Cutting Your Losses1/12/2019  Addiction is like an arcade game. Imagine walking into an arcade with $20, there is a big bouncer at the door and he says admission is free, no cost to get in. You see some people standing in front of a game and every time they press a big red button they get shocked. That is strange you think but you move on and see a machine get $5 for nothing, the machine says in big letters and there is red button on it. So you reach out and press it and $5 comes out. You look around thinking this can't be right so you press it again $5. This is crazy you think and you start pounding on the button and five dollars keep coming out. Now you've got 30 or 40 five dollar bills and you feeling pretty good. Then there is a small shock when you press the button but you still get the $5. Oh well it's worth it, you think. This keeps up and the shocks get a little bit worse but you hardly feel them because the money is piling up. You remember seeing other people standing in front of machines getting shocked, they looked foolish but their machines didn't pay money. Time goes on and then all of a sudden a shock and no money. Try it again a shock and no money. Is the machine out, I'll try it one more time just to see, you press the button the shock is worse and then a $10 bill pops out. You've lost track of time now the shocks are bad and sometimes no money comes out but when it does it is always more. Eventually the money is few and far between but when you get money it is worth it. Eventually your hand is horribly damaged from the shocks that you physically can't press the button. So you decide to stop, you count your money you've got $2,500 plus the $20 you came in with. You are happy but you look at the time you have been up for 48 hours. You slide back into a corner and pass out from exhaustion. When you wake up the money is gone all $2520.00. You can't believe it no money and your hand is still horribly mangled from the shocks. At this point you either leave with nothing but a mangled hand or decide to go back to the game and at least try to get your $20 back. Through out this story the person has many opportunities to quit. Some people stop with the first shock others keep going. There are different types of people in different stages of addiction.  Wow, I haven't thought about addiction this way in a very long time. I forgot about the pull, hope that this time it will be different. Shame for getting into this mess to begin with. Anger at myself and others, my parents, life, god or whatever lead me here, for allowing this to happen.
It isn't going to be different the game will steal your money every time. You aren't smarter than it if you keep playing. You can only beat it by leaving it and learning to do one of the hardest things in life. CUT YOUR LOSSES. Use the regret, the shame and the frustration that at the same time you are feeling those things you want to go back for one more. This is so hard because it is an utterly hopeless place and if we embrace hopelessness once then hope can never innocently be trusted again. Its true. No way around it. The price of wisdom (quitting a destructive habit) is innocence (ignorance that it will ever be like it once was). Quit things in life to teach yourself this lesson. You will grow up. You will make hard choices replacing hope with the knowledge that even if it doesn't work out you will be ok because you are strong and wise. No one who has never quit anything understands this type of victory in the same way that a person can learn all about how to climb mountain, every detail and have no idea what it is to conquer a mountain. Most people never learn to fight. They avoid battles. The greatest battles in life are in own own minds with the pieces of us that are broken. Integrate yourself. How to bring peace to your mind win the war one battle at a time. Every mental victory matters the smaller it is the more important it is. Because no one who can't walk can run. Start walking.
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Pain is Information1/6/2019  Pain
Getting to the cause always involves pain. I heard it said once that pain is inevitable but suffering is not. Why pain? Pain can be the friction that happens with a change in direction. Pain can be focusing on the symptom and not the cause. Like many other concepts pain is information that something is out of balance. Pain is the feeling that comes when you touch a hot pan. It is important information that you need to stop our your hand have even worse physical problems. If we numb our hand we can touch the hot pan. We feel no pain but still get burned. A burn is a thing separate from the pain felt when burning takes place. Our nerves that allow us to feel pain are very important to our health. Simply by knowing what pain is we are able to know what it is not. The goal of change cannot be to avoid pain. Avoiding pain is often the reason change cannot take place. The goal of change must be to avoid suffering. Suffering is long term pain doesn't have to be. Being enslaved to in addiction is suffering a long drawn out ache that doesn't go away. Pain can be a quick jolt, a shooting pain that makes up jerk away from something. The longer we avoid the pain that comes with change the longer we will suffer. I have been thinking a lot about pain lately. It seems that pain is connected to fear. I recently heard it said "it can't kill you but it can convince you that it can kill you" For me the worst part of pain is the fear that it won't ever end. Some of this come from the fear based eternal damnation programming I got a as a child. In truth nothing lasts forever and our bodies are trying to acclimate all the time. We become desensitized to pain some even find pleasure in it. They like the sensation. it reminds them they are alive. I have been giving myself small controlled pains to grow. Exercise, heat, cold problem solving. Short pain to avoid long term pain. The solution is built into the problem. Pain is unavoidable but we can use it to our advantage...not easy but needed. if you don't do it the universe will. NoteI was an Alcoholic
This blog contains many of the ideas that helped me to get sober and stay sober. Everything in Italics is me now, commenting on the writing from 10 years ago. Everything not in Italics is the 8 year old writing. In some ways I am the same but in others very different that is what make it interesting. AuthorRob Alexander 
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