September 23rd, 2018
Addictions can serve many purposes, but one of the most important is to create—or usually wrest—a sense of comfort in the present moment . . .
September 16th, 2018
At root, participation in our addictions as well as in our recovery is work in the invisible. The payoff of addiction is internal, emotional, and in all ways, not part of the material world. While that to which we are addicted is usually visible—drugs, money, another person—the underlying rewards of these pursuits are not . . .
September 9th, 2018
The investment in either our addictions or our recoveries is, ultimately, an investment in attaining a sense of well-being. Furthermore, successful addiction recovery must be viewed as the functional pursuit of what was pursued, dysfunctionally, through our addictions . . .
September 2nd, 2018
Our addictions attempt to serve many important emotional purposes. One of these is footing. Often our addictions serve to create an emotional footing when we have trouble finding this equanimity without them . . .
August 26th, 2018
One of the most useful ways of looking at the underlying motivations that drive addiction is as an attempt at mind control. When we pursue a substance or behavior to the point that it becomes an addiction, we are really attempting to create and maintain a mind-set—an experience of the mind—that is soothing, comfortable, and calm . . .
August 19th, 2018
Making changes in life always requires diligence, consistency, and follow-through. There is not a magic formula that can create the types of internal changes that will make recovery successful, there is only hard work . . .
August 12th, 2018
Our addictions serve very important purposes. They are not undisciplined frivolous indulgences nor are they simply the result of automatic reactions to neural demands or genetic unfolding. Our addictions establish themselves because they act as anchors . . .
August 5th, 2018
There are so many ways in which the use (and misuse) of our mind influences our experience of life. At their core, our addictions are used as short-cuts to creating a mental state that feels comfortable, or at the very least, distracts us from how uncomfortable we really are . . .
July 29th, 2018
Recovery from addiction is always an imperfect process. There is often an expectation that the process of recovery should be linear and move in a consistent direction, but it does not . . .
July 22nd, 2018
The process of addiction recovery is one of personal change. Often, we will initially facilitate this inner process with changes made to the outer structure of our lives—moving to new surroundings to avoid emotional and familiar triggers, hanging around different people, going to an inpatient treatment facility, etc.—but these outward changes are only made to support the inner processes of change . . .