addictions

Addiction: the quality or state of being addicted; compulsive need for and use of a habit forming substance characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal.

How do you get rid of an addiction?

1. Do you attempt to rid yourself of that habit by simply not thinking about it? Perhaps the thought of not thinking about it is so painful, that not thinking about it will make your addiction go away. Pain drives all things away.

2. Maybe you try to get as much of it as possible. Maybe being overloaded with the sensation that the addiction causes is so overwhelming that you get desensitized, so much so that the sensation is no more.

3. Addictions can arise when there is a short-term deprivation of the senses, or in times of extreme duress or bliss, such as the holidays. Perhaps when that period of heightened sensation is over, the addiction ceases to be. Waiting it out is perhaps the cure for the addiction.

4. Deprivation of the substance that causes the addiction usually works. That’s the cold turkey treatment, and in some ways similar to the first method. As the body adjusts to the unbearable pain of not receiving the daily dosage of the substance, time heals all wounds and before long, the body no longer needs the substance to carry on it’s menial existence.

What if, after attempting all the above methods, the body still finds that the substance is absolutely essential in its daily operation? What if, deprived of the substance, the body finds all colors relegated to shades of black and white, all taste bland, and all words and sounds meaningless? What if the body is forever decapitated because of the lack of the substance? That is when one realizes that the body and substance are fused into a symbiotic entity, when the body cannot survive without the substance. That is when one realizes that the addiction is an addiction no more, but has evolved into a need, a necessity, an almost desperate clinging on to the substance for fear of the consequences of its absence. That is when an addiction becomes a love.