​"You don’t get to be a hero by slaying a squirrel. You have to do the hard thing and slay the fire-breathing dragon."
 
"Change inspires us. We all recognize and admire the idea of change even if--and often because--we don't do it ourselves."
 
Do What You Want When You Want
Becoming the best version of yourself
Introduction
            I’ve figured how to do whatever I want, when I want. I can teach you how to do it, too. But I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is you can be in total control of yourself and become a much better person. The bad news is, you’ve got to give up your cake.
 
            Let me explain.
            I always thought I was a pretty quick learner, even when I was a little kid. But I still remember when I was stumped by a simple riddle my dad told me when I was young. One day Sunday morning he sat at the breakfast table and asked:
“What’s black and white and black and white and red all over?”
I puzzled over this tricky little sentence but I was too ashamed to tell him that I didn’t get it so I mumbled, “Dad, that’s so dumb.”
Weeks went by before I got up the nerve to ask my older brother to explain it to me. There is nothing worse than humbling yourself in front of a big brother. But I was floored when he said, “What’s black and white and black and white…,” dramatically pantomiming opening a newspaper, “…and read all over?” scanning his eyes across the imaginary pages.
A newspaper! So simple!
I never figured out the riddle because I only heard “red all over.”  Even though I wanted to figure out the solution, I couldn’t see past my first interpretation.
The thing about a riddle is—no matter how tricky it is—once you learn the solution you can’t unlearn it. No one can stump me with the newspaper riddle again. It’s not a challenge anymore because I know how it works. I'll never forget that light switching on in my head when my brother explained it to me.
Which leads me to another clever saying:
 “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
It’s not actually a riddle so it’s kind of embarrassing to admit that this one stumped me when I was younger, too. I kept picturing myself with a big piece of fluffy coconut cake in my hand, puzzling over yet another stupid saying that adults throw around. But this time I figured it out on my own. You can’t eat your cake and still have it. It’s got to be one or the other. You’re either going to enjoy every bite of it’s delicious goodness or you’re going to save it for later. You can’t do both.
            I’m pointing out these two childhood memories because struggling with a addiction or compulsion is a lot like struggling with a riddle. We want the solution. We want so badly to figure it out and stop feeling humiliated. It often takes someone else explaining it to us because we can’t get past our first interpretation. But once we do understand, there is no going back to the old thinking. There is no unlearning the solution. The frustrating part of the solution to addiction is realizing that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
 
            Free people do what they want when they want. Slaves do what their master tells them to do.
            My struggle with addiction led me to discover very simple truths behind all addictive behavior. These truths are powerful and I’ve had a difficult time keeping them to myself once I realized how helpful they can be to others. I’m writing this book as a basic roadmap through addiction. I don’t spend time talking about the biological technicalities of addiction and I don’t throw around different treatment options. My goal is not to replace established methods, like the 12-Step Program, but to enrich them. This book can be a supplement to someone working through a program, it can be the jumping off point for someone newly admitting addiction, or it can educate friends or family members who need help in identifying addictive behavior in someone they love.
            I believe the 12-Step program can be summed up into a few character concepts: humility, honesty, accountability. I am going discuss the importance of each of these characteristics in a way that will enhance any recovery option. This is a simple how-to book on identifying and confronting core addictive thinking. It's about learning to do what you when you want, without excuses. The concepts that I present in this book can be applied to many self-destructive compulsions. The principles I discuss can be applied to the person who wants to lose five pounds all the way to the heroin addict living on the street. My hope is that it will help the addict break down cognitive distortions and educate friends and family of someone struggling with addiction. In fact, you do not have to be addicted to anything in order to apply the information in this book into becoming the best version of yourself.
            Most of the concepts in this book are very practical ideas right in front of us that we too often ignore. We want the basic rules of life to be different, but they aren’t. We want them to at least bend, but they don't. The laws that govern human behavior were there before us and they will be here when we are gone. As you read, I want you to think about the concepts I discuss and apply them to your own life. Make them personal and specific to you and your situation. Challenge them and see if they work in every situation. I am not more knowledgeable or smarter than you--I am you.
            I suggest that you will take a very systematic, proactive approach toward accomplishing your goals. By the end of this book you will either feel empowered to change into the best version of yourself or you will realize that you already are exactly who you want to be (for good or bad). You will be able to stop talking about changing and actually do what you want to do.
How does any of this apply to addictions? We'll get to that. I've narrowed it down to addictions, but this truth applies to everything, every action, and every person who wants to have control of their own lives.
Initial evaluation
            I suggest evaluating yourself several times throughout the day. Some of us who are self-aware may do this naturally, but for most of us it requires a conscious pause to ask important questions. Ask yourself:
What am I feeling and why?
What changes can I make in myself to look at this differently?
Am I tired?
Am I hungry?
Am I under that influence of chemicals?
 
What am I feeling?....Why? If you are used to reacting, then your actions are probably emotional responses not cognitive decisions. It is important to stop and ask this question every time you face a temptation or stressor. Taking a moment to become self-aware will pull your momentum away from moving toward the temptation, a concept we'll dive into later.
What changes can I make in myself to look at this differently? The wording here is important. Read it again.
What changes (something different) can I make in myself (taking personal responsibility) to look at things differently? You can't keep looking at things the same and expect to see them differently. You can't learn something that you already know. I like to say that the flower of knowledge is grown in the soil of the unknown.
Am I tired? Tired people don't make wise decisions. If you're tired, find a way to relax or get some sleep before reacting. Nicotine, energy drinks, caffeine, and sugar are quick fixes that will only make this worse.
Am I hungry? Hungry people don't make wise decisions. If you're hungry, get some food in your stomach. Energy drinks, caffeine, sugar, and fatty foods aren't going to work here.
Am I under the influence? High people don't make wise decisions. Sober up and then read on.
These are just a few questions you need to ask yourself as you read this book and as you attempt to change. I suggest you come back before starting each new chapter and ask yourself these questions again.
Here's another battery of questions that help you dig a little deeper and honestly identify where you are at. Be honest with yourself.
 
What do I really want?
Who do I really want to be?
What actions am I taking to bring about change?
Am I willing to change my location?
Am I willing to take drastic steps to achieve my goal?
How would I tell someone else to become the person that I want to be?
How much research have I done to become who I want to be?
 
I'll ask you other questions along the way, but this is a good starting point. Here is the list again and I'll share my answers-- the answers I started with at the beginning of my change process.
What do I really want? Freedom. I want to be free from slavery to alcohol.
Who do I really want to be? A free man. My own person, not controlled by everything around me.
What actions am I taking to bring about change? I'm willing to read books and talk to people who became sober. 
Am I willing to change my location? Not right now.
Am I willing to take drastic steps to achieve my goal? Yes.
How would I tell someone else to become the person that I want to be?
How much research have I done to become who I want to be?
 
Here's the significance of these questions: if you're not willing to put basic effort into discovering a different way of living, finding different choices, and pursuing new understanding, then don't bother. You have to acknowledge your slavery in order to struggle for freedom. We learn about things that we are interested in. If you can't have a conversation or read a book or do a little research about making changes, then you aren't serious yet. Reading this book is a good step. When it comes to telling other people how to change, most of us ready with lots of good advice. We just don't believe it applies to ourselves.
            I want people to change. Once you get a taste of freedom it is so incredible that you can't help but tell others about it. If your reading this and you are free but you know someone who is still trapped, first recognize that you can't change them. I repeat: You can't change them. All you can do is change in front of them and hope that they are watching. Make freedom look worthwhile.
 
The Concept of Justification
            Any conscious action that a person takes must be justified. In other words, every time you act it is because you have given yourself good reason and permission to do so. Every time you make up your mind to do something, whether it be to read this book or to eat your next meal, you convince yourself that it is acceptable to do so. You use your reasoning so often that you don't notice your "permission-giving" at all. If you want to do something but you don't convince yourself that it is okay, you will not be able to do it. Sometime we know something is wrong, possibly even evil, and we do it against our conscience. Even in this circumstance, we make a decision that is it acceptable, that we had good reason to break our own morality.
I want to point out again that I am discussing conscious action. There is a major difference between accidentally hitting someone with my car or choosing to hit someone with my car because that person cut me off. In the second incident, I justified hitting the person based on my reaction to their the action.
            The importance of the concept of justification is that whatever you are doing you have decided it is ok, ultimately you are responsible for that decision. In the example of hitting the person that cut you off you decided that because he cut you off he needed to be punished and that hitting him was a fair punishment and that you needed to be the one to carry out that punishment. Another person may disagree entirely but you are the one who decides. You may try to explain the reasons you felt justified to others and they may disagree, possibly everyone you tell may disagree but you will be able to continue to do that thing as long as you decide it is ok for you.
Here is my top ten list of common justifications. These are not the only justifications out there and these can be phrased in any number of different ways but if you really want to stop being a slave to things so you can get free to do what you want when you want you need to learn them and learn them well.
Common Justifications
 
1. Minimize- It's not a big deal.
 
2. Compare- point out someone else who is worse
 
3. Pay back- others did this to me before, so I can get them back
 
4. Self Pity- I don't matter so my actions don't matter
 
5. Arrogance- I am the best so it is ok to hurt lesser people
 
6. The I don't care lie- repeating "I don't care" to try and convince                                                  yourself
 
7. Less of 2 evils- I could have done something much worse
 
8. Identity- I define myself as an addict so I'm just doing what an addict               does
 
9. I'm only human - everyone is addicted to something, so am I
 
10. Blame shifting- Billy did it too (substitute Billy for any other name                                              that applies
 
and if those don't work....
 
11.  Screw it- no thought I want it so I do it
 
            Each one of these justifications has an opposite. The opposite is the statement that has the potential to undo the justification. I will keep the same list but after the explanation I will give it's opposite.
            Justification opposites
 
1. Minimize- It's not a big deal -It's not a small deal
 
2. Compare- point out someone else who is worse -point out someone who is better
 
3. Pay back- others did this to me before, so I can get them back -it wasn't ok when they did it and it's not ok for me to.
 
4. Self Pity- I don't matter so my actions don't matter -If it doesn't matter then it shouldn't matter either way
 
5. Arrogance- I am the best so it is ok to hurt lesser people -It wouldn't be ok for people that think you are a lesser person to hurt you
 
6. The I don't care lie- repeating "I don't care" to try and convince                                                  yourself - you only have to repeat "I don't care" that many times about things that you do care about
 
7. Less of 2 evils- I could have done something much worse -you could have done much better
 
8. Identity- I define myself as an addict so I'm just doing what an addict               does -define yourself as a sober person so you will act sober
 
9. I'm only human - everyone is addicted to something, so am I -Classic- if everyone else jumped off a bridge would you
 
10. Blame shifting- Billy did it too (substitute Billy for any other name                                              that applies -Is your name billy
 
and if those don't work....
 
11.  Screw it- no thought I want it so I do it - there is no stopping this one which is why when the other justifications are gone people lean on this one
 
The key is to decide not to use justifications when it comes to the thing you are addicted too. Remove the justification and you remove the action. If you are trying to quit smoking start to think about what justifications you use to smoke. Do this before you quit smoking. Get familiar with yourself and the way that you think. Start to use the opposite side of those justifications and you will start to remove power the addiction has and then quit smoking. You will have much more success than if you quit without knowing what the addiction will whisper in your ear. 
The smokers justifications are the same as the heroin addicts and the man who beats his wife as the child who steals a pack of gum. Now, before you think that I'm saying all these actions are the same and slam the book down don't. Realize the actions are very different but the justifications are the same. As you start realize that the justifications are not yours but instead are the same justifications everyone else uses you will hopefully stop thinking that your situation is different and instead realize that it is the same. Learn to remove the justifications and learn to remove the power from addictive thinking in all its forms.
            Once you know these in yourself you will start to here other people use them constantly. Allot of the time people feel the need to say them out loud in hopes that someone will agree with them so that they can mentally shift the blame to the that person. These are also powerful if you have kids. Children think they are the first one to say Billy did it too. Learn these for yourself but also learn them to teach your children not to use them. 
So to review in order for you to do any action you must justify it to yourself in your own mind. (if you disagree with this concept and are telling your friend how full of crap the author of this book was you have convinced yourself that it is ok to do that)
Action is information
Every conscious action that you do gives the rest of the world information about you. Every action the person next to you does tells you something about them. I’m not saying what is good or bad information. I just want you to understand that the conscious actions that you have justified to yourself tell others about who you are. We give people information about ourselves in two different ways. We tell other people about us with our words and we tell them about us with our actions. Sometimes we tell someone something with our words that goes directly against what we are telling them with our actions. At this point the other person is getting mixed messages and it is up to them which information they will accept and which they will reject. 
            So to review every action that you do gives information about you (If you disagree with this concept and are telling your friend how full of crap the author of this book was that gives the friend information about you)
This leads me to the next concept it is a phrase that you will see repeated over and over again in this book.
 Action Reveals Priority
Every conscious action that you do reveals your priorities. This means that action that you have justified to yourself gives information to others about what you value. I will take it a step further and say it shows what you valued at that particular time in that particular circumstance. So the act of writing a book shows that at the time and place I wrote it the act of writing was more of a priority than anything else I could have been doing. If you are reading this you are saying with your actions that reading this is the priority over watching the newest episode of scrubs or the priority over eating a sandwich or you fill in the blank because if you chose to read this at this moment that action is the priority over any other possible action you could have chosen instead. I’m not saying the choice to read this book was a good or bad thing to make a priority (because I’m biased) but you gave the information that for whatever reason it was. By the way I didn’t ask what the reason was. Realizing that action reveals priority gives your action power and takes power away from the excuses and the lies we all use to justify our actions. The truth is that your actions reveal your priorities and no matter what any person says they want or what they say is the priority in their life the actions they choose to make will show weather their words are true or not.
So to review every action that you do reveals your priorities (if you disagree with this and are telling you friend how full of crap the author of this book was that was your priority at that moment.)
The concepts of change
Change and discontentment
Chances are if you are reading this book there is something about yourself that you want to change. All that means is that you are somehow discontent with your current situation. Don’t think that is a bad thing, I’m not saying whether your current situation is good or bad only that if you desire change it is because you believe your current situation is lacking in some way specifically it is lacking whatever to want your situation to change into.
If you want to lose 5 pounds that means you are discontent with your current weight and your current situation is lacking a skinnier you. If you want a raise that means that you are discontent with your current pay and your situation is lacking money.
So to review all change comes from discontentment (if you disagree with this concept you may want to change this book for another one because you are discontent with it)
How things change
Things only change when they stop being the same and start being something else. Yeah that’s simple enough but here is the concept that goes along with it. You change things by doing things differently. Another simple concept but full of power. How often do you see someone who says they want change but continue to do the same thing and in turn get the same result they always got. So what I get from this is that the desiring something different does not equal change. It is doing something different that brings the change…the doing….the action. You must consciously do something different than you did before. 
So to review you bring about change by doing something different (if you disagree with this you can change your situation by doinganything else.) Desiring a different book or thinking about a different book does not take the place of action—actually getting out of your chair, marching to the bookshelf or driving to the library and getting a different book.
Awareness
 
            The key to all change is awareness, or an expansion of your awareness. What does awareness mean? When I say awareness it is the part of you that is not your physical body. It could also be called your consciousness. I know this sounds deep but it's an easy concept that has been very important to me.
            We humans are made up of the same material as other physical things but our awareness is different. There is a connection between the physical and your awareness. Each one effects the other. So if your physical body changes, let's say you start to go grey. Your physical starts to change before you notice and as you do notice you become aware of the changes that are taking place. At this point your awareness about your ageing has increased and now both your physical and your awareness are changed.
            So now reverse it. In the grey hair example your body changed and then your awareness followed. Your awareness can change and then your physical will follow. I'll give you an example. You think diet pop is healthy and your body is overweight. You learn that the chemicals that replace the calories in diet pop are worse for you than those in regular pop. As you learn this your awareness changes and that change allows you to change your physical body by giving up diet pop. (the diet pop example is true by the way so if you didn't know that your awareness has increased.)
           
            Everything I am going to share with you is an attempt to increase your awareness it will then be up to you to decide whether or not your physical body follows. At this point I hope your starting to make up your mind to change or at least keep your mind open to the possibility. As awareness increases so do the opportunities to solve the riddles of own weaknesses and insecurities.
           
Motion concept
I learned about motion in my high school physics class. I was immediately struck by how applicable the laws of motion are to the concept of change. What is in motion wants to remain in motion. This deals with momentum. When an object is moving one direction it has force behind it. It takes friction to oppose that force and slow it down. It takes an equal force to stop the object’s motion altogether and it takes an even greater force to change its direction. When people talk physics we always end up talking baseball. A baseball won’t move until it’s forced.
Someone has to throw it. Once it’s hurtling through the air wind resistance, or friction, will slow it down. Over time, with enough friction, the ball will stop and land on the ground. You could stop that ball faster if you aimed it at a wall. The force of the wall is at least equal to the momentum of the ball. The ball will hit the wall and drop to the ground. If the force if great enough, the ball might even bounce back a little. Now let’s say you want to change the ball’s direction. You want to hit it out of the park. You’re going to apply much greater force by swinging a bat at the ball. When that bat connects, it will drive the ball the opposite direction.
People are just like baseballs. For whatever reason we’re hurtling in one direction. Sometimes we’re flying down a certain path in life and nothing is slowing us down. Sometimes the friction of life is enough to slow us down. But if we want something different, we need a new force to stop our momentum and a much greater force to change our direction.
Let’s go to another example. If your car is rolling down a hill it has momentum behind it. It will take greater momentum to push the car back up the hill. One time my car stalled just as I crested a hill. My car immediately started rolling backwards down the hill because gravity was providing momentum. I jumped out of the car and yelled across the street for three college guys to help me. Three strong young men were able to push the car up the hill into the safety of a parking lot. They provided a greater force which changed the direction of my car.
Just like pushing my car up a hill, change can be hard. At the very least, all change requires a greater force to change than it does stay the same. if we can accept this concept we will stop daydreaming about how nice it would be if change was easy. We can understand that we cannot change direction without friction and that we need a greater force to make change.
So to review what is in motion wants to stay in motion (if you disagree with this concept tap something with your finger, anything, the tapping noise is the sound of friction your fingers wanted to stay in motion but the force of whatever you tapped stopped them)
Change =
So change requires a few things one is that things not be the same. Simple enough You can't change if you stay the same. So we need a change in action but we are not looking for a temporary change. Addiction wants to convince you that if you just take a break from the addiction you can come back to it and it will be just like that first time. Well, that is not the change that I'm working toward. My change is action plus consistency. This means that real change only takes place when time is added to it. The more time in between you and the addiction the more changed you will be. This gives you something to look forward to because once you are free you look forward to every new day. Each day is a day when you are that much more free. I can't emphasize the consistency enough. You don't get to take a vacation from slavery.
Think of addiction like a big fire breathing dragon that wants to kill you. You can never train it. Addiction never gets to be your pet that behaves itself and walks by your side. It always wants to kill you, so you have to kill it first. I didn't say wound it I said kill it. That is why consistency is so powerful. Once you have mastered consistently living in freedom you never have to fear addiction again and that is what makes you free. That means you never get to use again. But not even when I'm old and....no never. The good news is that if you truly do this right you won't struggle with that. It is good news, you will never be a slave again, that's what makes you free.
What you can‘t change
This is kind of a side note but there are some things that we as people cannot change. We have limitations. See the serenity prayer
I don’t want to spend much time on this because I want to empower you to see that change can happen in your life. But what I want you to stop doing is trying to change things that you can’t and devote that energy to things that you can. Most importantly you cannot change other people. I cannot control you, I cannot make you agree with this book, I cannot make you better but you can. Realize that you cannot change anyone else and start working on changing yourself. Use these concepts on yourself, even though it is tempting to go around and accurately critique others, you can critique them but you can’t change them. Also, you cannot change the past or future.
Regret has a very specific function. It is a negative memory that exists in your brain to keep you from repeating the same thing that cause the regret in the first place. If you had no regret it would be difficult to learn from your mistakes because you would not be able to make the connection between the negative feeling and whatever action cause it.
So if I write something foolish on this page and realize it I may think to myself. I regret writing that and that recognition will keep me from writing the same foolish thing on the next page. Regret is just information about your past that tells you what not to do in the present. Unfortunately, many people are plagued by constant regret. Anyone who is doing something now that they have regretted in the past is missing out on the simple idea that regret is information. These people start to hate their past which is where the regret is coming from. Then They start to hate the present where the action that is triggering the feeling of regret is coming from and then sure enough based on the past and present they start to have expectations about the future. They start to expect that regret will always be a part of their lives, that it is unavoidable like aging.
The good news is that once a person realizes that regret is just information to help us learn they can change the current behavior that is causing it. This is figuring out the riddle of regret. At this time the expectation that their future has to be filled regret goes away. The future opens up and starts to have possibility. This process of learning from regret has to be repeated over and over. Most of us don’t have just one regret So the process of learning from regret can’t happen just once but over and over until our regret list starts to get shorter and shorter.
            Things that oppose change
There is a long list of things that oppose change. To many things to make a list. This is one of the reasons it is so hard to change in the first place. The things that oppose change are anything that is not changing. People places and things. As you change some things will change along with you. They will change to remain close to you as you change. Most people places and things will try with all their might to stay the same and if you change you just won't have anything in common anymore. I remember being a child and loving my action figures. I remember thinking to myself and telling others I will always love these action figures. Well, years later guess what. I changed and the action figures didn't so we grew apart. No hard feelings just nothing in common. I can look back on them with fond memories but I'm not tempted to go back to playing with them. I look back on my addictions the same way. I changed and all that stuff, places and those people stayed the same, I changed. No hard feelings just nothing in common.
            As much as I loved the action figures and my addictions I'm glad I grew up and now I love new things, no regrets. I hope as you change you feel the same way.
The circle
Now there is a place where change seems to happen most of the time, not all the time but most of the time. It is a window where it seems to be easiest for change to take place
Thinking in terms of change happening based on discontentment you decide when enough is enough. On one side you are not discontent enough to change other side you are so discontented that the a person doesn’t seem to be capable of getting the (force, momentum, friction) required to change)
There is a window where change happens, where you discontent motivates you to action. (If you feel defeated there are practical action that effects where you are on the circle) You are not in a set place you are in motion going one direction or the other, once you become aware of this you see that you have the power to figure out where you are on the circle and move yourself to the window where change can take place. once a person buys into the idea that there is a place where change is more likely to take place they can immediately become more proactive about their situation.
Proactive vs Reactive
For most of my life I was reactive. Life gave me situations and I responded to them. I knew that I didn't have control over very much so I was stuck. Since I had no control over people places or things I gave up on control and slipped into a powerlessness state, believing that somewhere there was a big guy in the sky throwing things at me and my job was to see if I could get out of the way fast enough, I reacted. I still have no power over people places or things but the one thing that my all or nothing thinking missed was my ability to control my subjective perception of people places or things. This means I can't change anything outside myself but I can decide whether to shut my eyes or put glasses on. If I shut my eyes everything is still there but I can't see it and if I put glasses on objects don't change my site does. I have a diction about how I see things. I have control over my own site. As this really started to sink in I soon changed from reacting life to being proactive about life. Constantly changing my focus, choosing to shift my mind's eye toward positive things and shutting my eyes to the unnecessary. I can't make bad things go away but I can choose to not focus on them. An example of this is I have no control over what movies are made and I can't stop people from being killed but I can choose to look at a movie that doesn't glorify killing. The slasher movies exist but they have no influence in my life because I have chosen to shift my vision to more positive things.
This same concept holds true for things both physical and conceptual. I can't remove self pity from the world or from others but by focusing my attention on self worth I self pity becomes very small and insignificant. I can choose what to focus on and that choice makes me proactive because I decide how significant things are in my life. Now start to apply this proactive perspective concept to addiction. I can decide how big or small cravings are. I can decide how what I really need and what I don't. I can choose to no longer do or use addictive things. I can shift my focus away from them making them so insignificant that there is no struggle. I can give things up and never pick them up again. That's right, never. So can you. 
The Addictive Mind
            The moderation person that has never had to quit any thing can
never understand the addictive mind any more than the addict can ever
truly grasp the concept of moderation.

There are different types of people this why two people can do the same
thing and have totally opposite results. With personality typing I see the
difference between the addictive mind and the moderation mind.


The addict is all or nothing, unfortunately most addicts spend their lives
trying to be moderates (not being honest with themselves about their
true self) and end up with nothing. The good news for the addict is that if
we say all or nothing and choose all we can have everything life has to
offer, purely motivated by the realization that we have to have all or
nothing and we don't want nothing. The moderate does not have this
motivation and so they can miss out on all the pain that nothing has to
offer and also miss out on the joy that we addicts can find in all.
            It is important to note Addicts don't lack self control. They simply
believe that it is a ridiculous thought to not be an addict. Follow this logic.
If someone offers you 1 dollar, 5 dollars or  10 dollars which one would
you pick. The addict says 10 of course. I would be a fool to pick one or 5.
I like money so why have less if I could have more. Now change the word
dollar to beer. I will do it for you.
             If someone offers you 1 beer, 5 beer or 10 beer which one would
you pick. The addict says 10 of course. I would be a fool to pick one or 5.
I like beer so why have less if I could have more. Now realize that the
same logic applies to 20, or 50 or however much you can stand before you pass out. Addicts have lots of self control they just think that people
that aren't addicts are stupid.
            A moderate person is the exact opposite they see that they can
have one so they do. As an addict I immediately think how that is such a
waste. When I drank if someone offered me a beer I would say no
thanks. I would say no thanks if there was no way to get more than one
because one would be just enough to tick me off. The problem was that
because of my self-discipline I could usually find a way to make
sacrifices and find more. My problem was not a lack of disapline but
instead my devotion to the idea that it is stupid to only have one. Now I
don't drink at all because what would the point be I could only have one
but why I never wanted one beer and I still don't so I choose none. When
the addict realizes this about them self, stops trying to figure out how to
enjoy just one and just chooses none the addict wins.
            As always we see the grass is greener but the truth is I am glad I
have my addictive mind. I truly can quit substances as well as concepts
entirely and never ever need then ever again in my life and move on
completely unaffected.
            This does help me to understand the moderation mind (it is simply
conceptually in opposition to the addictive mind) and to understand why
we addicts will never get the response we want from the moderates.
The successful addict is hated by other addicts because they don't
want to see that change is possible let alone much easier than then
think. Also the successful addict is viewed as weak by the moderate who thinks they have no self
control.

            But what is the alternative? When the masses are either failing or having moderate success the person having success is removed socially. You simply don't have much in common with the rest of society that does not know themselves. I choose it anyway.
Relationship with self
Most people know the golden rule. Treat others how you want to be treated . I think we can take that furtherer and say how you treat others is how you will be treated by yourself. This is another variation of reaping what you so. You will get what you give...to yourself. 
The most important relationship we have is the relationship we have with ourselves. This is so often missed because we our eyes look out way from ourselves at other so guess what we focus on others. We blame others and we love others not realizing that the one that deserves the blame and needs the love is us. We spend so much time trying to get other people or substances or things to make us feel good. If you can learn to have a right relationship with yourself you can learn how to change yourself. So many of the ideas are connected to this one self respect, self discipline, self esteem. Realize that the conversation that you have within yourself before you do something is the most important conversation that you have. Our relationship with ourselves follows all the same ideas as a relationship with others. If you don't have positive relationships with others, if you lie, manipulate, or abuse other people chances are you have also done those things to yourself. If you hate others chances are you hate yourself. How we treat others is a window into how each one of us treats ourselves. We as people do what we practice as we practice lying to others it becomes more and more easy for us to lie to ourselves. The good news is that by learning to have positive relationships with others we can also begin to have a positive relationship with our self.
When an addict tells someone, I'm quitting this time and they actually start to change often the other person doubts them and with good reason that have said this time it will be different so many times in the past that the other person has to test the addict to see if they are for real this time. This is why addicts sometimes start to change and expect lots of joy and support from friends and family and instead they only get doubted and tested. This same concept holds true within ourselves. The addict can look in the mirror and say this time it will be different and immediately start to doubt. The person thinks I've said that to myself before and I never quit.
Negative accountability
Addicts that see a person moving toward sobriety or victory often feel a sense of desperation. A need to be the audible voice of the addiction. The combination of the internal voice of an addiction mixed with the audible voice of the "friend" is usually enough to keep change from happening. Many times people united in the love of a substance will use negative accountability. This is the idea that while using both addicts will say lets never change or sell out, we will stay true and never leave the precious drug or each other. They agree if either one tries to get sober the other one will stop them. This mentality is not rooted in companionship but in the selfish desire to never be alone in addiction. If the people around you concur addiction and you do not you are left staring at your own weakness and loneliness. Then you must quickly find a replacement someone who understands what you're going through someone like another addict and the cycle continues again. When an addict is moving toward sobriety they are often forced to move themselves away from their current social surrounding that all are involved in addiction.
            The Enabler
An addict needs an enabler. This is a moderation person that doesn't understand the addictive mind. They don't know about the deception, manipulation that the addict will use to get "help" while the enabler provides the stability required to continue in addiction. Being an addict is expensive and time consuming. The addict has to stay stuck in lots of real problems so they have excuses to use but also so they can make excuses to the enabler. The enabler probably really wants the addict to change. They feel an obligation to the person and at times even help an addict so that they can appear comparably strong and stable not having to look at their own character issues. The addict wants to be cared about and also wants to continue to use. The addict likes the idea of change and that is why they can make convincing change statements. The problem for the addict is I really want all the good things that come from being sober now if I could just get that and still use. The addict will use charm and affection or anything at their disposal to make the enable believe that this time they are for real. The addict lies to the enabler about changing but in turn and enabler will lie to the addict saying this is the last time I will help you out or continue to support you while you use. Yet they continue to come back and allow the addict to take from them. The enabler tells themselves that this is for the sake of the addict but it is another selfish act because the enabler doesn't want to believe that they are being played and that the addict never meant any of those wonderful things they said.
            Many times the enabler know the situation and prefers it because of the safety and control that is involved. Think back to high school and then think of the hottest girl you knew. Ok, now think about her ugly friend. Was the hottest girl really that hot or did she just position herself to appear hot. If the ugly friend becomes hot all of a sudden then the first hot girl has allot more work to do. What a perfect place to be if you don't want to have to change anything about yourself and you want to control everything but still not be alone. The enabler can have people feel sorry for them, appear so loyal and caring, and is never under threat of being asked to change. This is why many enablers get very scared if the ugly person next to them becomes good looking all of a sudden. 
            Both the addict and enable lie to each other and lie to themselves. To break out of enabling clear boundaries must be set. If you use I will stop supporting you, and then the key is when the person uses actually stop supporting them. The addict will not believe the enable any more that the enabler believes the addict when they say that was the last time. The addict will then test the enabler to see if they really mean it. This is the same testing that goes on by the enabler when the addict tries to convince the enabler that they really are sober. That is why it is so important to watch the actions of the person. The words are the same when someone actually changes and when they want people to believe actual change has taken place when it hasn't. The action is different every time.     
Battling the moderation is healthy lie
I get the impression that in our society we have convinced ourselves that moderation is healthy. It may come from the idea that all things are permissible but not all things are beneficial. I believe that the idea behind this phrase was an attempt to get people to step away from a set rules for everyone and to realize that we all have different struggles and the problems lie much more with the character of the person than the thing they are doing wrong. I tend to think about the idea that playing cards is evil. There were and probably still are people who thought anyone who played cards was a horrible person. I don't believe cards are evil but for someone who has a gambling addiction they may not ever be able to touch a deck of cards again. So we need to know ourselves.
Unfortunately, a person who is struggling with a gambling addiction and admits that he can't play cards ever again is looked at as weak and inferior by people who have no struggle with playing cards. They may say "playing go fish isn't a problem" and "we're not gambling" They may say that everything is ok in moderation.
 For the addictive mind things are not ok in moderation. It is very easy for the addict to always try to control their addiction thinking that everything is ok in moderation. If fact the hope of the addict is that someday their drug of choice will be controllable. It seems to make sense but moderation is a lie, maybe the best one an addict ever told themselves. - The reality is that it is very hard to quit something that you keep doing- in fact it is physically impossible by definition to stop doing something that you are still doing.  This simple concept almost never occurs to the addict. So only by rejecting the moderation is healthy idea can we quit anything.
Another idea that goes against moderation is healthy is the fact that many things in our lives are entirely unnecessary and don't contribute to our health in any way. Let me give you some examples white sugar, caffeine, ice cream and McDonalds...and I can keep going. These things are not required we would only be better off without them. I'm not saying that you have to give all these things up but you could and you would only be healthier for it. We actually need far less than we think we do. There was a time when there were no cell phone's computer or the internet, no processed foods. People lived. If it all went away today we would still live. So we can actually remove unnecessary things from our lives and actually be healthier for it. But most people want to believe that they need things so they criticize those of us that continue to remove unnecessary things from our lives 100%. McDonalds is better than some McDonalds. If people started to find out that we could be much healthier simply rejecting the idea of moderation and cut out the things that are not necessary we could be healthier people.
Parts of you- physical, relational, mental, emotional and spiritual
            We are all made up of different part that all work together. Some parts are seen and some are not. We are physical, relational, mental, emotional and spiritual. We are much more than this but this is a broad explanation. These five parts all effect each other and are meant to be balanced. If we focus too much attention to one than the others can be neglected and your whole self will suffer. In this same way when we fall to addiction it destroys every part. Only by recognizing the interconnected nature of our parts can we remove addiction from our whole self. Understanding our parts helps us to understand that all addiction starts because at least one part of our self is lacking. We choose to try to fill that lack with the thing that we later become addicted too. The faster we realize that addiction is a symptom of an existing imbalance in one or more of our parts the faster we can begin to treat the cause of addiction then removing the need for the addiction.
The addictive mind is clever and tends to move from one part to another. The body builder who's physical self looks great but can't seem to stop gambling. The mathematician who spends so much time learning about math that he has no relationships. Addiction tells us that if one part is ok than the whole is ok. If it can't destroy all parts than it is happy to take four out of five.
That is why many people can overcome a specific addiction in their lives and still not see a real change. Someone may stop drinking and that is great, sad to smoke twice as many cigarettes and start eating terrible to die of lung cancer and a heart attack at an early age. We must recognize addiction in every part of ourselves and then began a total retraining of our body, mind, relationships, emotional responses and our spirituality including exposing ourselves to positivity.
Many people get overwhelmed when they realize that in order to concur addiction they have to change every part of themselves. It is important people hear the hard truth about addiction early on so that they can truly prepare for what is to come. To often in addiction discussions people don't want to scare an addict so they will let them think that they can keep everything but the drug of choice. I find it is better to be real and not minimize situation. Most people do not have total victory in their lives but they could. Change is chosen. But don't be overwhelmed life is a process and so is the process of removing addiction from our lives entirely. Total removal can be the end goal with small goals along the way. If a person is trying to bench press 300 pounds they must first bench 100. If a person that can't bench 100 goes to the gym everyday for a year and tries to bench 300 they will probably make no progress but the person that recognizes the process will go lift 100 and then 200 and work up to 300. First work on your drug of choice then move on to the things that you have started to do more of since your drug of choice is gone. in time you will be able to have control over physical addictions and you can start working on concepts, quitting fear or sadness Situational truth, Lies and Universal truth
There are different forms of truth or maybe better explained is different levels of truth. There are situational truths. These are things that are true in a certain circumstance. Green means go is a situational truth in a physical traffic situation this is a true statement but the is no concept behind it and it doesn't apply to anything besides that situation. There are universal truths, these truths are concepts. Concepts that work and apply in the physical world but also our relational, emotional mental and spiritual selves. I'll give you some examples
-you reap what you so
-the only way to get to a solution is through a problem
in the first example this can apply to you physically, in planting seeds. Relationally in that how much you but into a relationship is directly proportionate to what you get out of it and so on. How much effort you put into quitting something is directly connected to how much success you will have in quitting. This concept deals with our personal responsibility to take ownership of our lives. 
In the second example we talk about lifts difficulties and problems. We can decide how to view them (it doesn't matter wheather it is a spiritual problem or physical problem ect.) if we recognize that no victory, success or satisfaction has ever taken place without first having a problem we can start to choose to view all problems as opportunities. Addiction is such a difficult problem that if you choose to overcome it will give you a true sense of victory in your life. allowing you to have huge rewards not possible without the problem of addiction to begin with.
Once we start to believe in universal truths we don't have to think so hard when making decisions. The universal truths work all the time and we don't have to look so hard at our situation. These universal truths give us wisdom where situational truth as good as it is can only make us smart. This is why you can have brilliant people that are very successful in a situation but a total failure in other parts of their life. The business man that knows he only makes money if he works hard and makes sacrifices but has a failed marriage and problems with his children. He understood the reap what you so concept in the situation of making money and didn't apply it universally to his family relationships. 
Some more universal truths are - you can't start and stop at the same time, the real concept is you can't do two things that are in total opposition to each other at the same time. Is sounds simple but we try to all the time this is the have you cake and eat it too concept. You can't quit something and still do it. You can't move forward and move back at the same time. The wisdom is seeing this and realizing that if we are moving backward the only way to move forward is to change directions. In my own life and in speaking with others it is amazing how much of the time I have to say. We don't change by doing things the same. This is key. If we are doing things the same we can't get a different result. How do we quit anything by changing things. If we choose not to do things different we choose not to change.
Truth, Reality and Beliefs
Many people make the mistake of only looking at the physical world and thinking that where ever they are or whoever they are at this moment is the truth about them. Where I am at this moment is my reality. But the truth and reality can be different things, they can also be the same. I'll explain. Clark Kent works for a newspaper, wears glasses and has a hard time with the ladies. This is his reality. But what others don't know is the truth about Clark. The truth is that he is an alien and can fly and shoot lasers out of his eyes. Now there was a time that Clark didn't know the truth about himself he got hints that he was different and as he experimented he discovered the truth. His belief moved from the idea that he was a normal guy to the belief that he was a super hero. He didn't change, he always had the ability but his belief changed and as his belief changed so did his reality. It soon lined up with the truth. He is superman. These superpowers are a awesome but they also mean that he will never really fit in with all the people who don't have superpowers.
If you are reading this. I have news for you. You have superpowers. Powers that can allow you true freedom. You won't be controlled by any substance, action or situation you can remove shame and fear from your life. You can do what you want when you want. In your current reality you are weak but that is not the truth. Start to believe in the truth and your reality will start to move toward it. The truth is that the things you think you can't give up are totally unnecessary. You can do what you want when you want, it is your wants that will start to change.
Many people make the mistake of fighting with their addictions. If you fight with something it becomes your target, you start to focus on it. Victory over addiction is letting go. Realizing the addiction is unnecessary. Balancing the parts of yourself so that the symptoms of addiction go away.
            Addiction is...
            Addiction is anything that a person wants to stop but can't. That means if you can't stop gossiping you should start to view it as an addiction. If you can't seem to stop overeating yup it's an addiction , this is anything. Usually the reason people want to stop doing a thing is because that thing has become more important than responsibilities, commitments, personal relationships, goals, promises, physical health and any number of other things that should be valued by a person.
Attempting to control
Some people realize they have a problem and then try to control the thing they are addicted to. Most of the time this control comes from a love for the addiction. 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 confect for an addict.
When control fails the addict 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 ways that the person may try to control the addiction in order to hold onto it is to let it go for a time. thje 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 slave 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 addictions for a time. While the person is taking a break from the preferred addiction.
            Some people can maintain a functional addiction 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 functional addict 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 just as I explained with the change circle. These people desperately need someone to help them come to a place of honesty. The functional addict still lacks all the sober characteristics that are found in freedom.
 
The path of addiction can take a long time or things can fall apart all at once. The important thing to know is that only the addict can decide when they have had enough slavery. Only the addict can decide when to treat the disease.
Addiction is a disease
            Addiction is an incurable disease. No amount of time will "cure" the disease. Also like an allergy: no amount of time away from allergen will "cure" the allergy. If you were allergic to dairy and every time you eat dairy it mad you act unlike yourself no amount of time or attempts would change that fact. Dairy products cheese, milk butter and ice cream will always smell good taste good and look good but the allergy is still there. Making you sick and you are stuck watching other people enjoy the things you can't have. The same is true with addiction.
            Victory over addiction comes when we recognize that we can't be like everyone else and then we stop taking or doing things that we are allergic to. If we stop trying to eat dairy and remove it from our lives we can keep from every experiencing the bad things that diary does to us. But the longer we ignore the allergy and keep on eating dairy the sicker we get.
                        Addiction has many different definitions and can be looked at in many different ways. Addiction is anything that if given up causes withdrawals. If you are reading this you may start to think about yourself and not so much the drunk on the corner. Anything that if given up causes withdrawals. So that can be heroin, or caffeine, or sugar or even an activity like being dramatic or gossiping and many more. These substances and behaviors are not required for us to live. If they are not required than why do we hold onto them so tightly? Because we don't want to go through the physical, mental and emotional withdrawals that they give us.
            This doesn't mean that you can't have a cookie ever again, you can. You don't have to but you can. I just want you to start shifting your beliefs from needs to unnecessary things that I choose. That gives you personal responsibility over your life and helps you to be proactive. When you realize whatever you are addicted to whether it's unhealthy food or alcohol that it is not needed. The first thing we think in our head when a choice presents itself is do I need this. Our brains are designed that way it is a great thing. Take care of your needs first. The problem comes about when we make things needs that are unnecessary. So someone offers to buy you a beer and instead of thinking is this good for me, will it help me accomplish my goals? We throw it right in the needs column. Would you like a beer? Yes. No thought simply I need beer so I should take it. That is the tendency when people realize they are an addict. They never take the time to investigate their own lives. Instead we blame. God, our situation our parents our well anything we can. Forever looking out away from ourselves. Away from the only solution to our problem.
You are what you say you are-
            That's right we are what we say we are. You define you or you let
others define you but either way you are defined. That means that at some point in addiction an addict starts to identify himself as an addict and what do addict do well they use, they stay addicted. If someone lies to you and you say " are such a liar" they will probably start to identify themselves as a liar and what do lies do...they lie. A better response is this. When someone lies to you say you are an honest person why would you choose to lie. This shows the person that they are acting in conflict with their identity and they have chosen to lie and therefore could have chosen not to.
            This applies even mire to how we choose to define ourselves. We may say to our self you are so stupid self. You are then defining yourself as stupid and stupid people make bad decisions. Start to realize that the first step in changing from one type of person to another is the choice to change the identity, the choice to change your name from addict to sober from stupid to wise. It is very difficult for an addict to get sober but it is so much easier for a sober person to get sober. By saying that you are something different you can then start to become something different. Now notice that I said the first step in change not the only step. If you stop that this first step you will be smack in the middle of denial. This concept like every concept can be twisted into addiction. But that is only done by the person that does not want to change. These people will never find sobriety. The freedom and power that come with sobriety are only found by people who look for them. finding involves seeking. if you are reading this you are seeking. Welcome to the club, the seekers who find club.    
The grieving process concept
            The future is uncontrollable, we make expectations based on our past experiences and core beliefs along with our current situation. We expect to be able to use substances/ food/ dishonesty and any number of other negative concepts in the future if it has worked as a coping mechanism in the past.
            Every time our expectations don’t match up with reality no matter how big or small they are we have the potential to have a very negative reaction. We grieve our unmet expectations
            If you wake up in the morning and put on a shirt you expect that you will end the day in that shirt. You make a cup of coffee and accidentally spill it on your shirt. At this moment the end the day in that shirt expectation dies and you enter into the grieving  process you may move to anger or depression. You can then have this incident ruin your whole day or week or however long it takes you to get to a point of acceptance. At this point you realize you have no control over a past event so you move on. Your no longer stuck in anger or depression or any other part of the grieving cycle. The danger is when your expectations are not met over and over again you may start to expect bad things to happen to you. Then you are trapped because either bad things happen and your prepared for them because you are expecting them so no grief or good things happen but you are so focused on the bad that a good thing would be outside of your expectations and you would actually grieve your unmet negative expectations. People that struggle with anger or depression and remain there for a significant amount of time are trapped in the grieving cycle. There is only one way out of the grieving cycle and that is through acceptance. You can't escape it any other way. Guess what other ways people try to get out through their addictions. But when they choose the addiction they expect to get out of the grieving process. Addiction doesn't take them out but further in. This leaves them with a new dead expectation and still trapped in grief but now they are pulling around a big heavy bag of addiction, and that is a big burden.
            So what can be done? The first thing, no matter where you are in this process, stop expecting things. Expectations are closed thoughts they say I expect to get a raise in pay today at my meeting with my boss. No raise begin the grieving process. Switch to hoping and get rid of expecting. Hoping is open minded positivity. I hope I get a raise today and if you don't you can carry your hope into the next day. Hoping is starting the day with a perspective that says I am open to hoping for an infinite number of positive things that will come my way today. Hoping is unknown. I hope good things happen and then good things do come our way things we would have missed if we would have had our expectation blinders on. Hope is in things didn't even know about when our day began. Expectations are limited to the knowledge we have at the beginning of the day and hope is in the recognition that we have no control over that day except our perspective of it.
            The next thing you need to do is choose the actual way out. Choose acceptance. "But I just still feel so ....." acceptance is a choice you make with your mind. You don't wait until you feel like accepting your lack of power over the past. Acceptance is when you decide to accept that you can't do anything about the past but can change the now and at that moment you decide to accept and then you go back to the first suggestion I made and hope that you feel like it at some point down the road. 
            The third thing you do is practice. Having a hard time accepting that big thing that happened in your past start with the cup of coffee you just spilled on your shirt and then work up to accepting that you didn't have the childhood you wanted or whatever other thing happened to you.
I am not saying that this will be easy at first but it can get easier and easier.
            Once we become aware of the grieving process when our expectations die we can recognize the process allow the feelings to come in freely but work through them almost instantaneously getting to the point of acceptance where we can then move on in the actual reality that is not what we expected.
            Let me repeat that. Once you figure out that every time you feel depressed or angry you can move to acceptance instantaneously. You can spill the coffee on your shirt and instantaneously accept it and move on. At this point you are free. Unaffected by unmet expectations and enjoying finding unexpected treasures in every day. Your life becomes a treasure hunt and all you have to do is live and hope to find the great things you didn't know about in the morning.
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Grieving Process -
   Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
  Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
  Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."[1]
  Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
  Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[
 
Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect - switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.[1]
Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.
            Those who have ears let them hear  
            This concept really unfolded for me when I was listening to my wife describe a person with a speech problem. She explained that when people are about one or two it is the best time to learn new languages. As we get older we start to hold on to the language that we use and it becomes increasingly difficult for us to learn new languages. Our hearing becomes so in tune with what we know we don't even hear what we don't know. So the person with the speech problem actually had a hearing problem. His brain had never learned certain sounds so of course he can't replicate a sound he can't hear, hence the speech problem.
            This is the same problem we have in other parts of our lives. We are so in tune with what we have learned that we stopped being able to even hear what we haven't. So those who have ears let them hear. The idea is that not everyone does. Some people have an ear for music and others don't the sounds are the same it is the listener that changes.
            If you want change in your life you will have to work hard to unlearn what you think you know so that you can then replace it with what you don't. This starts with listening. So listen close. A free person starts as a listening slave.
 Treating the symptom
            In this concept I'm talking about a crying baby. When a baby cries the loud noise is a problem. You could solve the problem of the noise by covering your ears so you don't hear it. No more noise problem solved. But this would be treating the symptom problem and not the cause problem. The other way to remove the symptom problem (the crying) is to stop and ask the baby why it is crying. The baby is probably not going to answer to you will have to do an investigation. You will have to think. You will defiantly have to spend more time and energy than just covering your ears. But if you care about the baby you will ask yourself does the baby need food or changed or to be held? You have to go through and start to meet all these needs and how will you know when you've found the right one, No more crying. The cause problem (let say hunger) is solved so the symptom problem (the noise) is no longer necessary.
            This seems simple enough but what do we do when we have a headache. We take a an pain reliever. but the head ache is a symptom. The pain reliever is the just like covering your ears to the baby. It is a symptom. Instead we need to ask ourselves about the cause of the headache. Am I dehydrated, or mineral deficient? Have I been staring at a computer screen too long? There could be any number of causes but you have to care enough about your head to do the work to fix the cause and the symptom goes away. I am repeating this concept because I see in my own past and in the lives of others around me symptom treating. Here is another example but this time I'll use an action instead of a physical thing. Lying is a symptom of unappealing truth. If the truth was better the lie is unnecessary.
            Addictive behavior starts as symptom treating. I'll say it again because this is the thing that everyone involved in a struggle where it be with food, porn, drugs or any number of other addictions needs to realize. Addictive behavior starts as symptom treating also called self medicating. It doesn't stay that way. as the addiction gets stronger the initial cause seams to fade away and many times that is just what the person wants.
            Let's say your father was verbally abusive to you as a child and because of this you feel bad. You may start an addictive behavior that makes you feel good. So we have cause (father problem) symptom (feel bad) and a choice. Do I treat the cause and deal with the problem with father or do I go for the quick fix and treat the symptom. Addictive behavior treats the symptom while you are doing the addictive behavior. The problem is that when you're not doing the addictive behavior the cause (father problem) is still there along with new problems that come with the addiction. Go to the cause and the symptoms will be unnecessary. The substance is used as a coping mechanism for your past abuse, trauma or unmet expectations. Got to the cause to remove the addiction.
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. 
The addiction Exodus
            I'm going to tell you a story. The journey out of slavery starts in a cold jail cell with Joe, Tom and Anthony. In the jail their cells are lined up one next to the other.
             Joe was put in jail at such a young age that it's all he knows. He has never been outside the cell. Tom remembers the outside world as a harsh and hostel place. It was lonely and fending for himself was hard. Sometimes he gets sick of jail but at least here he has three meals a day, a roof over his head and he is never alone. Anthony was put in jail as punishment for something he had done wrong a long time ago. He still feels so guilty about what he did that he figures he is right where he belongs.
            Then a person named Nick comes along and visits the jail. He is happy and has a strange smile like he knows a secret. Nick says "Joe, Tom and Anthony there is a wonderful place called freedom where there are no bars and you can come and go as you please. It is the most wonderful place. That's where I'm from." Each one replied in their own way. Joe excitedly said "I've never been out of this cell that sounds great." Tom replied," I have heard of that place but never really believed it existed. The world I remember was nothing like that." Anthony quickly started to laugh, "There is no place like Nick is a liar and a fool and even if there was a place like that we are locked in these cells. How cruel you are to come here"
            "The land of freedom is real and I can take you there." said Nick. "How?" Joe asked. "Reach in your pocket you'll find the key to your cell." replied Nick. "This guy is crazy! There is nothing but dessert out there." yelled Anthony as he turned away and refused to listen anymore. Joe and Tom reached in their pockets and sure enough they each found a key to their cell. Filled with joy they both unlocked their cells and ran out of the jail but before they left Joe yelled back to Anthony "Come on the key is in your pocket!" but Anthony just turned away.
            As soon as they got out side Nick started to lead the way through a hot desert. They walked on a wide road with tons of people. Nick kept talking about how great the land of freedom is. Joe and Tom were so glad to be out of their cells. As the days passed and they kept moving Tom asks, "How much further is it? I'm starving and the sun is too hot. You never said it was this far away and if there is a land of freedom what are all these people doing here." Nick replied, "These people could come too if they wanted to but we just have to keep moving." More time went by and Tom finally yells, "Forget this! Anthony was right even the jail was better than this dessert." Then Tom turned back and started walking toward the jail.
            "It's just a little bit further just down this narrow road." said Nick. Joe tired out didn't say anything but he kept walking. Then all of a sudden the dessert faded away and there was the land of freedom in all its beauty. A wonderful place but only a few people. "That cell seems so far away. I can't believe I'm here." said Joe. "I'm glad you trusted me." said Nick as they both sat down to relax. 
            Addiction is imprisonment. Whatever reason a person is in a cell time goes by and as it does a person in jail becomes institutionalized. This means people get used to the cell and are comforted by it because they know what to expect from it. In this story everyone did what they wanted, when they wanted to. The only question was did they want freedom or not. Are you Joe, Tom, Anthony or one of the people in the desert.
Hoarders
            Hoarders have a compulsion to collect positions, they pile up stuff. The stuff may not be sanitary or useful in any way they just have to keep everything. In other words hoards are addicted to stuff. Since this is an addiction I believe all of the concepts that I'm trying to unravel apply.
            Some people reading this may be thinking oh good I defiantly don't have a hoarding problem. But all addicts, and we are all addicts, have a compulsion to pile up stuff in our lives. The stuff may not be physical but it is still a bunch of useless things that we hold onto. People will hold on to useless beliefs that just get in the way of progress. We hold on to people that have no use to use. We hold on to our huge list of needs, that are really wants. We watch TV shows about hoarders and say those people are so nasty and then we use their physical mess to help us over look our own emotional, relational, mental or spiritual mess.
            What do you tell a hoarder when you want them to change. "Just get rid of all that junk, it's not worth anything." But have you ever heard that in your own life. has anyone ever said "just don't" has a skinny person ever said just don't eat? Has a sober person ever said just don't use? Has a happy person ever said just don't be sad? I have heard these things in my past and every time I found myself thinking this idiot just doesn't know that I need this stuff. I personally never struggled with hoarding physical stuff. But I think people who do are just making their environment look like their inside. When I was depressed I wanted my environment and those around me to be depressed.
            Two ideas here. First, you know an addict because you are an addict and second. Try to convince yourself to get rid of the useless stuff in your life physical and emotional, spiritual, relational, and mental. What are you clinging to? Chances are you thought it just then but said to yourself no I don't have to get rid of that I need it. You don't.
Time concept  
            I always want to point out things I have said in the past or things that I hear all the time that make no sense at all but people say it anyway and other people agree. This is one of those things. "It'll be easier to change later."
            Is it easier to climb out of a 1 foot hole or a 2 foot hole or a 15 foot hole. 1 foot simple enough. Is it easier to run 1 miles 2 miles or 15 miles? 1 mile simple enough. Is it easier to quit my addiction after 1 year 2 years or 15 years. 1 the answer is always less is easier. So get out of your addiction now and it will be easier. The longer you wait the harder it will be always. But some people just prefer to plan to change.
            Perpetual Preparation
            I have met allot of these people. I was one of these people. They always have a great plan of attack. When they see you they are telling you about the newest diet but they are still over weight. They may be at the bar telling someone about the AA meeting they are going to start going to. Or my favorite the person with a cigarette in their hand telling someone about how they know how to quit because they've done it before and how they are going to do it again next Tuesday. 
            People that carry around too many plans don't have space left to carry any actual change. Plans are fine just know that people who are addicted to things are often addicted to planning.
            My last one
            Here is a mistake I made a thousand times. This is my last__________. Yeah, fill in the blank. It doesn't matter what it is. You never get to have that one last magical experience with your addiction because then you'll remember the magic and forget it was you last time. You have to quit when your half way through or when it's already over. When you're hung over or feeling sick because of the shame. That's where quitting lives stay there. You give yourself one last great whatever and the chances of you not going back are slim to none. Think this way the last time I _______ was my last time. The next time is never the last time.
            Rewarding yourself
The addiction will whisper things in your ear and most them make no sense. We listen because we want to believe so bad. This is a lie the addiction uses and it makes no sense but it was so powerful. You're doing so good not ________ing you deserve a _______. Never ever reward yourself with the thing you quit. Reward yourself with something you're not addicted to. If you reward yourself with the thing your giving up you won't be giving it up so what is the reward for.
            Cheat days are a lousy idea if you want a change in your life. People say well it's too much to just give it up. If you have a cheat day planned than you haven't changed. Diets don't work. They don't work on food or drugs or depression or anything else. You can't be victorious if you already have a planned failure coming up. You don't get to be victorious for a few weeks so that you can go back to loosing again. If you are taking a break from lying but have a new lie planned out for next week then you never took a break to begin with you just used some patience to make it a good one.
            Two types of thinking
            I clearly remember people telling me you should stop before you get addicted. I had the first kind of thinking. I don't have to stop because I'm not addicted. So I didn't stop. Then I woke up one day and someone told me I should stop and I realized I couldn't stop because I was addicted. That is when my thinking changed to the second type. I started telling myself that I was an addict and that was my new reason to not stop.
             The reality is that with both those ways of thinking have one consistent theme use. Addiction exists where ever use exists. The thinking may change but the use is the same.
Buzzer example
            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.
            Three types of people
            There are three types of people when it comes to a specific addiction. Never used, social user and the addict. I say a specific addiction because a person may not be addicted to one thing but very addicted to another. One of my main goals so far has been to point out that everyone can get something from the removal of addictive thinking on some level. The vast majority of people today have some addictive struggle on some level. For example a person a drinking problem but that doesn't mean that they are not over weight and struggling with a food addiction. A person who has an addiction to anger may not have an addiction to caffeine.
            With that said I'll go back to the start. There are three types of people when it comes to a specific addiction, let use alcohol for example. The first kind of person has never drank. This person is not addicted and I call them doesn't use. Simple enough, the second person drinks socially and so I will refer to them as the social user. Finally, the third kind of person is an alcoholic and I will call them the addict.
            I know that there are places where the line between social user and addict are blurry, the addict loves this fact. In any case hear me out. A sober person is in the doesn't use category. The goal of the addict is to find a away to move from the addict category to the social user category. The addict will try with everything they have to prove to others and themselves that they already are just social users. Only when the addict gives up on becoming a social user and accepts that they must choose to either remain an addict or move to the doesn't use category do they become free.
Addiction give away
 How can you tell if you or someone else is an addict? Here are some things that are give a ways that someone is in the addict category.
-They spend allot of time explaining why they are not an addict.
-They tell you they aren't addicted while doing the thing they are telling you they aren't addicted to.
-Here's one for alcoholics. The alcoholic may spend time reading the Bible and pointing to the water into wine miracle as a reason to drink.
-They never leave half way through.
-There are many more tells. Some are pretty standard. If you use alone or lie about your use that is good information.
            The last one that I will share is a hard one for most people- an addicted person can't go 6 months without the thing they are addicted to. I'm going to spend some time here. If the idea of going without a person place or thing strikes fear into you then you are controlled by that fear. Since you are controlled by fear you are not living in victory. I have thought about this and there are people out there that love their addictions so much they could wait a week or even a month but six months is a long time. The challenge here is to be truly free. If you are thinking to yourself. I don't have to give _______ up. Give it up and then find yourself starting to use the justifications. If you really want to change know yourself. 
Opposing characteristics
            Slavery aka addiction involves certain actions and concepts that are in direct contrast to freedom aka sober actions and concepts. Building the concepts of one takes away from the other. That means that seemingly unrelated actions and concepts are actually direct contributors to the inability to move out of slavery. If you realize this you can start to focus much less energy on the addictive symptom being the thing you can't give up and use that energy on things that you can. Be creative, think of it this way. If you are in a deep hole you might try with all your might to climb out with your bare hands. Eventually you may get tired and give up but look around. There may be a something that seems to be unrelated to the hole that you can use to get out. Maybe something to build a latter. Possibly something you can use as a rope. Don't waste your time trying to get out of addiction with your bare hands use other concepts and it won't be a problem. The addiction is clever you have to outsmart it. It sees you coming when you run up and try and fight it head on with no weapons. It knows you don't stand a chance. But when you build these characteristics in your life you walk up to addiction well armed and there is no fight the addiction has to run away and look for someone weaker and with less character than you.
 
            It is also important to mention that these characteristics are can be exercised in other parts of your life and they will automatically reduce the amount of addictive thinking that you have. You must use them or you lose them and this is how people fail. As long as the characteristics are strong addiction is weak. You can build them up and have "victory" for a time but you never get to stop using the characteristics. As soon as you do you will find yourself in slavery again. Think or some pro athletes after they retire. They stop training and their bodies stop performing. Stop training your character and it will stop using it's addiction fighting power. Freedom is lifelong and it's not something that you need to retire from.
 
Here are the tools to victory
 
Freedom (Sober) Characteristics
 
1. Honesty
2. Selflessness
3. Self-discipline
4. self-respect
5 Accountability
 
and their opposites
 
Slavery (Addictive) Characteristics
1. Dishonesty
2. Selfishness
3. Impulsiveness
4. Shame
5. Isolation
 
I am going to break these down for you. These are the tools, the weapons that will bring you out of slavery.
 
Sober Characteristics
 
1. Honesty / Dishonesty
           
             Honesty is the most important part of victory. Take your attention off of the things you are struggling with and focus on honesty. Being honest is nice for the person you are being honest but honesty is the most powerful gift you can give yourself.
            Honesty is an art that needs to be practiced. The more you practice being honest to others the stronger truth will get and all addiction and slavery is connected to lies. The lies we tell ourselves and other to continue in slavery. No lies no slavery. Truth is freedom. Once you start to learn the power that truth offers it will blow your mind. Fear, shame, hiding all run from truth. Better yet liars run from truth. If you master truth in your own life then you can start to see the lies that other people tell. Lies only work if the liar is believed. If you learn the standard lies that you tell yourself as well as the lies you tell others you will never be a slave again. 
            Because truth is so powerful you have to earn it by giving up everything that you are hiding. Yes everything, all the junk that you have tucked away hoping that no one ever sees. That is why most people never become free, they want the lie. Liars are slaves who live in fear that someone fill find out the truth. So truth becomes the enemy.
            Be warned. Choosing honesty is choosing power but it is also choosing quality. It is saying I would rather have a little honesty than allot of lies. It is like saying I would rather have a pound of gold that 1,000 pounds of dirt. It is saying I would rather have 2-3 friends that really know me that 1000 people who don't know me at all. If you don't want honesty, if you don't choose gold don't be surprised at how much dirt is in your life.
            It is important to note that lying is only necessary when the truth is unappealing. If you get an A on your test there is no need to lie about your grade. So lying only exists because people believe that the truth isn't good enough. When you realize this then liar just seem sad. Liars are always in a state of poverty. 
            Truth is a big deal but don't get overwhelmed just remember the more you tell the truth the less dishonesty will be in your life. If you need a place to start, start by telling the truth. If you are struggling with an addiction whatever it is. Just start telling the truth in other parts of your life and as you do it will become easier to be honest about your addiction. I said to start, so once you have done that and done it consistently finish by adding truth to the addiction. No lies, no slavery. No lies no addiction. It is possible.
Types of Lying
 
            There are lots of ways that we lie to ourselves and others. People lie so often they often have no idea that they are not being honest. Sit in a coffee shop for a while and listen. If you hear people talking chances are you will hear some people lying.
To help you here is a list of common lies.
1. Lying- simply not telling the truth
 
2. Omission- telling part of the story but leaving out the part about you
 
3. Distraction- quickly look at anything that is not connected to question or situation
 
4. Truth while avoiding-saying true things that have nothing to do with the question
 
5. Blame shifting - they..he...It's not my fault (finger pointing)
 
6. Hesitation- trying to wait in hopes the other person just moves on
 
7. Half truths- I kind of, sort of, maybe I did
 
8. Joking- telling the truth and following it with just kidding
 
9. Silence- Refusing to answer the question
 
10. Minimizing- no big deal
 
*11. Exaggeration- when a person makes something bigger to make their rightness bigger
 
This was a personal struggle of mine.
 
 (example-  Every single time we talk this happens. or  All the people at work are ridiculous, every last one without fail.)
 
If people pointed out my exaggeration I would say "I used an exaggeration to make a point and the point stands." the problem is that the point was never strong enough on its own I had to prop it up.
            Ok so now hopefully you are starting to think back to the list of justifications. Most of the justifications that we use are lies. If we can't justify something we cannot do it. This is power, freedom and peacefulness.
            I have some people will practice and take pride in their ability to lie. They practice their lying skills hoping to fool everyone. This is perticularly sad. Liars can never trust anyone. See it's built into lying, the more you lie the less you trust, the less you trust the less peace, joy, freedom, you have. The judgment for lying happens instantaneously. Even if no one ever knows and you forget you have still lost something.
2. Selflessness / Selfishness
 
            Selflessness is tricky. It is true that all conscious human action involves self. If you give your friend the best birthday present ever it is because you value that persons happiness, so you get something out of it and therefore where really giving in order to get. I don't want you to get hung up on the this even selflessness is selfish idea and I only brought it up because in the past I would justify my own selfishness using this kind of thinking.
             Selflessness is thinking about others instead of yourself. Addiction is all about self. When I say selflessness I am talking less about giving to others and more about not feeding yourself. We are consumers we are taking in from the minute we wake up until the moment we lie down. We feed on food, stimulants, caffeine, sugar, entertainment, sex, drugs. This is the selfishness of addiction.
            I found out recently that if you put huge amounts of food in front of some animals they will eat until they die. They never get full enough to stop and they just thin k they are blessed until the blessing kills them. Don't be like those animals.
            It is for this reason that not all addictions are bad in and of themselves. It is never about the thing you can't give up it is about you and your perceived need to feed. I think of a fisherman. Catching fish is great until you have so many that the boat starts to sink. Then there is a choice to make. This is not an argument for moderation, it is the acknowledgement that if the fisherman is unable to cut the nets to save the boat he should quit fishing all together and try being a farmer.
            Look at the word selflessness Self Less ness. This has become the background music to my life me saying self less. The less you have in other areas of your life the better able you will be to have less of your addiction, less means less slavery. So whatever you struggle with try exercising the muscle of selflessness in other areas. As this characteristic grows the addiction will shrink.
3. Self-discipline / Impulsiveness
 
            In the past I would make promises to myself and others. Then I would decide to lie and do the thing anyway. Once I made that decision I would turn off my self-discipline and go straight into impulsiveness mode. I probably looked like a dog sniffing around for a bone. I was focused on a target no time for a conscience. No time for thought about the consequences. This is the self discipline that I am talking about. Mastering the ability to either pull yourself out of impulsiveness or catch yourself before you go into it.
            Easier said than done I know. There were times when I did pull myself out of it and then I would reword myself by doing it anyway. Wow. Well the way to strengthen your self-discipline is to start using it in seemingly unrelated things. If you can't seem to quit smoking. Keep smoking and start exercising. Focus on exercising. Get an exercise routine. I'm not saying to give up on quitting all together just realize this is one way to help you quit. When I was a smoker I didn't exercise. There didn't seem to be much point I was unhealthy and couldn't breathe very well. But do it and exercise your self-discipline while you are at it. This is a great way to weaken addiction.
4. Self-respect / Shame
 
            Self respect is another characteristic that can drive addiction out of your life. The more self respect you have the less you will be controlled by people or substances. Self respect involves being secure enough in yourself to not be controlled. The opposite of self respect is shame. Shame is everywhere in addiction it is in hiding. We always hide what we are ashamed of, our problems, our fat, our weakness. But self respect comes in when there is no shame, nothing to hide. Commit to not hiding anything because of your self respect. The more shame you let into your life the less free you can be.
            Self respect is something that so few people have that when we find it we are amazed. We see it so infrequently that when we do we feel the need to find something that the person is doing wrong. We do thi9s because of our own insecurity. We want to continue to believe that self respect is a myth, like Santa Claus. We are all skeptics now. Even as you are reading this you may be thinking yeah right I know this guy is hiding something, he must still be doing something. I'm not.
            The tricky part about self respect is that you can never know whether it is real or not from the outside. Only the person knows, you can get glimpses of the person if you listen and watch closely. If they feel the need to lie or hide that is information telling you at this moment the person does not have self respect. But don't write them off. As soon as they start being honest and admitting instead of hiding they will immediately get self respect.
            I do have to make note that some people figure this out and try to cheat their way into self respect. I'll give you some examples. Have you ever seen or heard someone claiming to be proud of something that involves them being a slave. Sometimes it is a tee shirt or a bumper sticker. It is the person that thinks that if they tell the world that they are proud to be a promiscuous, or addicted or any number of other negative  things that they will be free. The person has figured out that shame is bad but unfortunately telling others that you are proud to be a slave never makes them envy you. You get the benefit of not hiding and all the draw backs of people knowing have bad things are for you. No amount of bragging about being a slave ever made anyone free. So if you catch yourself saying "yeah I'm (insert your issue here) " That is information telling the rest of us that you are so far into your addiction that you just don't have the energy to lie anymore. Never be that person and if you are I hope that explaining it to you helps you choose the third way. Stop lying and bragging about being a slave and get yourself free.
            To get self respect you must remove shame. To remove shame you must make your secrets known. Shame hides in the shadows and is afraid of light but self respect is out there in the light.
 
 
5. Accountability / Isolation
 
            The fifth and final characteristic is accountability and it's opposite isolation. So much goes into accountability and I have thought long and hard about what it means. It like the other characteristics is all about you. In the same way that being honest is for you so is accountability.
            Accountability involves telling other people about your goals. It is recognizing that some moments we are weak and others we are strong. Some moments we are not tempted and other moments we are not. accountability comes in when you are in a good place, when you aren't tempted. You recognize that at this moment you are thinking clearly, you are feeling strong and at the same time you recognize that a time will soon come when you feel weak and defeated. So when you are strong you have to prepare for when you are weak. You need to find someone and tell them to be the strong voice when you are weak.
            Here is an example. Hey Joe I'm trying to stop __________ing and right now I feel good. Unfortunately soon I will change, I will lie, I will try to manipulate you and myself into justifying my actions. When i feel this way can I call you?
            So accountability requires the other four characteristics. It is not easy but it is a very powerful tool. It is recognizing that shame can be controlled, it can be used as motivation to do what is right. Accountability is an effort to bring others into the truth about your weakness. It is not about hiding and it is not about the other person. The reason I say that is because in that crucial moment before you slip into impulsive mode, when you are deciding whether or not to do what you said you wouldn't you know you can call someone. The act of calling is enough to get you to stop. By the time you have called the person you have already resisted going into impulsive mode. 
            The person shouldn't be a person that is currently struggling with the same problem. It could be a person that has defeated the same problem. This would allow you to learn from someone who knows. It could be a person that doesn't have a just a person that won't make garbage excuses for you. Or it could be a person that is struggling with an unrelated problem. I have had some go bonds with people when I made myself accountable about one thing and they made themselves accountable about another. Both people are vulnerable and seeking victory. It would be great if it was a person you respected and someone that you wouldn't want to lie to. Accountability must have honesty. Lying to someone immediately removes the entire purpose. 
            Isolation is the slavery characteristic because there is no trust among thieves and no friendship among liars. Isolation doesn't mean that you are alone physically it means that you don't have anyone but yourself. I know that you can be in a bar full of people but the only friend you are there to see is alcohol. Isolation is the feeling that all you have is the thing that is enslaving you. Now people often think that they have friends when they are slaves. You may find someone that you have allot in common with the person may be enslaved to the same thing, they may love it just as much, they may have all the same problems and use all the same excuses as you. You may try to use negative accountability with this person because you don't want to be alone. "Let's stay the same, let's never change." What is really being said is, "let's stay slaves, never leave me, never become happy and health or I will be alone." Negative accountability is never for the listener it is always for the one doing the talking. Chances are the only thing that you have in common with the person is the addiction.
Explanation about characteristics
 
            So those were my five characteristics of freedom and my five characteristics of slavery. I know that I could have added to the list and there is allot of overlap between those five. I have a hard time talking about anything and not having truth be a big part of it. The root word of characteristics is character. Having character is the key to overcoming addiction of any kind. I hope that you see that character is not something that you do to avoid going to hell. Character is the preset mechanism of change. I know this is hard to believe, it was hard for me. The reason we treat others good is not for them it is because it is to only way we can learn to treat ourselves good. Don't get me wrong, the thing that makes it great is that others still get the benefit of being treated good weather it was for them or not. Character is a win, win and without these characteristics I don't know how to do what you want when you want. How can you, hiding, lying, manipulating takes up so much time and energy.
Manipulators will
 
When people are trapped in addiction they have to manipulate the people around them. You may not even realize it. Here are some ways that you may be manipulating people or ways that you may be being manipulated.
 Success/ Failure
 
            Manipulators will make their success of failure hinge on you. This
 
means that they will position themselves so that all the pressure falls on you and all the manipulator has to do is be there. I remember calling people when I was tempted. I would call when they were unavailable on purpose and let ring once. That way it was their fault, they didn't support me and all I had to mess up.           
            Another example of this type of manipulation is when the person makes another person the decision maker. Have you aver said to someone or had them say to you. You should just leave me, you would be better off without me. This is a word trap that puts the other person in the place with all the responsibility to make the hard decision. Never say what other people should do about your problems. if you think the person would be better off then leave them and say them the hard choices. The other way that this is a set up is that if the person does leave the addict is perfectly positioned to have an excuse to do the thing that made the person leave in the first place, it allows for self pity and the person can be the victim.
Keeping score 
 
            Manipulators love to keep score and make deals you don't know about. This is when the manipulator does lots of nice things for another person but the whole time is keeping track so that they can then have guilt free use. A husband may clean the whole house for his wife while he drinks. The wife comes home and is upset to find him drunk again but she is trapped, he can point to all the things he has done and say I have done all this for you and you can't let me have...She then finds out that there was a deal going on that she didn't even know about.
            Gift giving is another form of this. The manipulator will get a large gift for the person knowing that he can then spend that same amount of money on his own addictions. Be careful taking gifts from people who like to attach strings to them. The manipulator will try to make you feel so good that you won't remember to be angry about the addiction.
 Your problems
            Manipulators seem to forget their own wrongs but always have a list of things to point to in the people around them. This way if anyone tries to tell them to change that person will be hit back with their own insecurities. Here's one "Oh, I should quit smoking how does that fast food taste?" See how the health of smoking is immediately ignored and fast food is now the topic.
            The best way to deal with this is to start changing yourself. The power that is found in being free and not enslaved by anything is the ability to never have to worry about what someone will say if you try to help them. We have to teach people to change by changing ourselves. If you want your friend to stop doing drugs, then make sure your not overweight because the person will never hear what you are saying as long he or she knows that you're not really free. Addicts know that they never have to take advise from an addict so they will look carefully to see if they can find any slavery in your life. The thing they find may be small, a caffeine addiction is enough to ruin good advice. If you can't give up your coffee how can you tell anyone else what to give up?
            If you know that you have your own issue but don't want to change it then you have no business trying to change anyone else. But if the person sees you change they can then see that it is worth it, see how to do it, and see that you are real. Nothing is harder for me to see than an overweight doctor giving health advise or a smoker teaching others how to quit using drugs. 
 
Where you down
            Manipulators will were you down. They will keep bugging you until you give in. Children learn this one at an early age and keep it in their pocket all the way up to adulthood. The manipulator knows that if they have more endurance than you then you will give in. If you are going to take a stand against something you have to be willing to stand longer than the other person and they are very motivated. If you are not up for the endurance race with a manipulator then don't start. If you start and stop you will teach the manipulator just how to get you.
            Parents if you really love your children then learn how to say no. You are teaching them things every time they ask you for something. A lot of people are enabling parents. They want their children to change but they don't want to change themselves. The child never sees the parent change and never learns how to change them self and the cycle continues. As a parent don't get worn down.
Abusers
 
            Once a manipulator's tricks don't work they tend to do one of two things. Move on to an easier target or switch things up and become abusive. Have you ever pointed out someone's lie and before you know it they are yelling and screaming as you've done something wrong. That is the shift from manipulation to abuse. Being abusive has to do with the father that beats his kids but there is allot more to it than that. You may be being abusive and not even know it.
            All abusive behavior is rooted in a double standard. I have not been able to think of one abusive act that isn't. A double standard has to do with hypocrisy and hypocrisy sounds like this "do what i say and not what I do". Any time someone says this they are trying to establish a double standard. Often kids pick up on this but have a hard time understanding it conceptually. You may tell your child to go to bed at 8:00pm. But you stay up until 10:00pm. This is not a double standard. When I say do what I say and not what I do I am always referring to the characteristics of freedom.
            If you lie but you punish your child for lying then that is a double standard and it is entering into abusive behavior. Unfortunately parents often think well in order to not be hypocritical I will not punish my child for lying. Then lowering the standard for everyone. We'll get into low standards later but this is not the way to handle a double standard. The thing to do would be to stop lying so that when your child lies your punishment is legitimate.
            Abusers love double standards. I'll give you some examples. I have a gun and you are unarmed so give me your money. All theft is abuse, I take from you but you don't take from me. If each person took something it would be an exchange and would be a great. All types of bullying are abusive. I get to make fun of you but you don't get to make fun of me so on and so forth.
             Abusers always want to make sure that they are going up against someone weaker than them. They travel in packs or seek out woman, children, elderly or even animals. Abusers always have alot to say when they are looking down at someone and nothing to say when they are looking up.
            I want to explain all this because abuse and addiction go hand in hand. People use substances that hinder brain function and when they do their ability to manipulate quickly goes away and they become abusive. So this is important whether you are the abuser or the abused. many people use the substance to justify their abuse. Whisky makes me crazy is one I've heard several times. If you become abusive every time you have a substance and you continue to use the substance then you are choosing to be abusive, it is no excuse. 
            Understanding abusive behavior is the best way to guard against being abused or being abusive. People are abusive for a reason. Abuse is always information about the persons inability to be free. That's right abusers can't do what they want when they want and that is why they believe that being abusive is necessary. If you seek power over someone else it is always because you don't have enough power over yourself. If you have to control other people through double standard it is always information that you don't have control over yourself. An addiction to a abusive behavior can be treated. Abuse is an outward expression of inner weakness. Like all other addictions if the inner problem is dealt with the symptom will go away.
            I'm not justifying abuse I'm only trying to explain it so that if we understand it proactively we will better now how to deal with it in our own lives. If you remove double standards from your life it will be very difficult to ever be abusive again whether it be anger, theft, verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual predators or any of the other ways that this type of weakness shows itself.
            Only when you remove abusive behavior from your life are you free to do what you want when you want. Until then you will be to busy being controlled by weakness. Many abusers don't like being abusive they simply don't know how to stop. This is the same concept that we find in other types of addiction.
Timing
            When it comes to addiction timing comes into play. Social users tend to make exceptions to use. A social drinker may only drink on a Friday night with friends. The alcoholic will be there but he will also drink on Saturday and Sunday and so on. A healthy person may have cake on someone's birthday were a person struggling with eating would have cake any day of the week. The point here is to know timing.
            This is a type of justification. I had a bad day, I had a good day, I had a stressful day I had to work today, I had a day off, I was with friends, I was alone. When you are enslaved to something the addiction doesn't care what day or time it is. The response when the addiction uses this type of excuse has to be, I will not do that today.
            You must have the mentality that as long as I don't use today I am ok. The trick here is that every day is today. That's right as long as you don't lie today you will not lie, as long as you do not steal today you will not steal. When you see that you can always choose not to be enslaved today you have already stepped into victory. You have acknowledged that you don't have to do that thing today, you have become proactive and you have taken personal responsibility for your situation. The addiction never wants you to be free and so it will always use timing to get you to continue in slavery. The addiction will either get you to think about the past or the future.
            "I have always ________'ed in the past." Or, you mean that I can never ______ ever again as long as I live?" Thinking too much about the past or the future can be a distraction from this moment. Freedom lives in the moment. Freedom is always in today, it always stays in the now far away from the trap of who you were in the past and the fear of the unknown future. Be controlled by nothing in this moment and you will see that you are free.
            The way that people often try to cheat their way into freeedom is to try and buy now and pay later. Addiction loves this. You can drink tonight and you won't feel the effects until the morning. What if you instantaneously got hung over, maybe it would change things. No matter what your struggle is you are probably trying to put off the consequences. The idea is that if you can push the consequences to tomorrow at least you have today, but you don't. So be careful running too much makes you tired and weak and that is just the way the addiction wants you to be.
Replacement vs. Removal
            It is far easier to replace something than remove it. But this truth needs an explanation. In my personal experience and what I have seen, which is what this is all about by the way. People tend to either remove, replace with something the same, or replace with something different.
            Lets start with remove. This is when people just try to give stuff up. To just remove it from life and it can be done. But it doesn't seem to be sustainable because with any void comes an ache that often drives people back to the thing they gave up. Many times they go back and are in even deeper soon after. I would not suggest this option.
            Then there is replacing with the same thing. An example of this would be when a person shifts from one addiction directly to another and believes a change is better than staying the same. There is no freedom here, just changing slave masters. Sometimes people can step down from one addiction to a another. An example of this would be not drinking but chain smoking cigarettes. For some this can work as it shows the process of change as you move from one destructive habit to another. But be careful the addiction wants to kill you and has no preference weather you die of liver failure or lung cancer. Never stop there. Another important point with this type of replacement is that many times the things we switch to are leading us back without us even knowing it.
            I will go over nutrition later but in the case of an alcoholic, the body breaks down alcohol as a sugar and a switch to consuming lots of sugar can trigger a relapse. This is important information that many alcoholics don't know. They may walk into a meeting after smoking a cigarette which injects your body with toxins. You then eat a doughnut which further trigger craving for alcohol as your blood sugar levels change. Followed by a cup of coffee that acts as a stressor on the body, it causes a spike that is followed by an energy crash and finally as the meeting is over the alcoholics is biologically set himself up to go straight out a and drink.
            The third way is replacing the addiction with something that will not lead you back to it. This is the best thing a person that wants to break free can do. It always depends on what you can't give up, but this often involves gaining knowledge like I'm trying to give you. Know your addiction in order to know what to replace it with. This often involves going deeper. Knowing that alcohol strips the body nutritionally the best thing to do is to replace it with nutritious foods. If you are addicted to porn you may want to replace your computer with something out side. Possibly the things that you have been neglecting, family friends children or work. The point is just as every addictive concept must be replaced with a sober one, every addictive action should be replaced with a sober one.
Dry Drunk
            It is important to bring up the dry drunk scenario. This is when a person stops the symptom addiction but never stops the problem. This is why I keep emphasizing freedom. you can never drink again and stay a slave. Well, why quit then you might ask. I didn't say you had to stay a slave I said you could. Sometimes the realization that we can't do what we want when we are slaves ticks people off so much that they feel the need to walk around destroying people whether they still do the addictive act or not. This is the miserable guy in the meeting who knows the horrible things that will happen if he drinks but know that he is still not free so he just makes people miserable. Don't be this person.
            The addiction loves a miserable sober person. What better thing to point to in order to keep someone from getting free. Where ever you are go further there is still more for you.
The Law
            Addiction is never about the law. Notice at no point so far have I said don't get addicted to things because it's against the law. Addiction enslaves people, it doesn't matter whether you are addicted to cocaine or food. I'm not saying that they are the same but the thinking is the same. Is it worse to be addicted to cocaine or food? Well that depends on whether you are about to die from an over dose or from a heart attack. The addiction doesn't care, either way you're dead.
            People addicted to illegal drugs know all the excuses about why it is ok. An adult that drinks and then tells their kid not to is probably making some argument about it being against the law. The kids probably knows that the law isn't perfect. There is no law that says how much alcohol a person can consume in their home. The law doesn't say that a person can't huff glue.
            Don't stop reading here, I'm not saying that we should do away with laws I'm trying to fulfill the law. I'm trying to get you and the people around you be free I don't want you to be enslaved to a legal substance or an illegal one. So remember that if you're enslaved to something that is legal get free before you criticize those enslaved to illegal substances. 
Changing yourself to change others
            This has been a reoccurring idea so far but it is too important to not emphasize. Do not try to change anyone else until you have changed yourself. A liar is not the person to teach honesty. If you are enslaved and you try and tell someone else to stop being enslaved you run the risk of doing more harm than good. You are showing that you have a double standard and as I pointed out in the abuse section all abuse comes from a double standard.
            Don't think that you shouldn't try to help others first remove the slavery from your life and then go out and remove slavery from others. Often your change is the best way to change others. If they see how to change they will much more likely to respond than if you just tell them. You may be thinking but I'm not addicted to anything. Look harder. If you want your kid to stop smoking pot give up bread. What? yeah, give up something that you enjoy on a daily basis. Something that You don't need. Something that everyone around you is doing. Something that you feel no moral conviction about. Something that makes you feel good. Give up bread, give it up in all forms. Hopefully your brain is being flooded with reason why you don't have to. Hopefully you are feeling a little defensive or thinking about how hard it would be. Good by changing yourself you will experience the same thoughts feelings and emotions that the person you are trying to change is experiencing. Let them see your struggle. Maybe you will fail and will be tempted to hide it from the person maybe you will make excuses. The best leader is often the person one step in front of you.
Worst case scenario
            Lots of times people start to get free but they keep one photograph of the old times. Instead of leaving it all at the grave of the addiction mourning and moving on They keep just one little thing. It could be any number of things sometimes it is an actual photo of the person doing the addiction but most times it is a mental worst case scenario.
            It is that one horrible thing that could happen and it would justify going back to the old ways. For some it is if a family member were to die. For others it may be a spouse leaving or a job falling through. Whatever it is you must get rid of it. This is not your intention but you risk starting to wish for the worst case scenario. You may start subconsciously or consciously pushing away a spouse or day dreaming about losing that job. You may start to wish for that one perfect excuse to go back. Be on your guard. Admit this and then start to plan about what you would do even if the worst case scenario would happen. Once the door is completely shut it blends right in with the wall. It is always there but you would have to look for it.
Sorry
 
This something that you have probably said or heard today. We hear sorry all the time.  The problem is we don't see sorry very often. When I was enslaved I got good at say sorry. It's not hard to say when you don't mean it. I would often say sorry you. Let me give you an example. "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way." That is not an apology. Any time a person say I'm sorry you...it is an insult. When I realized this it really caused me problems because I did it so often. So if you yourself say it or someone says it to you never for one second believe that it is an apology.
            There is another kind of sorry. It is a "sorry I" statement which is good but unfortunately it is no apology. This is a very easy "I'm sorry" it is the I'm sorry with no change of action. Any apology without a change in action is a manipulation attempt. It is an effort to remove guilt, shame or punishment while continuing to do the wrong thing. To explain this to people I might start poking the person in the arm, while saying "I'm sorry for poking you in the arm" If you're sorry then quit. Yes, that is right. The goal of this section is to try and get way more quality apologies and that will probably mean way less apologies, that's ok.
            The only real apology is one that comes with a change in action. If the action doesn't change the sorry is either an insult or a manipulation. So listen carefully both to yourself and others. Saying you're sorry and changing your action is a very difficult and humbling act. I know because I still struggle with it. But it is one of the most important things to learn. If you want your family and friends to apologize to you then start teaching them how by doing it. If you master apologies you will see what it is to be truly free from guilt.
            If your thinking "but I'm can't change", "it's their fault" or "I'm not sorry" cool. If that is the case then alright, just don't apologize. If you apologize and either don't mean it or don't change then it will become increasingly difficult to actually apologize.
            The benefits of use
            No matter what your struggle you are getting something out of it. Instead of treating our issues as entirely evil it is more important for us to stop and understand what am I getting out of this thing. If someone does something that sickens you, stop. Resist the initial temptation to condemn them and think. What are they getting out this, what is the benefit? If you are more concerned with getting the person to stop than with your own greatness then you will figure out what need is being met by the act. What need is the person meeting. Find another way to meet that need and you will help. Condemnation and removal are far less successful than grace and replacement. In doing this with others it will encourage others to do the same to you.
What you don't know
You don't know what you don't know. Other people don't know what they don't know. I so quickly judge ignorance but the truth is that what I know now I have only known for a short time. It will change and grown and I can't wait to find out what I don't know. What will that be? I don't know that is why I am excited. There can be fear in the unknown. sometimes the best way to teach people is to ask them questions. Sometimes the best way to help someone is to ask them for help.
            I had a friend who was struggling with anger. he was a great guy but he would snap at people and just get so frustrated with people. I know what it is to struggle with anger. Instead of telling him what I thought he needed to hear I tryed a different approach, because frankly I didn't want to get him angry. So I went to him and asked him if he could help me with my anger issue. I asked his advice, I made myself accountable. When I would see him getting upset I would pull him aside and ask him how I was doing with my anger.
            The funny thing is that he was able to give me great advice. As time went on my vulnerability caused him to work on his anger, he was taking his own advice. Eventually he thanked me for asking him for help because it had helped him and then he figured it out. I understood that I was giving him an opportunity to teach himself.
            He knew all about dealing with anger, what he didn't know was how to listen. We have to find out what people know and what they don't. Often they know the right answer they don't know how to apply that right answer to their own lives. We have to stop focusing on what people don't know and shift to what they do. We can never be angry with people for not learning only mad at ourselves for not teaching.    
            Knowledge can be a big responsibility. That is why so many people subscribe to a life of ignorance and call it bliss. It is sad because I can say they literally don't know what they are missing out on. I can remember when my goal was to forget, to know less. now I know better. and even though knowledge can be dangerous I choose it.
Defensiveness
            Here is the deal with defensiveness. Every time you or someone else gets defensive you are telling everyone around you right were your weaknesses are. Here's where the common sense comes in. Of course you would protect the weak spots more than the strong ones. I'm not saying that defensiveness is a problem. I am trying to get you to see it as valuable information to understand yourself and others. You have to know yourself. The addictions in our lives know our weaknesses if the addiction knows more about you than you do then your odds of being free are slim. Admit your weaknesses so that no one can control you with them. If you find yourself defensive and you don't know why than stop. Figure out what weakness is being revealed and then take the steps necessary to strengthen that weakness. Once the weakness is removed you will no longer have to be defensive.
            Snitch Concept
 
            In the world of addiction you can lie, cheat, steal, abuse or anything else that you want to do as long as you don't break the only rule. The snitch rule. The one thing that liars never allow is telling the truth. Liars do everything they can to keep the truth covered. They spend their lives running from the truth, the truth that they are not free. So the snitch rule has been established. The snitch rule states that anyone who try tell the truth is punished.
            I have seen people with no morals what so ever totally crippled by this. They can't tell the truth. They have been convinced that it is a sin, the only sin.  I tell you this because you may find yourself punishing someone for shinning light on your darkness. Realize that having a problem with snitches is always a problem with fear and weakness.
            One time I was having a conversation with a young guy. he was ready to punish someone who had told the truth about him. This is what I said to him.
            "Come here, close. I have to tell you the solution to your snitch problem. But I don't know if you can handle it." "I can handle it" he said. I said "Okay but this didn't come from me. What I am about to tell you is the key to never having to have a problem with snitches ever again." His eyes grew big as he leaned in.
"Don't hide anything." I whispered to him.
            He waited for me to go on. That was it, if you never hide anything no one can ever snitch on you, ever. There is power and freedom in honesty.
Rock bottom
            This is hard to explain but very important. Rock bottom is the best worst place there is. Not everyone has had a rock bottom moment. I don't think it can be planned. It is a place where you are so shattered and broken that you let go. Rock bottom is when you know the only way out is up. It is a powerful place if you are lucky enough to get there without getting destroyed. I had a hard rock bottom experience and I think other people depending on what they are enslaved to may have different experiences. There is defiantly a moment of authenticity where you realize this isn't me. 
                        A rock bottom moment of authenticity only last so long and then it moves on. Rock bottom is like a like a thunderstorm that scares you, out in the pouring rain the loud thunder and crashing lightning. Sit in it, stay there and when the storm is over you will find that that frightening rain has washed all the dirt off of you.
            Unfortunately many people never get to a rock bottom moment of change because well intentioned people around them keep them from it. This is when an enabler doesn't want a person that is enslaved to feel any pain and there is pain at the rock bottom point. Here is a word of advice let people reap what they sow. If you disrupt this law it will deny the person that you think you care about the information that they need to change.
            High standard vs. Low standard
Here is the deal with standards. Unfortunately many people spend allot of time and energy getting others to expect less from them. Setting a low standard for someone is an insult. If someone sets a low standard for you that is information telling you that you can't do more. At least I get to do less you might think, but then that pesky reap what you sow law comes in. When you set a low standard or you let others set the low standard you give away your power. Once it is given away it takes work to get it back.
            Set high standards for yourself and others, this is a choice. You may be far stronger than you think but when you were young people insulted you and set low standards for you. Maybe you started to believe that those were your actual limitations. I'm here to tell you that you are capable of so much more. Compliment yourself with a high standard today. Challenge yourself and remember that the human brain in order to change has to rewire itself. This rewiring process takes some time. You could be trying to do things differently, maybe your brain is rewiring itself as you are failing. You may not know that every failed attempt is bringing you one step closer to that new connection being made and you changing.
            Why is it that we see that everything in life worth anything requires effort and probably involves failure. We still try something once and then say see it didn't work and quit. Get back up.
Addiction role change
            There is a role change that goes on that I didn't know about. As you get deeper and deeper into addiction the role of the addiction changes. At first it is your best friend, it is always there for you and it helps you through some hard times. It makes you feel good and gives you a feeling of power. People who get involved with addiction aren't idiots. Unfortunately we get into a relationship with something that sucks us in and then turn on us.
            As time goes on the addictions role changes. It goes from being friend to master. At this point the addiction starts to do the talking. You find yourself saying and doing things that you wouldn't have done in the past. The addiction starts to get you to turn away from anything it considers a threat. It is now leading you. You may go along with this. This is often where people with "soft addictions" stop. Soft addictions are socially acceptable. They do damage but as long as you go along with them no pain.
            Once you stop going along with the masters plans then the role changes again. This is when the addiction becomes your enemy. You start to hate the addiction that you once cared so much for. This is when it punishes you every time you try to break free. You are no longer doing the thing because you want to, you have no choice. As your enemy the addiction makes you do what it wants.
            This is important to know because at every point you are doing what the addiction says. It doesn't care what role it is to you as long as you follow along. The addiction hasn't changed it has been controlling you from the first day. Be careful, often the most abusive people pull up with some candy and a smile. The addiction is no different.
Your role changes
            There is another role change that no one told me about. When I started breaking out of addiction my role started to change. When I was in addiction I knew my role. Be desperate, wallow in self pity. Everyone around me knew what to expect. As I started to break free my role as defeated addict started to change into the role of a victorious sober person. I was changing from a follower to a leader.
            I thought that this change would have people singing my praises. I was surprised to find out that any role change often causes problems for others. No I know that people oppose real change most of the time. When the change started for me people thought it was just another weak attempt and didn't think anything of it. I don't blame them I had cried wolf before, saying this time it's for real and remaining the same. As time went on my role continued to change and so did my relationships. I quickly realized the people who were friends with me because of my weakness because the simply went away when I got strong. Some people will never believe that you are really free and others will hate you for it. The good news is that you will find people who appreciate your new role. They will offer you quality relationships, it just may not be quantity.
Relapse
 
            When you have gone some time without the thing that you were struggling with you will be able to remember having a positive experience. Chances are that you did the thing so frequently that you were desensitized to the negative effects. Now that there has been some time you start to wonder would the old thing give me the same good feelings that I remember. If it has been long enough your brain has already rewired itself to not be the same as you were. This when a relapse occurs it.
Relapses can be confusing to talk about because a relapse can be the best thing ever or the worst. Here is what you need to know to make sure if you relapse that you make it a learning experience. It can never be planned. You never get to think "well a relapse is part of the process so I'll have one in two weeks, I can't wait." Only you know if the relapse is authentic or not. But there are some actions to look for. There should not be excuses, there should be shame.
            When a relapse happens there is a moment of truth. If you hide it and start on the old path then that is the direction you will go and fast. Or if you do what you would not have done before and admit your mistake then you will know that you are different. If you do the old thing hopefully it will not feel the same because you should now be filled with enough positive things that there is no hole left to fill. You will have to decide do I want to go back in to slavery or keep moving forward. Relapse can function to retrain the brain. Relapse = pain = bad instead of Using = pleasure = good.
            This is why you do not want to have one last great time with your addiction or that is what you will remember. When you relapse and see that the old thing just doesn't satisfy the new you hold onto that memory, hold on to the guilt, shame and the just plain stupid feeling. When you ask yourself what was I thinking. Remember that hang it on the wall of your mind so that when the addiction comes knocking again you will not forget.
            You may not have a physical relapse but a character relapse. If you have built the freedom characteristics into your life you may have a character relapse. The has the same function as a physical relapse. You may think I used to lie and be just fine. So you lie and now you feel like crap because you know that all lies are rooted in fear and weakness, great hold onto that. Successful character relapses will prevent you from a physical relapse.
Genes and Upbringing
            I was adopted at a young age. I have never met a biological relative. That means that for me genetics is a guessing game. When I was fat I imagined my biological parents to be fat. When I lost my hair I imagined my biological father bald. I was removed from the home so I am assuming some negative things were going on.
             In the home I was raised in no one else was overweight. They were just skinny and I was very fat. No one drank or smoked ever. I was not raised around alcohol or cigarettes. Yet I latched on these things just as tightly as someone who was raised in around them. We did have our fair share of addictive concepts but the way those concepts manifested themselves in my was very different.
            Genes play a powerful role in who we are. The danger is that we will use them as an excuse to continue the cycle. My past has lead me to believe that genes play more of a role in addiction than upbringing. Many times people have both. If you are raised in a home with an alcoholic father then you are getting attacked both from the inside (your genes) and from the outside (your upbringing). But when you are a kid you don't get to make allot of the decisions for yourself. When you can make those decisions you will have to work that much harder to over throw your genetics or you upbringing. If you don't then you will just be giving your children the same disadvantages you were given. As always know yourself. If you have a history of anything negative in your families past use it as information instead of an excuse.
Stress
            Stress is strange, it does so many negative things to the body and the mind. It kills and that is why the addiction loves it so much. I knew what it was to be stressed my entire life but I never took the time to learn about it. Don't get me wrong there is allot of biological responses to stress. I'm going to try and break down two types of stress. I'm calling them situational and physical. As always this is my perspective and it may not line up with some much more complex stress explanations.
             The first kind of stress is situational. This is the type of stress most of us think about. For example you get chewed out by your boss, that is a stressful situation. That situation causes a stress response in your physical body.
            Another kind of stress is a physical stress. this could be explained in a number of ways. The way I want you to understand it is from the perspective of substances. Any substances that make you biologically spike and crash, highs and lows. Any substance whether it be caffeine, nicotine, sugar, alcohol all the way up to any number of other less socially acceptable drugs or prescriptions causes a stress on the body.
            Here is how the stress cycle works. You have a bad day, that is the situational stress so then you consume a substance to cope with that stress, that is the physical stress. Here is the important point, your body can not tell the difference between situational stress and physical stress. The body only sees it as stress. So let's repeat the cycle, you have a bad day and the body feels stress and then you consume something and the body feels a physical stress. So the body is stressed and then it is stressed.
            The reason this is important is because the things we are doing to release stress are causing stress, so we feel worse. We feel worse so we need something to pick us up, probably a stressor. See the problem. The body stays stressed all the time.
            Your body is designed to handle stress, all types by shifting you into fight or flight mode. This is why some people believe that they only perform under pressure. If the pressure doesn't go away your body just gets drained and is now unable to shift into fight or flight mode so when a problem comes along instead of fighting it or running you just lay there and your problem gets you. 
            The things that we are doing to cope are causing are the problem. This why we have to free ourselves from these things, they are unsustainable and leave us defenseless against the situational stress that life brings.
Change your surroundings      
            Change your surroundings to change your life. If you leave the old places you are much less likely to constantly think about old things that you have given up. We naturally follow paths we have walked before so sometimes the best way to go a different direction is to go to a place that has un walked paths. I realize not everyone can just pack up and move across the country. If you can I would try it, I did actually and it was a big help. The idea here is to change you surrounds in some way. If you want to feel different start dressing different. Paint the walls in your house a different color. Start trying new things that are not related to the old baggage. Tyr new food, new friends, try learning things. There was a time when I would have rolled my eyes at this suggestion but I didn't know about all the things that I now love.
            A change of scenery has a lot of power to but not all the power. This suggestion is a good one but don't think that a new place will make you new. There is a trying new things and running away. If you are learning how to guard yourself against the lies of addiction a change of scenery can be perfect. However, if you are not doing the work no amount of exterior change will change your interior. If you are establishing the characteristics of freedom those characteristics shoulod not be comfortable around the old things. If you still have the same old characteristics of addiction then you will change the place from new to old quickly.            
The shift
            At some point there will be a shift from freeing yourself from physical addictions to freeing yourself from conceptual addictions. you may have started this process when you started looking to the root of the physical addiction. Most times because the concepts are the cause of the physical addictions they are stronger and take more time to get rid of. The good news is that addiction only has one play book, full of lies and fear. Once you learn the tricks that addiction uses to keep you physically addicted there are no surprises for quitting concepts. In this way you will be better prepared.
            The main concept is fear, but there are others like stress, insecurity, anger, dishonesty, shame and many more. You can quit these things and never go back to them the same way that you can quit smoking and never go back to it. The most common response here is "no body's perfect". Which is a popular response because it is both true and sets a low standard at the same time. You will always make mistakes but you do not have to repeat them. You can quit fear in every way that you have experienced it in the past. When you experience it in a new way in the future that will be one more expression of fear that you can do away with. To remove these concepts use the same freedom characteristics.
            Giving up more
           
            Here is one of the secrets to victory that I never heard from an AA program or another addict and I think that it has made all the difference. Once you have given up your drug of choice or dealt with your major struggle and are getting a taste of freedom you are going to want to set up some major walls in-between you and the old ways. The best way to do this is to start giving up more things. I know this sounds crazy. But here is a trick that most people never realize. You will tend to think about the last thing that you gave up. That's right you will tend to think about the last thing that you gave up. This means that if you want to stop struggling with thoughts about alcohol then give up coffee. If you have been off alcohol longer than coffee than your body will shift its attention to the substance that it most immediately craves. So you are now struggling less with a more destructive drug and more with a less destructive drug.
            The other great part of this is that once you have given up the second addiction it sits in between you and the first one. Following my alcohol and coffee example, you have given up alcohol and then coffee so if you fail and start drinking coffee again you will know that you are headed toward the first addiction. What better way to always know where you are at and which direction you are headed.
            Another reason that the giving up more concept works so well is because as you are giving up more you are you are strengthening your the freedom characteristics. You start to realize that because you have given up the drug of choice that other substances or concepts are really not that hard to quit in comparison. You will start to feel powerful. You will start to realize the true nature of freedom. Guess what you do after you have totally given up the second addiction, give up a third. As you go on you will have set up so many road blocks between you and the first addiction that you will have a hard time getting back. You will start to see the investment that you have made and how you have changed and you will think of the old addictions the way you think about toys from your childhood. You will remember that you liked those things but you will have a hard time remembering why.
            You will start giving up things not because you are addicted to them but simply because they are unnecessary. You will give them up because it will be fun. This will seem strange to other people and they probably won't like it because you will be giving up things they don't think are a problem. They may get defensive and that's ok just keep going. If you want to stay free this is necessary.
            The freedom characteristics in your life are the key to success. Giving up more allows you to exercise the characteristics without being anywhere near the initial addiction. Giving up more can be as enjoyable as physical exercise. Working out is just that working, but it is enjoyable because it makes you strong and you feel good after. Same thing here. You are working out your freedom muscles. Just like physical muscles if you don't use it you lose it. So find ways to use them constantly. 
Living in wisdom
 
            Most people that break free from their addictions still battle those addictions for the rest of their lives. My goal is to get people not only free from the addictions but off the battle field and on to living a full life. Once addiction had been removed a person can start to see that there are two ways of living. Motivated by fear or by wisdom. I lived in fear long after I got sober, in fact I thought that I needed fear. I needed to remember the past and use my fear of returning to it as motivation to move forward. This fear life worked for a while and I didn't back slide but after a while you have to ask you self how long do I have to run from something that is supposedly gone. I asked myself do I ever get to say I was an alcoholic. The mainstream view is once an alcoholic always an alcoholic and that is true in the sense that you are always allergic to that disease so you don't get to drink. The thing that changed for me was motivation.
            I stopped running, I stopped telling people I am an alcoholic. I started living in wisdom instead of living in fear. Fear says I can't do that because of the consequences. Wisdom says I choose not to do that because I of the reward I get from not doing it. Either way you're not doing the thing that once controlled you. Living in wisdom just allows you to make you decisions from a confident and secure place of strength.
            If you tell someone "I can't drink beer I'm an alcoholic" it has been my experience that they make a comment about you being weak. That way they can go ahead and drink thinking of themselves as strong enough to control it.  If you tell someone "I choose not to drink because I know the negative effects of alcohol on the body" you are being honest but you are explaining you position from a place of wisdom. It then becomes very difficult for them to perceive you as weak. As you give up more and more addictions both physical and conceptual it will be very important to remember that your reasoning is rooted entirely in wisdom. You are not making judgments of others you are simply holding yourself to a high standard. When you do this people will make comments like "I couldn't give up my ____________." looking for validation. Never be apologetic for making wise decisions.
Alright
            Others will try to twist your wisdom into lower standards so that they can feel good about doing unnecessary things. I have found the word "alright" to have power form a wisdom perspective. When others try to get you to compromise yourself respond with the word alright. Don't argue with people about their decisions. Wisdom always worries about itself, knowing that you are the only person you can control. Saying alright acknowledges what the other person is saying. It does not ignore it or dismiss it. Alright also does not retaliate. If someone calls you a nasty name your first instinct is to fight them or run away by avoiding them. These two impulses come from the body, it is our fight or flight response. Wisdom does not come from the body it comes from your awareness. Wisdom says alright, and acknowledges their opinion and absorbs their negativity. The lack of retaliation shuts the other person down. You have absorbed their best attempt at controlling you, then remained unaffected. Free people are unaffected people acting out of wisdom and not retaliating. Turning the other cheek out of the security.
            You only fight or run from threats. When you are truly free yourself worth is not contingent upon others opinions you define yourself. You are free if others oppose you say alright, knock the dust off your boots and move on.
Staying Ninja
            If you are not sharing the message enjoy your freedom but stay ninja. This means be aware and discreet at all times. I'm not telling you to hide or be dishonest, those days are gone. I'm telling you to be aware of your surroundings, don't get sloppy or complacent. Don't use your new authentic self as an opportunity to become arrogant. You will hear every lie that people tell you, you will know every excuse. You will see the addiction all around you, be in this world and not of it. Your battle field is always inside yourself so remain unaffected by what you cannot change.
Sharing the message
            Once you have learned the tricks of addiction and removed it from your life. You will feel free, alive for the first time, unaffected. At this point you will be tempted to start telling people about the journey because you will see addiction in their lives and remember.
            Sharing the message has potential to help others get free. It allows you to strengthen yourself through teaching the concepts to others. If others respond positively and become free you will feel an unexplainable unity with them. But be warned most people are not free and they don't want to be. They want to convince you and themselves that they are voluntary slaves. They will try to destroy you, so they no longer have to feel dirty next to someone so clean. If you want to change others you have to welcome opposition. I am trying to make things easier on you than it has been for me. Hopefully you can say "here read this and let me know what you think."
            If you choose to help others focus on quality not quantity. Remember just because others don't believe freedom exists doesn't change the fact that you are free. History teaches us that truths only become widely accepted when a chosen few lead the way and discover them. Don't share the message with just anyone. Look for those who have ears and let them hear. If you give the message to people who can't hear it you are trying to feed a wonderful gourmet feast to a bunch of people that have been stuffing themselves on fast food. They couldn't eat it if they wanted to they are already full. Wait for hungry people to feed.
            Never work harder than the person you are trying to help. Remember when you didn't want to hear the truth, so you didn't. Be patient wait for people to find the place of optimum change. Wait for the rock bottom, wait for them to become seekers, they become the finders.
            Nutrition
            Nutrition is a tool, it is a powerful one but still just a tool. Lots of very notorious people still struggle with addictions. After I personally got out of slavery I spent a long time in the desert wandering around and complaining. I had broken the addictions and my thinking was getting sharper and sharper. I wasn't listening to the old lies anymore. The problem was that I still felt like crap, physically. Many people stay here. I was fortunate enough to have a wife who knows more than me. She suggested I do a week long detox and like all good change teachers she offered to do it with me. For a week I cut out all processed foods, white sugar, white flour, and junk food (fast food, pop, candy, icecream ect.)
            I did this for a week and hated it. It was a good test for my mental strength. I am either all in or all out so I was all in, no compromises. I couldn't wait for that week to be over. But I did find myself sleeping better, my energy was up, and I lost weight. When it was over went straight back to my old eating, for one meal. After that one meal I started feeling sick. My body was rejecting the food. I was not about health or nutrition but I knew that if I could feel that much of a difference after a week that I needed more.
            This is when I finally got out of the desert and got to the promised land. I decided to continue with the new way for eating and I started to learn about the reasons I was feeling so much better. As time went on I kept changing. My moods got better, I lost lots of weight, I rested, I exercised, even my tastes started changing. I kept learning more and other people started noticing all the changes. The past addictions where interior and now I was happy that others could see the difference. My confidence and self esteem went up and I was constantly exercising my freedom characteristics.
            Getting free is a process. I would have been overwhelmed to try and give up all my comfort foods the same time as the alcohol or the nicotine. So don't be overwhelmed just know that the sooner you start to change your nutrition the quicker your body will begin to detoxify itself and the easier it will be for you to quit you addictions. If you are struggling with non- physical addictions like gambling, a change in nutrition will have a positive effect.
            Our moods are directly affected by our nutrition. Many times our mood is bad because our nutrition is bad, so we feel like we need an active substance to bring us up. If we nutritionally repair our moods the need for the addictive substances will diminish. Here are some things that helped me. There is allot of information out there are this just a start.
Everything that you eat is looked at as a protein ,fat, or carbohydrate and you need all three. Everything else is waste or toxic or both.
Water
Drink a gallon of clean spring water a day, this is powerful. We are constantly dehydrating ourselves with coffee, pop and sugar filled drinks. This makes us more thirsty. So many problems come from dehydration and this the primary way that the body detoxs itself.
 
Protein
            Your body needs protein in order to produce your good mood chemical in your brain. Eat protein at every meal, the higher the quality of protein the better you will be. Free range chicken, turkey, grass fed beef, raw nuts, quality eggs, wild caught fish are all good sources of protein. I can't emphasize this enough. Fast food is not what I am talking about. If you eat fast food it is highly addictive, treat it like an addiction and quit.
Fat
Your body needs fat, good healthy fat. Organic olive oil and coconut oil are the best that I have found. Also the fat in egg yolks, raw nuts and seeds is good to. Stay away from other oils like vegetable oil or corn oil. Don't buy anything found in a plastic bottle it exposes the oil to air and makes it go rancid. Stay away from all trans fats these are manmade and are not far off from cooking with plastic.
Carbs
Fruits, vegetables, and everything else not a fat or a protein are carbs. You want your carbs to come from organic vegetables if possible. Stay a away from white flour, white pasta, white sugar, pop both diet and regular . These have all been processed stripping them of any nutritional value. I know this can be hard. Sugar addiction is so prominent in our society. Sugar causes the body to spike and crash just like other drugs. The term sugar high has become popular and it is real . This all caught me by surprise. My addiction to alcohol was a sugar addiction because alcohol is processed in the body and broken down as sugar. If you are trying to get sober and eating allot of sugar it will trigger you to drink alcohol. I wish I had known this.
Calories
            Calories are units of energy. So low calorie diets or not eating literally means that your body doesn't have any energy. This sends your body into starvation mode and you store fat. Eating needs to be just as much about the quality of the calorie as the quantity.
Exercise
Exercise is so important. It will make you feel good naturally. Try weight training. I have learned allot from lifting because so many of the ideas found in the physical world are analogies for the conceptual word. By exercising you will learn self discipline you will start to change the physical to match the change on the inside. I did fall into the trap of working out too much because of my all more nothing mentality. This can damage the body. You have to recover in order to get strong. Exercise will also make you strong mentally, you are the pilot of your body tell it where to go and what to do. Tell it to get up and move.
More nutrition 
            Try to stay away from anything that makes you spike and crash. Caffeine is a popular one that I was very addicted to. When you spike and crash you are causing a stress on the body. There are also allot of important supplements out there that you should know about. I will touch on just a few. The best advice I can give you is to go to a naturopathic doctor or find a medical doctor who will spend an hour speaking with you. Someone to ask lots of important questions about you to get you feeling right not just treating symptoms.  
            Look into L-glutamine if you are struggling with alcohol, cigarettes or sugar. Get a whole food multi vitamin. Get ionic minerals, these allow the electricity in the brain to work properly and they do allot more. Amino acids are very important for moods. Check out 5-htp, L-tyrosine, Gaba to name a few.  I could go on and on but this is just to give you a starting point. I can't emphasize the importance of nutrition. The more of these suggestions you take the better you will feel.  
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About me
            I did not want this to be a book about all the things I did when I wasn't free. Instead I wanted it to be a window into the mind of addiction. A mad toward freedom. I was a slave to a long list of things.
           
            -alcohol
            -food
            -sugar
            -nicotine
            -caffeine
            -sleep aids
            -lust
            -dishonesty
            -anger
            -self pity
            -selfishness
            -depression
            -anxiety
            -stress
            -fear
 
The biggest symptom of addiction for me was alcohol and the root of my addiction and what I have found to be the root of all addiction is fear.
            The reason I tend to use the examples that I do is because of the addictions that I had. But my goal is to get give people a map out, no matter what type or how many addictions you have. Then you can help the people that you know that are struggling. I want to make sure others have gotten a chance to hear the things that no one told me. I am not a doctor, and am not formally trained in addiction. I am free from the list of things that at one time controlled me. Do what you want, when you want...you already do.
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For Friends and Family
            Very rarely is the addicted person the only one affected by the addiction. Well-meaning people and the addicted persons themselves are convinced the addiction can occur in isolation. The truth is, compulsions put a strangle-hold on all relationships that they touch. Many people who struggle with destructive compulsions function relatively well in society. They go to work, hang out with friends, avoid brushes with the law, raise families, and some even become very affluent or successful—all while maintiing their addition. The addict tries to avoid shame at all cost by pushing shame back on you. Your insecurity, self-doubts, shame, fears, etc. gives them room to keep using
(Maybe it is me.  Maybe I am uptight, petty, judgmental, jealous.....maybe I am too hard on him).
 
If you are in a caring relationship you should be able to tell express when someone's behavior is causing you pain. If you are the priority, they will stop. If the substance is the priority, use will continue with more excuses or in hiding.
 
Tough guy: men can handle their alcohol/drugs       comparing self to media and others         
Weak guy: too depressed, anxious, fragile, low self-esteem, previously abused, broken family relationships, "black sheep" --- any excuse to get you to believe they are not on a level playing field with everyone else in life. Substance is there to level them out.
 
Take away the substance = increase in anger, depression, impulsive behavior, abusiveness, irritability, sleeplessness, anxiety. Blame you for the psychosocial problems and expect you to fix it or allow continued use.
 
Deal making:  I'll let you....so I can drink. You spent $50 shopping so I get $50 for a "good time."  I promise I'll only drink 6 beers on Friday...I promise I'll cut back to 4 beers....I promise I'll only have 1 glass of wine with dinner. I promise I'll only drink on "special occasions."
 
Hints of dishonesty = chronic character issue...there is always more below the surface
 
Using self is only one version of self = the addict has other versions to choose from, he is just choosing the easy way. Sobriety will bring out best version of himself. Excuses that he will lose personality, hobbies, skills, ability, creativity, friends to guilt you into "allowing" him to use.
 
You do not "allow" his use. He always chooses to use whether you allow it or not. What he is pressuring you for is not judging his use, which would cause him justified shame. He wants shame-free substance use, regardless of how his use is destroying his life or relationships.
 
Efforts to talk about use will be heated and long and confusing and hurtful and will usually resolve little. The addict will promise a lot to ease momentary pain and avoid the pain of actually quitting. Keep track of broken promises, not to throw it in the addict's face, but to remind yourself each time you fall for another "deal."
 
The caveman: the addict is withdrawn into himself and wallows in pity. He is not committing crimes, doesn't become abusive, puts more than his fair share of spending money into it but convinces you that life is hard and he needs a break. This can go on for years b/c compared to many addicts, he's "not that bad." But you feel distant, lonely, emotionally drained, worried about raising children together. He is unreliable and emotionally distant or needy. Do not settle for this life. It will drag on for a long time, as the addict convinces himself he has it under control.
 
Addict's use will always increase as tolerance increases...4 beers becomes 6 becomes 12 becomes losing count.
Tricks: only drinking at home to show he is better than "bar" people
          drinking at bar so he isn't one of those guys who drinks "alone"
          drinking out of cups or at bars so he doesn't keep track of how much he drank
          mixing own drinks so he can make them strong without anyone noticing
         drinking on empty stomach to feel buzz better
          hiding bottle, denying use, turning your drinking back on you
          get you to drink so you can't make him feel shame
          start a fight so that he can drink and blame you
          Get worked up about family/work/life drama so he can drink and blame circumstances
          Compare, compare, compare, compare: his problems are bigger than others', but is use isn't as bad
          Has a hangover plan in place...a way to get himself going the next day
 
Addicts will only change when the consequences outweigh the reward...however, they also settle into misery because this allows for self-pity. If you continue to rescue the addict, they will not suffer as much as you. You will bear the brunt of the emotional damage...they will continue to use to avoid any discomfort or pain. The more discomfort they feel, the more they are justified to use--up to a certain point. Each person's point is different. Because of this you cannot know for sure that staying will help them quit or leaving will help them quit. All you can do is set up clear, rigid boundaries and leave the decision up to them. They will always want you to make the hard decision but you must keep handing the ball back to them.
 
If you are not willing to leave an addict on his own in his addiction, then you must accept the addict as is. If you accept the addict as is, then you are accepting the ultimate destruction of their character, their humanness, and possibly their life. There is no such thing as apathy in addiction...not taking a stand for sobriety = support of substance use. Action reveals priority. If you do not take action, the person is not a priority...your actions speak louder than words.
 
Friends/Family Support
 
Remember who is working on sobriety! Forgetting is like forgetting that someone's dad died even though you went to the funeral last year! Do not make offhand remarks about drugs/alcohol. Don't relive the old days or tell war stories. Don't smoke, drink, use anything around them, no matter what they say. Addicts who are newly clean will particularly try to appear "strong" and "cured" because it feels uncomfortable and shameful to be singled out. They may say that your drinking doesn't both them because they are trying to convince themselves. The truth is being around drugs/alcohol is like playing Russian Roulette. It may not get you the first, second, third time but in the end, it will get you. Addicts who live in a using environment may not use, but it wear them down emotionally, mentally, and even physically. Addicts need a safe place that is drug and alcohol free. Completely free...not beer down in the basement fridge or pills stashed in a purse.
 
If you are unable to quit your own use for a close friend or a family member, you must ask yourself if you are addicted. Action reveals priority. If you choose to drink if a daughter or wife or cousin or best friend stops, you have made your "freedom to drink" a priority over that person's needs.
To do list
Here it is I have a to do list for you no matter who you are or what your struggle is.
1. Check yourself. Who do you want to be and how bad?
2. Learn your justifications and remove them
3. Establish the five characteristics of freedom in any way possible
            -Honesty
            -Selflessness
            -Self discipline
            -Self respect
            -Accountability
4. Learn the concepts of addiction
5. Start to experiment with change in various parts of your life
Final evaluation
What do you really want?
 
Who do you really want to be?
 
What actions are being taken to bring about change?
 
Are you willing to change your location?
 
Are you willing to take drastic steps to achieve your goal?
 
How would you tell someone else to become the person that you want to be?
 
How much research have you done on how to become who you want to be?
 
You have always been doing what you want when you want. I hope this has helped you to either stop saying you want