, I can’t find a single instance of eating without reading. Upon further thought and research, I realize that we’re all addicts.

Why We’re All Addicts

With the stereotypical addict being a dude with dark bags under his eyes, wearing a hoodie, and clutching a syringe — it’s easy to think that most of us are far from being addicts.

But the signs of addiction are much more subtle. As The School Of Life defines it, addiction is — the maniac reliance on something, anything, in order to keep our dark or unsettling thoughts at bay.

So, what matters is not ‘what’ someone is addicted to, but ‘why’ — the intent or motive behind it.

Everything we do is a coping mechanism — Be it smashing weights in the gym to quell stress, getting lost in work to prevent undesirable thoughts, tuning into the illusory world of TV to escape reality, or aimlessly scrolling through our social media feeds when there’s nothing to do.

We’re constantly shying away from confronting our own minds. Living in a hyper-abundant world, being “perma-stimulated” has become the norm. There’s always something to do so we’ve forgotten the art of doing nothing.

To get a measure of how addicted we are, it’s worth asking ourselves — when was the last time we sat doing nothing and letting our thoughts, both uncomfortable and pleasant run freely?

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

— Blaise Pascal

The Antidote to This

The opposite of being “perma-stimulated” is — unstimulated. In other words, getting rid of external stimuli, embracing boredom, and — patiently and compassionately examining our mind’s contents.

In other words, thinking about our thinking.

Also called metacognition — this is the key to rapid self-improvement, heightened self-awareness, and eternal learning. And unlocking this quality isn’t hard — all you need is regular introspection.

Before you go to bed every night, tuck away your phone, shut your laptop, and sit in solitude. Reflect on the day’s events and examine your actions and thoughts. Ask yourself questions such as — “Why did I say that?”, “Why did I react that way?”, “What drove me to that action?”, “How could I have acted better?”, etc.

Looking in the mental mirror will feel uncomfortable at first. But stick to the habit. It’s unbelievably rewarding in the long run.

“The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection” — William Godwin

In fact, if you do this long enough, it’ll get programmed into your subconscious. Nowadays, within seconds or minutes of saying, doing, or thinking something — I’ll unconsciously be reflecting on them.

Apart from introspection, let your mind wander freely from time to time. Don’t quell any unpleasant thoughts or force positive ones:

Just sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and watch the show inside your head.

But There’s an Insanely Powerful Bright Side

The ugly truth is that we’re all addicts and thanks to the fact that we’re wired to be addicted, there isn’t much we can do to solve it — apart from the few snatches of introspection. But there’s something insanely powerful about this:

You can choose what you’re addicted to.

The maniacal nature of addiction means that if you manage to replace a bad or unhealthy one with a good one — you can achieve some pretty wild results.

I used to be addicted to gaming and anime in college. And all they’ve given me are — sleep deprivation, thicker spectacles, and brain-splitting migraines. With the lockdown, I got back to reading and quit gaming. Then, writing came along, and out went anime.

While reading’s given me a portal to thousands of brilliant minds and worlds, writing’s become a soul-rewarding side hustle.

You don’t have to quit an undesirable addiction, you have to replace it with a better one.

Replace junk food with tasty yet healthy food. Replace lung-harming cigarette smoking with lung-improving exercise. Replace TV shows with documentaries. Replace movies with books. Replace porn with dating apps. Replace YouTube with MOOCs. Replace gaming with leveling up in real life. And this way,

Eventually, replace the person you are with the person you want to be and your present life with the life you dream of.

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