Overcoming Addictive and Compulsive Behaviors

You need to simply understand a little bit about how the brain works. Conceptualised, the brain has many "circuits", and the connections within these circuits get strengthened through repetition. You are not able to control your reddit compulsion because you have a number of "triggers" that activitate these circuits, and you get rewarded, in the case of social media, with a dopamine hit. The more repetitions you do, the quicker the dopamine hit wears off, and the sooner you want to repeat the experience. In this way, you fall victim to a downward spiral.

Luckily, the exponential nature of addiction also works in reverse. As you ignore your compulsion, the circuits get rewired, and again repetition strengthen the connections within the newly configured circuitry. The old circuitry will never go away, but it becomes disused, like an overgrown railway track.

Beginning this wonderful upward spiral might sound easier said than done, especially considering the sweet sweet dopamine hit you are currently hooked on. Do not try to use willpower to overcome your compulsion. This is important. You are in control of your prefrontal cortex, which can exert a good measure of control over your limbic system. Your limbic system wants instant gratification. Your prefrontal cortex has the power to override that urge to a good degree, but not completely. Again, this is not about willpower. Hypothetically, if you were truly convinced that it would be better if you didn't read reddit as much, would you need willpower to stop yourself from doing it? It stands to reason that you would not, because you would feel a stronger pull towards the course of action that you believe benefits you the most. If you do not feel that pull strongly enough, you are simply not as convinced as you need to be to be able to change your behavior.

Luckily, it is relatively easy to convince yourself of something if you really want to. Here are some techniques for you to try:

List down all of the reasons why you use reddit. Then, next to each list item, write down why these reasons are ultimately the result of erroneous thinking or faulty logic. For example, reason: I use reddit because I believe it alleviates boredom, however I often find myself bored while browsing reddit. Further to that, boredom is merely a state of mind and there are many people who do not experience boredom despite never having used reddit.

Write down all the benefits of your desired behavior. Make sure they are logically rigorous. For example, I want to stop using reddit as often because it will give me more time to get things done, which will ultimately benefit my life.

Constantly remind yourself of these errors in your logic, and the benefits of your desired new behaviour. Rewrite and refine your arguments. Put them on sticky notes around your house. Politicians and marketeers use this tactic to get you to believe their claims, and it works.

Finally, and most importantly, do not get frustrated or berate yourself if and when, after all this, you still get the urge to use reddit. This is counterproductive. The very fact that you noticed the urge (regardless of whether or not you end up succumbing to it) is an immensely positive thing, so feeling bad about it only makes things more difficult. Noticing the urge means that you are bringing your automatic actions into the conscious realm of control. Once you get into the habit of noticing the urge, you can build upon it by beginning to dismiss those urges using the logical arguments you devised and memorized earlier. This is where the circuits get rewired and strengthened exponentially. You start out by dismissing maybe on in ten urges. Soon, without trying, you're dismissing one in two. Before you know it, this new behavior becomes just as unconscious as your previous behavior, and one day you wake up and realize you haven't had an urge to use reddit for a week.

All of this knowledge genuinely changed my life. I stopped smoking, I lost weight, I fixed my sleeping disorder, I became productive at work, I stopped my bad spending habits, I stopped using reddit, I stopped looking at my phone all day, I stopped feeling sorry for myself, and I cured my depression.

I hope it works for you. I don't want to come off as a shill so I won't mention any book titles in this post but if you PM me I'll send you some recommendations.

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How to Stop Drinking/Using

We start feeling bad so we medicate it with alcohol, drugs, sex, anger, etc. and then we feel shameful because we know we did something that we shouldn't have done. So now you have the original feelings you were trying to drown out and cover up early plus the added feeling of shame for drinking/using again. So, now we medicate the shame with more drinking and/or using and the cycle continues.

The cycle not only continues, but it grows stronger and stronger until we're driven to the brink of complete hopelessness and depression. In order to get sober we have to break that cycle which is simple, but not necessarily easy.

It's simple because there's a ton of things we can do constructively that can pull us out of that shame based thinking, Reaching out to somebody, journaling, meditating, prayer (if that's your thing), going to a support group/12 step meeting, exercising and making a gratitude list are just a few of the ways you can do that But unfortunately for us alcoholics/addicts, those things are the absolute last things one earth that we want to do when we're in that shame based thinking.

So how do you change that?

Well the truth is you simply have to force yourself to do it. You have to force yourself to reach out and ask for help even when your ego will tell you that you don't need to. When going to a meeting/support group is the absolute last thing on Earth that you want to do, you force yourself to go because chances are that's exactly where you need to be at that moment.

The good news is that our brains are adaptive so the more you do those things that pull you out of the shame cycle, the easier they get. I don't know much of anything about the brain and how it works but I've heard people talk about making new neural pathways. I'm a very visual person so I imagine it like my brain has different solutions for different situations that I'm in.

Before I was in recovery my brain pretty much had 1 solution to deal with stressful situations and that was to go drink and/or use. So I think of it like back then my brain had this path between when I felt stress and telling me to drink/use. The path was wide open and surging with electrical activity with absolutely nothing in it's path to stop it. The more I used the more I imagined the road getting wider and more open, like a wide open freeway.

So once I got into recovery, I would feel stress and force myself to do something else like writing for example (which is a huge one for me). I pictured my brain having a very hard time taking the path of writing over the path of drinking and/or using because it was like trying to crawl through a narrow, rocky canyon versus taking the large open lane highway. But, over time the canyon got wider the more it was traveled and it became easier for my brain to accept writing as an acceptable alternative to drinking/using. Now it may not be the wide open highway that drinking/using was for me but it's getting there and it gets wider and easier to travel every time I feel anxiety and respond by journaling.

I don't know if that makes any sense and by no means is it an accurate representation of what's actually happening in the brain, but it's definitely a visual that has helped me in my recovery. I also try to remind myself that the old highway to drinking/using isn't gone, it's still there, as wide as it once was with its abandoned roads. I try to remember that because I truly believe that the minute I go back to drinking and or using, I'll open that highway right back up and be right back where I started.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, I sincerely hope you find sobriety and the peace and serenity that can accompany it.

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