In Part 2 we had a closer look at why and how people get addicted. Having understood the physiological and psychological reasons behind addictions, we can now move on to finding some answers on how to give up addictions. While in some cases you wont need to give up the addictions, it is still helpful to control your dependency on the addiction. While the actual approach would vary depending on the particular addiction you are trying to give up, I believe there are some fundamental steps you need to keep in mind when you are trying to give up an addiction. Here I want to focus on the softer addictions I talked about. More serious addictions like drugs, alcohol abuse, etc., may probably require professional and medical help beyond what I talk about here.
Become Aware
The first step in your journey is to become aware of the addictions in your life. Take stock of your life and the things that you do each day. List down the activities which you do and make note of all those which you think you feel you “must” do. Write them down for a few days and then look for patterns of behaviour which you see. For example every day after coming back from work you may switch on the Television or you feel you need to read the newspaper as soon as you get up or you “must” have your morning coffee or tea (if you are like me) to get you started for the day. What we are essentially doing here is consciously making a list of things which have become habits and we do them without giving them a second thought. These are patterns of behaviour which have been deeply engrained into our subconscious that we believe that they are or should be part of our lives. Let me give you an example here. Till around a year ago, I had this belief that I had to watch television because it helped me relax. My argument was that I was watching stuff which was light hearted and did not have to think a lot. As a result by brain would relax. Now that I’m more aware, I fully understand how absurd that belief was. So while going through this step don’t think too much of what you are writing. Write down everything that you do for around 2 weeks and then make a list of common behaviours.
Evaluate
Once you have made the list, the next task is to pick the ones you want to change or get rid of. This is probably the most tricky and challenging part because our minds will come up with all kinds of excuses and reasons on why it’s a bad idea to change a particular habit. So for example say you pick the amount of time you spend on social media, your minds first reaction would be to ask you, How do you expect to stay in touch with your friends?, “What if you miss your friend’s Birthday? And so on. While your reasons could be different, the point I’m trying to make is that as soon as you create a thought which goes against your belief system, your inner voice will start talking to you on why it’s a bad idea. Some of the questions to ask yourself to identify your list are
- Have I ever in the past thought about giving this up?
- Does this habit cause me discomfort if I don’t do it?
- Do my loved ones frequently talk to me about this behaviour?
- Do I have arguments/fights with my loved ones about this behaviour?
- Does it damage my health in any way?
- When I have some free time, is this something I feel like doing?
If you answered Yes to any of the questions above, it’s something which should be on your list of things to be aware of. You will need to be absolutely honest with your evaluation. Take help from someone close to help you with the evaluation if you find it difficult to do.
Think Small
I tried quitting smoking 5 times. I tried different approaches and what eventually worked for me was a gradual approach. So rather than trying to give up something altogether, I would recommend that you do it at your own pace. Think Small wins. One of the reasons for this is that besides causing physiological problems (for substance related addiction), you may also end up getting frustrated and depressed due to the withdrawal syndromes. The positive to this approach is that you feel happy about making progress. So there is a sense of achievement when you give up having that cigarette after your dinner or for that matter smoking when you have a drink. You feel good that you used the internet for 15 minutes less today and spent that time on productive work. The flip side to this is that it takes longer to quit as you may give in at times to circumstances. Adopt an approach which you feel comfortable with. Don’t be afraid to try and fail. Failure only teaches you what does not work. So you can try something else. Don’t be disappointed that you could not make it work with the first attempt. As the age old saying goes Try, try … Till you succeed.
Replace the Habit
Don’t think about your Mother. Ok I’m serious “DO NOT think about your MOTHER”. I’m sure that despite reading this, you saw your Mom’s image in front of you. This is an old trick which tries to explain how our mind works. We are all aware that we predominantly think in pictures. What this means is that words for which we cannot put a picture against, are difficult to follow. So although you read the words Don’t Think about your Mother, all that your brain gathered was “Mother” because it does not have any image for the word “Don’t Think about your”. The point I’m trying to make here is that you CANT break a habit by constantly remembering it. So if you constantly keep saying that I Will not Smoke, your brain will keep reminding you of smoking. This obviously makes it difficult for you to quit.
Instead of trying to directly give up a habit or an addiction, replace them with other good habits. For example if you know that you are tempted to watch television as soon as you come back from work, instead of coming home and forcing yourself not to pick up that remote, experiment with other things you could do during that time. For example what I did was to fill that time with some other activity like going to the gym, meeting friends, taking kids to the park, etc. so that my mind was not thinking about the television. The first day you do this it won’t be easy. The second day it will be easier and the third day it will be even easier. The trick here is to stick to the new routine for long enough. There is a belief which has been contended that it takes around 21 days to beat a habit. I can’t comment about the validity of this but from my experience is that depends on the particular addiction you are trying to give up. So while giving up TV took me less than 2 weeks, giving up smoking was more difficult. The reason it takes time also depends on how strong or deep rooted your beliefs about your addiction are. So until your belief system starts to change, it becomes very challenging to maintain momentum. Will power can go that mile for you, but it’s your mind which will help you go that extra mile!
Fix the Root Cause
This is probably the most important things to do when it comes to making sure you not just quit your addictions but also avoid a relapse. Behind every addiction there is often a deep psychological reason on why someone gets into habits which turn into addictions. In the field of Information technology there is a concept of Root Cause Analysis. This is a process which is used to determine the true reasons for a particular issue in the software. Similarly we need to dig down deep into the root cause of the addictions. One simple and very effective methodology is known as the 5 Why Technique. It essentially requires “Why” to be asked 5 times till you get to an answer. Why 5 and not 4 or 6? Well I don’t know but I would assume that the inventors of this methodology observed that 5 Why’s were enough to nail down the root cause in most cases. Let’s take an example here. I’ll take my own example of Television. So here is how you would go about doing it
Problem: I want to watch TV every day
Why 1: Why do I want to watch TV?
Answer: Because I believe that watching TV relaxes me and helps me unwind after a busy day.
Why 2: Why do I believe that it relaxes me?
Answer: Because I feel I can distract myself from my worries for the duration
Why 3: Why do I need to distract myself?
Answer: Because I believe that thinking about them will cause me more anxiety.
Why 4: Why do I think it will cause me anxiety?
Answer: Because I think that I don’t have all the answers to my life’s challenges.
Why 5: Why don’t I have the answers to my life’s challenges?
Answer: Because I haven’t thought through them or taken action to overcome them.
So for me the real problem was not that I wanted to relax but that I was too scared to think about the challenges I had in my life and kept procrastinating finding solutions and answers to them. So TV was an easy way out to avoid the pain. So for me I had to change my fundamental approach and learn to face up to life questions and challenges. Once I did this I did not feel the need for a support mechanism or escape route. You may find this exercise to be silly but I can tell you that some of the revelations will be shocking. The only caveat is that you have to be absolutely honest with your responses.
Most addictions have their root cause in some sort of fear, doubt or low self-esteem. If you can manage to get to the root cause half your battle is won. The rest is rather easy.
Meditate
You’ve probably heard this before that you should meditate. It’s likely 
that you have also tried to meditate and not seen a difference. Meditation is one of the most talked about topics these days and there are all kinds of practices which you can choose from. What system you want to use is up to you. Meditation is a way of going inside yourself, knowing yourself, accepting yourself and empowering yourself through the experience. One thing which you will often hear from people who have been meditating for some time is that it gives you inner strength and you get the answers to your questions almost magically. As crazy as it might sound, you receive answers to all your questions if you listen carefully. Meditation helps address all the root causes which lead to addiction and prevents you from relying on external stimulants. I consider it to be the strongest intoxicants we can ever find. It takes your into a journey of Spiritual Intoxication! And that’s unbeatable!
Do you know any other ideas on how to give up addiction. I would love to hear from you. Leave your comments below and lets talk!