What I am about to talk about was inspired by @Sigmund.Fried on TikTok. If you want to learn about all matter of weird and wonderful things, please check him out. He's the only reason I have TikTok. I wouldn't otherwise.
There is a huge correlation between addiction and trauma. Addiction is not about drugs, it's about avoiding pain from the things you have experienced from trauma. Trauma can come from anything - from getting lost at the shops when you're 5, to sexual abuse and everything in between. Trauma can also come from caregivers that didn't know how to provide the love and affection you needed while you were growing up. This then causes you to crave that very thing you didn't get by filling the void with the warm and happy chemicals you get from your addiction that you don’t know how to produce on your own. You’re a human right? You just want what everybody else has, so you find it within the drugs, alcohol, sex, food, tv, work, etc.
As a consequence, it makes sense that recovery is not about the stuff you’re addicted to either. It’s about healing the trauma that you experienced by sitting through the pain that comes up for you, instead of running away from it or distracting yourself with whatever. Learning how to sit in it and be ok with feeling the pain because it’s in the feeling of it where you do the healing. The more you practice this, the more you will find your addiction begin to dissipate.
That’s what I did and am still doing to this day.
I was addicted to many things and it was only when I realised that constantly using these things to get instant gratification, producing trash dopamine, wasn’t the answer. That maybe, just maybe, if I wanted to really find contentment and true happiness from time to time, that I needed to slow the process of gratification down. That prolonging the “joy” and being in and experiencing the journey to its fullest extent is where the magic was. It was there where I was going to find peace. In the pain. Not avoiding it. In being ok with feeling the pain because the pain just needed to be felt, to be acknowledged in order to fade.
Nothing worth having comes easy. It took me a while to figure that out but when I finally did, that’s when my world started to change. Now I fully appreciate pain. I see pain as my teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t figured out how to make pain less painful. It’s still painful as fuck. I just view it from a different light now. A light that illuminates what I need to work on, what I need to look at and why. I have a deep appreciation for pain. I know that pain, just like happiness or love is just another part of the spectrum of emotions that is valid, that is there for a reason and it’s something that is indispensable for me to work with if I want to have a better life.
Please check out the rest of my website if any of this resonated with you. There may be a way I can help you through your healing journey.
Much love x