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Overcoming Addiction

 

“I believe that the greatest happiness on earth is to have health and that sense of triumph which comes from being your own master, able to do the things, big and little, which you know you ought to do and can do. But this joy of living will come only to the man who has learned self-discipline. In nine cases out of ten, physical breakdowns are due to lack of self-control! Watch yourself for one single day. See how often you transgress what you know to be the principles of health. There lies the secret of physical well-being.”

William Muldoon

What ultimately helped me overcome addiction, many of my addictions anyway, was the idea that they made me lose freedom and peace of mind. Freedom was big, and peace of mind was even bigger.

I knew that good things are borne out of self-control and self-discipline. In 2004, I read words in the book Red Gold that told me: out of thousands of successful people who took intelligence tests, only a handful had above average intellect—but nearly all shared the trait of self-control.

In addition to self-control, you need to have the ability to identify and accept that you have an addiction—become aware of it—and begin to see the problems associated with it.

Addictions Result in a Loss of Consciousness

The Neo-Tech philosophy asserts that consciousness is the supreme value. It further asserts that doing anything that limits consciousness is irrational. Addictions, we must come to see, are then irrational because they limit conscious choice. Instead of being able to control your actions, your actions are being controlled by something else—by habit, by conditioning, by compulsion, by addiction.

Consciousness is our source of power. Our thoughts have creative power. Yet, we dilute this power and give it over to something else when we allow addictions and compulsions to influence us.

Therefore, we see that we are shooting ourselves in the foot by not doing something to reassert control over our addictive and compulsive behavior.

Obviously, what we are addicted to will change the effect on our life. An addiction to alcohol will have different consequences than an addiction to caffeine. Both, however, are addictions. They limit our conscious choice, and they take us out of the driver seat and into the passenger seat—or into the back seat, where we watch from afar as our life runs out of control.

Personal Experience in Overcoming Addiction

I have what is called an addictive personality. The best manager I ever had, Sherri, once pulled me into her office to express concern over my addictions and to help me understand that, like her, I had an addictive personality and would have to watch it.

I didn’t heed her warning. Years later, the result of not controlling my actions and curbing my addiction was that I crashed my car into a telephone pole. It was the wake up call that eventually helped me gain control over my alcohol addiction. Still, it was a long time—nearly a decade—to get to the point I am now, where people can drink it in front of me, it can be in the house, and I am not bothered by it.

Alcohol was just one addiction and I’ve had to work on many.

The realization is that you can try to remove addiction from the outside in, but it’ll be a struggle every step of the way. The key is to learn how to remove addiction from the inside out.

Removing Addiction from the Inside-Out

I’ve already said that addiction lowers your consciousness. I’ll state it more strongly—addiction puts you to the level of animal consciousness. Addiction makes you like a monkey. You’re unpredictable. You’re out of control.

Again, this occurs in degrees, depending on the thing that you’re addicted to. The more damaging the thing your addicted to is, the lower your consciousness can become, the less in control you are.

Realizing these extremely negative aspects of addiction is the key to begin to want to change. Realizing the power of your addictions and how they’ve taken hold of you is one of the first step towards waking up. You’re living your life, and you have these addictions, and therefore you’re not in control.

In my Getting Started with Exercise series, the first step I talk about is habit change. You need to change your habits. (LINK over to how to effectively change your habits.) I have an eBook that details extensively how to accomplish this and I’ve priced it for a reasonable $5. It’s short, but loaded with information that if and when you take it seriously, you will begin to change from the inside out.

Why You Should Work to Overcome Addiction—Regardless of the Form that It Takes
In my lifetime, and assuredly in yours as well, you’ve seen the rise and fall of people and organizations who were unable to control themselves. Enron is a prime example. Bernie Madoff another. Multitudes of celebrities who could not control their sexual urges and disrupted their family’s lives and caused heartbreak and pain. More recently, the Wallstreet scandals.

These events stem from a lack of self-control. Who among us can criticize the failings of other when we’re so full of them ourselves. That’s why Working Man Fitness believes you must work on yourself first. You make yourself a better person, you make the world a better place.

Weeding out errors in thought and addictions and compulsions raises your consciousness and puts you in the driver seat of your life. It gives you more control and a clearer head. Whether it is checking your email unconsciously, a coffee addiction, a sex addiction, or an alcohol addiction, becoming aware of it and correcting it will lead to improvements in your life—it’ll make you a better person.

That’s the whole idea.

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