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Overcoming Addiction
Mike Hupfer introduces overcoming addiction. As part of Detox Sector, overcoming addiction provides information and resources with respect to the nature of addiction.
Presented below is some great information about the nature of addiction. Addictions come in all shapes and sizes. The information presented is recommended for everybody and may provide an illuminating window into our psyche.
Traitors
Mike Hupfer presents traitors. As part of Detox Sector, the nature of addiction provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare
The relationship that we have with ourselves, parallels the relationships we have with another.
Think about this for a moment: the relationship that we have with ourselves parallels the relationship we have with another. Let me explain what I mean. When I was drinking to numb my pain, I had no idea what I was feeling inside. I shut everyone out, even those who genuinely cared about me. Without thinking how my actions were hurting my loved ones, I continued my path of destruction.
After I sobered up, and received treatment, I learned that most of my problems were mine alone, and I needed to own it, and take responsibility for the choices I made later in life. After evaluating my Family Playbook, I wanted to make amends for the damage I was responsible for, and for how my addiction harmed others.
When I no longer relied on alcohol as a coping tool, I realized that I liked myself sober. I am becoming a better person, and this is the start of my journey to heal the wounds for myself and others, and I have mostly made amends to those I hurt.
For the most part, when we like who we are as a person, we are kinder to those around us, especially to those close to us. I learned that by better understanding my own Family Playbook, and how those rules influenced me, I realized that I am in control, and can decide how to live my life. Finally, to conclude this chapter, please don’t let regret rule you. This has been challenging to me. I have a lot of regrets in my life, and I wish I could go back in time, and make a tweak. Well, maybe more than a tweak.
Try to keep in mind that every experience we go through will make us who we are today, and the not so pleasant experiences, will strengthen us, and make us more resilient. Without the “hard knocks,” would we be who we are now?
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare
Change can be terrifying. At least, it was for me. Looking at ourselves can be an extremely difficult experience. When I was heavy into my addiction, I didn’t care much about myself, and didn’t give much thought to how I was treating others. Pretty much all I cared about was feeding my addiction, and getting wasted.
When I did manage to pull through, I recognized that fear had been holding me back. Fear had been causing me to doubt myself, and in my own abilities to help myself. When I faced this fear of change, it unfettered me of the chains of addiction, allowing me entry into a new phase of my life. For now, the shackles are undone.
Hot Potato
Mike Hupfer presents hot potato. As part of Detox Sector, the nature of addiction provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. Everybody is uniquely flawed one way or another. After all, we’re only human beings. Even the most enlightened person in the world has some kind of issue. People usually have some part of themself they may not like, and may not want to accept, and may not even recognize. Much of this takes place at a subconscious level, and is buried in the basement of our brain. I will refer to this subconscious burial as a person's shadow side as referenced by Carl Jung.
A great way to gain insight into your shadow side is to explore your pet peeves. Discovering what you don’t like in other people is usually telling of what you don’t like about yourself.
Exploring our pet peeves may help to provide an illuminating window into our psyche. By paying attention to our pet peeves, we can learn a lot about ourselves by examining them.
I will use myself as an example. Listed below are some of my pet peeves.
1. Soft spoken people
2. People who are too friendly
3. Plastic people
Let me start with the soft spoken pet peeve. In the beginning, the person I thought I was annoyed with is a friend who is soft spoken at times. After some digging, I discovered that the person I am actually annoyed with is myself.
Sometimes, I can be hard to understand when I talk quietly, and mutter to myself. I usually do this when I can’t find the right word, and my brain grinds to a crawl with all the mental tabs left open. It frustrates me because I like to think that I am on top of my game all the time. Of course, I’m not on top of my game all the time, I’m only human. I have to accept what seems obvious now, and learn to be more patient with myself and others too.
Next on the pet peeve list is people who are too friendly. On the surface, the pet peeve sounds petty. I try not to judge the pet peeve, and allow myself to just examine it. I was at a large grocery store the other day, and made contact with a super friendly store associate. I found myself wanting to yell at this person, and tell them to take it down a notch. Of course, I didn’t do that, and remained pleasant.
It dawned on me that this friendly store associate was similar in style to my personality during my working hours. I got annoyed with this friendly store associate because I annoy myself sometimes. I discovered when I pretend to be happy and friendly when I’m not really feeling it, I envision myself slithering down a pretentious slide, and that scares me. This fear of being pretentious aligns well with my next pet peeve.
The final pet peeve on the list is people who are plastic. A wonderful example of this plasticity comes from a golden couple in the extended family. Every Christmas, the golden couple mails out a mass shipment of picture cards.
The Christmas picture cards are custom made, and feature the golden couple standing in front of their beautiful home. In the picture, the golden couple is surrounded by their lovely children, the family dog, and the nanny to pay homage to all the little helpers.
In the picture, everyone is looking the part of the dandy. Even the dog is wearing his Sunday best. The Christmas picture card omits non-essentials like Jesus and Santa.
When I thought more about the golden couple, I discovered some interesting insights. What difference is it to me how the golden couple choose to live their lives? I should focus more on my own life.
While I have little in common with the golden couple, I’m still a bit plastic myself. I use face creams, and hair products to keep myself looking pretty. With my lifestyle devoid of alcohol and smoking, I strike a pose of a good looking guy, and that pleases me. I am learning to accept the plastic part of myself and other people too.
Let’s continue forward and talk more about our thoughts. Our own thoughts are extraordinarily powerful. We talk to ourselves all the time. It’s called self-talk.
We have thousands of thoughts every day, and many of our thoughts are negative. The critical voice in our head affects how we feel, and subsequently how we act.
Envision all the negative thoughts that have been festering in our head throughout the years. It’s likely that these negative thoughts have not been challenged.
The negative thoughts have gained momentum, and some have become a permanent recording. Some negative thoughts are particularly vile, and we work hard to get rid of them quickly. I will share two of my most vile thoughts below.
1. “I’m a failure.”
2. “I wasted my life.”
These are some horribly vile thoughts. The thoughts can surface anytime, and are more frequent during periods of heavy stress. These heavyweight negative thoughts are what I call “hot potato thoughts.”
Picture a giant potato that just finished cooking in the oven. Now imagine that we forgot to use an oven mitt, and then grab the hot potato right from the oven. We soon discover that the potato is painfully hot, and we toss it from one hand to the other to avoid getting burnt.
It’s a similar scene when these hot potato thoughts surface in our head. Hot potato thoughts are so vile that we want to get rid of them quickly. We then pass the hot potato to other people who are connected to us in some way. Passing the hot potato is far more egregious than having a bad day, and taking it out on someone. These hot potato thoughts are the most negative thoughts we have, and these vile thoughts have been allowed to fester like emotional black mold.
I will use one of my most vile hot potato thoughts, “I’m a failure.” In the example that follows, Vincent stopped over to watch some football.
1. My hot potato thought: “I’m a failure.”
2. Me passing the hot potato: “Vincent, why didn’t you ever finish college? You were only a semester away dude.”
See how I passed my hot potato onto Vincent. For now, I feel a little better about myself. Later, I will feel guilty about being a jerk to Vincent. The feeling of guilt will feed the “I’m a failure” thought monster, and it will continue to gain momentum.
In the process of passing the hot potato, I made Vincent feel bad, and probably incited his hot potato thought monster too. Hot potato thoughts will continue to be a long time monster. Unless the thoughts are challenged, the cycle will continue.
There is a book that can help. The book talks about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will help challenge negative thoughts. The book is called “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David D. Burns
Friends and Family
Mike Hupfer presents friends and family. As part of Detox Sector, the nature of addiction provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. The friends and family we have today, will probably not be the friends and family we have tomorrow.
This is one of the most painful lessons of my life. I feel pain, not for the loss of flavorless friends, who have long come and gone, but the genuine friends still with me, in heart and spirit, and in person. In the past, I occasionally dumped on these genuine friends, sometimes deliberately, and other times, I was just a fool who lacked insight.
I spent so much time hanging out with flavorless friends drinking, smoking, bar-crawling, attending all night parties, just random nothingness. Looking back, what a waste of time. True story: one flavorless friend didn’t even know my name, and this was after hanging out for years. I didn’t discover this until after I attended his milestone birthday party, and in our drunken conversation, he asked me my name. This was after 5 years. I felt like a fool. In all those years, he just called me “hangover."
We may think that our friends will always be our friends. I get it. Of course, for some people, this may be the case. That wasn’t the case for me at all. Not even close. I am fortunate that a couple of genuine friends are still with me after the years of incremental neglect. Sometimes, I was not a very good friend. I prioritized flavorless friends, over my real friends for the sake of foolishness, and hedonism. I paid the fool's price, and have the pointy dunce hat to prove it.
So, take time, and do an inventory of your friends, and prioritize your genuine friends. As we move down life’s bumpy road, our most important friend, and confidant, will be our life partner, you know, the one we will share our soul. Give this person exclusive stage pass. This is this person who is, and will be, your best friend.
The family part is much more complicated. I recommend breaking down the family into individual elements; more specifically, to each individual person within the family. Individuals in the family are a source of voltage, including good and bad jolts. The voltage may be sparked by one or more individual in the family, or every individual in the family. What we have is a collection of individuals, and individuals make mistakes. Sometimes, the mistakes are repeated accidentally, or otherwise. At many points in our life, individuals within our family will ignite some emotional voltage.
So, just like reviewing our friends list and Family Playbook, take time to review our own family to determine the direction in the family, and the level of participation in functions, events, and life stages. Remember: the only person in life we can control is us.
Avocation Well
Mike Hupfer presents avocation well. As part of Detox Sector, the nature of addiction provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. An avocation is something that we really like to do, and think about doing all the time. An avocation can also mean a person's true passion, like a calling. Compare that with a vocation: a vocation is what we do to pay the bills, our regular 9-5 job. Now, if our vocation is also our avocation, we have struck gold. We are making money, and loving what we do. All along, shouldn't we be doing something we like to do?
I think many people, however, just casually fall into their career field. I know I did anyway. We will likely work much of our adult lives, and then many years later, we retire. When we retire, we will likely do something entirely different from what we did all those decades we worked. I always thought that part was crazy, but probably the norm though.
Remember those people in high school, or college, who seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do, or be, when they grow-up? That would have made life so much easier right? I have spent an enormous amount of time looking for the unicorn flying up to the rainbow type job, occupation, and career. I have dipped my toes in many career ponds, and was fortunate enough to have sampled many different types of flavorful fish.
If you can narrow down your career focus, then go for it. As far as a career is concerned, there is so much power, in knowing what you want, or what you think you want. If work is just a means to pay the bills, so be it. Money is money, and bills are bills.
Our identities can extend outside what we do to pay the bills. Outside your regular job, try to channel your creative spark in whatever dimension that may give you voltage. Consider exploring such things as writing, media, music, gaming, sports, singing, reading, website design, travel, gardening, voice over, crafts, animals, instruments, gadgets, yard work, tinkering, volunteering, mentoring, and so many other things. Give it a go!