The Backwards Law of Addiction

“That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.”- Carl Jung

My addictions are quite plain in comparison to the normal idea of addiction. It doesn’t get in the way of me being a ‘functional’ civilian, in fact, they’re more ‘socially-acceptable’ than the more mainstream addictions.

What it does do is keep me from being my optimal best, which when accumulated over days, months and years takes a significant toll on my well-being, my relationships, and any ambitions I had in the first place.

To me, my addictions come in the guise of over-eating, over-exercising, over-dieting, over-caffeinating, over-dating, over-procrastinating, over-dwelling in the nostalgia of better days to name a few.

If we were to be consistent with the Cambridge dictionary definition of addiction as “an inability to stop doing or using something, especially something harmful”, then we can all claim to be guilty participants.

It wasn’t the substances or the act that was at fault, but rather the relationship I had with it.

I had let it become my crutch, my very reason for living. I had gotten addicted to the things that took me away from the pain, escaping, hiding away in my next ‘fix’ not realizing the repercussions of what I was doing to myself.

Nihilistic and Numb

“It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour”

-Gabor Maté, ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction’.

There was a time that I used to use binge eating as my sole coping mechanism for when life was at its hardest. It never solved anything, but it did bring me relief…albeit a pseudo one.

Every time an iota of a stressful circumstance arose, an internal itch that I just couldn’t shake off, I turned to food. I’d order a pizza, I’d fill a supermarket bag to the brim with sugary and savory treats and I’d hide away in my bedroom.

This was my new norm. My safe place, and for the longest while, it was the most sacred and most important thing I had going in my life. I had grown dependent, and that was a dangerous place to be.

My life was dictated around this vacuum I had created. Nothing else mattered.

I had no dating life, no social life, no ambition than to be anywhere else than this ‘shame cave’ I had created.

I had developed a numbing apathy towards life that was hard to shake.

“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”

― Viktor E. Frankl, neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor

With no meaningful driving force to live my life, I lost myself in hedonistic pursuits. I cut myself off from feeling the pain I was in, not realizing that I was in fact cutting myself off of ever feeling true happiness.

“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

-Brené Brown

By cutting myself off from one emotion, I in turn would be cutting myself off of others.

I had become nihilistic and numb. Numb to caring, numb to the shame, numb of doing anything about it.

The Backwards Law

The point-of-no-return for me came when I had ballooned in weight, nearly 40lbs heavier than my current frame. My energy levels were low, I had grown an insufferable appetite for energy drinks and caffeine just to make it through the day. I had reached the point where I had become accustomed to presenting a weak, self-conscious, and insecure shell to the world, all because I was not willing to confront the pain and discipline of being anything else…I had had enough.

“We are wired to become dissatisfied with whatever we have and satisfied by only what we do not have. This constant dissatisfaction has kept our species fighting and striving, building, and conquering. So no — our pain and misery aren’t a huge bug of human evolution; they’re a feature. Pain, in all of its forms, is our body’s most effective means of spurring action”.

- Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***

I may not have cared about much at that time, but this was just the spark that I needed to spur me into action, to finally break out of my self-imposed prison. It was my logotherapy, a meaning strong enough as Nietchze puts it, to ‘bear any how’.

But it wasn’t easy.

I knew that in order to confront my addictions I had to confront the pain I had been avoiding for years.

For me, it was the pain of being swallowed whole by the expectations of others for my life, the daunting thought that I had to be responsible for my life, from the macro to the micro.

It was the pain of boredom, the pain of facing, and exposing myself to a life that I hated but was too afraid to change or confront. It was one thing to being exposed to the pain of the uncomfortable, but an entirely different notion now that I realized that escaping pain would in turn create more pain.

Taoist philosopher Alan Watts describes it as the ‘backward law’ of life:

“The act of wanting a positive experience, brings a negative experience”.

The more I was driven by pleasure or wanting to feel better all the time, the more unsatisfied I became. Making pleasure as my mission in life meant I was reinforcing that something was always missing in my life as well.

Pleasure has no ceiling. Once one becomes accustomed to something, no matter who they are, it is human nature to want to up the ante, the dosage, forever chasing that allusive dragon that simply cannot be caught.

The basis for my change was not going to be an overnight effort. It had taken me a long time to cultivate this habit and dependency, and it would take a slow and conscious daily, moment by moment effort to change my life.

Staying in the Fight

“You don’t get over an addiction by stopping using. You recover by creating a new life where it is easier to not use. If you don’t create a new life, then all the factors that brought you to your addiction will catch up with you again.”

– Anonymous

I’m not here to tell you that I have the solution to addiction, nor am I claiming to be an authority on the matter, I am merely here to add a perspective to the conversation.

Addiction can come in many forms with many depths, but when it comes down to it, drowning is still drowning, no matter the depths of the water.

Trying to stay afloat in this life is hard.

To say ‘I’m over it’ would be a push, however, what I will say is that I have made a conscious effort to set myself up to succeed with the daily habits I entertain.

I surround myself with people who keep me afloat and if I can, try to lift as many people as I can with me.

The old formula of how to live my life had expired, and in order to achieve a different result, I had to change the formula.

I set systems in place, daily practices I adhered to to ensure it became harder for me to revert to my old ways.

I doubled down on my commitment to meditation, something I had treated casually in the past, and I felt a shift happen daily as if I was downloading a new software update for the person I wanted to become.

Alleviating the grip that addiction has had on me has not been an easy feat, however, it was only in destroying myself and then fixing myself did I finally begin to understand who I was.

The urges are still there, and I’ll admit that I do slip up from time to time...but I do not stay there.

I’m far from where I want to be, but I’m farther along than I was.

I may not be undefeated, but I have more wins than losses.

As long as I’ve got fight in me, long may the battle continue.