Motivation From Addiction

Some people realize they have a problem and then try to control the thing they are struggling with. Most of the time this control comes from a love for the that causes the struggle. I have struggled with alcohol personally so I'll use it as my example. An alcoholic may get into this frustrating pattern of thought. I need to keep drinking. I need money to buy alcohol to keep drinking. I need a job to get money to keep drinking. That is the thinking but this is what happens. The person likes to drink. They go to work. They get paid so now they can buy alcohol. They drink the alcohol which makes it harder to go to work. Which makes it harder to get paid. Which makes it harder to get alcohol. So the pattern goes on. This is when the person realizes they need control. They have to limit the alcohol in order to have the alcohol. This is a difficult concept. I want to have alcohol and drink it too.
When control fails the alcoholic begins to get creative. Working to get money to drink makes it hard to drink so are there other alternatives. Can I lose my job and collect unemployment? Can I get on disability? Can I steal money? Can I get a job at a bar so that I can get paid in alcohol? Can I find a way to make allot of money at one time? Can I find an enabler to provide for me?         
            Another way that the person may try to control the struggle in order to hold onto it is to let it go for a time. The thinking here is that if I can quit for a week or a month than I will be able to prove to myself and others that I'm not a entrapment to it. This is usually a goal that the addict tells no one about so that when an excuse comes up there is no shame or failure socially, only personally. To make this control easier the person may try switching struggles for a time. While the person is taking a break from the preferred struggle.
            Some people can maintain a functional struggle position for a long time even years. They are able to hide the truth and spike back and forth from diet to binge, from a little to allot. The person that is able to function with struggle often has a harder time getting free. They don't hit rock bottom for so long and as time passes the chance of them changing goes down. These people desperately need someone to help them come to a place of honesty. The person still lacks all the positive characteristics that are found in freedom.
The path of struggle can take a long time or things can fall apart all at once. The important thing to know is that only the person can decide when they are tired of being trapped. Only the sick can decide when to treat the disease.

*This seems so far away. Having not had a drink in so long it's tough for me to remember the desperation the focus on it. The real creativity it takes to be a functional addict. I have always been a strategist. Only after I quit drinking did things fall apart for me. When I was drinking I was buying and selling houses, I was married, I wasn't healthy but didn't have any major health issues. Only after did I loose the houses, the wife and got very sick. I think I always knew that if I stopped juggling plates they would crash to the floor and they did. The addiction was the only thing that kept them all in the air but the debts I wracked up as a drinker had to be paid sooner or later. No forgiveness when karma has built up. I'm glad that I have paid off that karma and now I'm free of it. - side note- this is wehy I have an issue with anything focused on forgiveness where the debt is paid for us, I learned that I needed to pay my own debt the best I could to forgive myself but that is probably an different post. 


I do realize that removing addiction from my mind has made me very harsh on people who won't change. This makes sense since I can never give myself a break it's hard to give others a break. At the same time the issues that others have they don't view as addictions just things they love that aren't good for them. maybe its sugar maybe it self deprecating statements to avoid the reality of the need to change. For me the only thing that really gives me these thoughts is coffee as I love it and I know it makes me anxious and that I shouldn't drink it. Trying to learn moderation with it. Since the all or nothing mentality has made moderation difficult for my mind I have to factor it in to cycles like only one cup a week on a day off. I realize that I had to learn extreme nothing before moderation so that I wouldn't apply moderation to alcohol and even now it's tough for me to think about. if I can master moderation could I apply it to alcohol? I answer that question by telling myself if i ever want one beer I'll have one but I never wanted one. I'll put the question off and spend the next ten years learning moderation through cycles. better to toy with coffee than anything that is really destructive. Of coarse all this stuff applies to thoughts and not just behaviors, depression, anger, sadness, loneliness, shame all sorts of non tangible destructive ideas that we are addicted to.