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How to defeat addiction
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What is it?
There is no such thing as an addictive personality; all animals (including humans) have a capacity to pursue pleasure to excess.
When the pleasure-seeking behaviour is excessive, our life begins to pay the price and so do the lives of those around us. There is a perceived loss of control as the habit starts to take over, and it soon becomes clear that the accompanying guilt or self-doubt is commonly over-ruled, and the established habits are indulged in yet again.
Human character, despite its strongly held beliefs and values, has been shown to be surprisingly susceptible to being overwhelmed by situational pressures. Now we can look inside the brain to see how our own brain chemistry can sabotage our best intentions quickly and effectively.
How it happens
In their book 'Freedom from Addiction', Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell, co-founders of the human givens approach, give an illuminating description of how the brain plays tricks upon us.
Using an office metaphor, they show how good intentions to quit coming from the boss (our rational self) are subverted by the machinations of the secretary (the part of our brain in charge of our emotional states) and the security officer (the part of our emotional brain which monitors threats to our survival).
When a habit or a substance has not been indulged in for a while, a chemical alarm is sent to the secretary. The secretary has to decide how to act, but before bothering the boss with a request to go against his expressed wishes, more evidence is needed.
From the memory store, an array of memories portraying the immense pleasure which the activity has produced in the past is gathered up. These memories are biased, but the secretary does not know this, so the message to the boss is loaded with a top priority sticker in the form of the motivating chemical dopamine.
The impact of this forceful intrusion renders the boss's superior intellect temporarily powerless and permission is granted to act at once. The secretary gives the go-ahead for the habitual practice to be indulged again, and the security officer cancels the alarm.
Only later, when the dopamine effect has worn off, does the boss realise that a serious error has occurred and the old pattern has once more proved its power to sabotage good intentions from within the organisation.
How to lift it
This metaphor provides the key to overcoming any addictive behaviour, be it smoking, hard or soft drugs, eating, shopping, alcohol, sex, or anything else.
Action has to be taken at the level of the emotional brain's memory store and the patterns which trigger old habits.
There is always a physiological level of discomfort arising from the withdrawal of the habit because the emotional brain attempts to maintain stability within the organism. Any change from the norm is interpreted as a potential threat to our continued well-being.
But this level of discomfort is never more than we can tolerate, unless we buy into the scare stories of those who would like us to believe that giving up something we are addicted to is virtually impossible without some artificial aids.
By re-structuring the memory associations to the habit we are struggling to free ourselves from, and firmly emphasising the damaging side effects of the behaviour - which are the truth of what is happening - we can empower ourselves.
We can then defeat the internal machinations of our brain which are deluding us and distorting our ability to meet all our needs in a healthy, balanced way.
We are all naturally equipped with pleasure circuits in our brains. These reward healthy behaviours.
It only when these circuits are artificially stimulated with substances, or thrill-seeking behaviours, that we suffer from the delusion that we are living a rewarding life - a delusion bolstered by a horrible withdrawal phase if we try to change.
The withdrawal is a message to us from our brain that we need to continue to make progress in our lives and not become complacent. This has become falsely associated to the cheap pleasure-seeking behaviour we have been adopting, instead of prompting us to take action to meet our needs more realistically with genuinely satisfying experiences such as exercise, creativity, social bonds, and meaningful work.
If we have become addicted through seeking escape from persistent memories of a traumatic past event , it is a surprisingly straightforward matter, using Human Givens psychology, to decondition the 'security officer' by using the 'rewind' protocol.
OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is like an addiction - the emotional expectations of the ritual behaviours must be changed. Like any bully, the OCD then backs off, allowing new clarity of perception and thinking to take its place.
How to avoid it
When our lives are lived well and our needs met, we are immune to mental disorders.
Relaxation is an art which we do well to learn, so that we can block over-busy thoughts, and calm down our body-mind system.
All negative thoughts need to be challenged on the spot and replaced with positive thoughts and actions. It sounds tough, but it is easier than we might think once we have reached the point of really wanting to make changes in line with our life goals.
Human Givens therapists are trained to work with addictions of all types.
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